CHRISTIANITY: FAITH OR FORMULA?
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
Romans 5:1-2 (English Standard Version)
Clinical psychologists Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend co-authored an interesting book entitled, 12 ‘Christian’ Beliefs That Can Drive You Crazy. The book, which was published in 1994, deals with some of the popular false assumptions that cause so much damage to hurting people who are seeking genuine hope from God. I won’t go into the details of the book, but will say that it is a priceless asset for ministers or people that have a passion for the healing power of the Gospel. In the book, the authors quote one of their seminary professors, Jack Deere, who made this very poignant statement:
“Law is the easiest subject in the world to preach, Grace is the hardest.”
I agree wholeheartedly with that statement . There probably is no spiritual concept that baffles our minds more than the concept of God’s Grace. Grace just does not make any logical sense. “Law”, on the other hand is easy to grasp because it validates the formulaic methods that we are used to in life. This is why many of us think that Christianity is merely a formula for success in life, when it really is about faith in a loving God; a God whose love for us is greater than anything that we have ever known; a God whose plan for our lives defies logical explanation. These days many people would rather identify themselves as a “Christ follower” instead of a “Christian”, because in this age of increased religious fundamentalism, Christianity carries so many negative connotations with it. Christians are too often perceived to be judgmental, self-righteous, hypocrites or too dogmatic. But this problem exists because we [Christians] do not really understand the basic tenet of our faith: God’s unconditional love for a fallen humanity. Contrary to the popular assumption that God’s love for us is based on our “obedience” to Him, God loves us because it is His nature to love. The Bible emphatically says that He is love (1 John 4:16). The message of God’s Grace is an insult to our sense of autonomy and entitlement because it shatters all the myths that we hear about meritocracy. We like to believe that we live in a an absolutely pure meritocratic society where blessings are earned by hard work and personal effort alone, but the truth is not that simple because we live in a fallen world that is marred by corruption and other sins and so the rules that govern upward socio-economic mobility are skewed favorably towards some more than others. Also, when viewing things from a spiritual perspective, there is no such thing as a pure meritocracy. Whether we admit it or not, we are who we are because of God’s love and mercy.
Most sermons that we hear from pulpits today, especially from the popular ministries on TV, are what I like to call “Law” or “Formulaic” sermons. These sermons emphasize the need to earn blessings from God by obeying Biblical Law. The assumption being that we can fully obey God’s law in the first place (something that is really impossible to do). “Law” or “Formulaic” sermons go something like this: God is holy, we are not, so we must strive to be holy by obeying The Law, and once when we do obey, He will shower us with the blessings that we want. These sermons are packaged differently, depending on the minister, and have different titles, but they are essentially the same. Grace teachings, on the other hand are not very popular because they are the antithesis to “Law” or “Formulaic” teachings. Grace teachings, for the most part, have become mere footnotes added only to win new converts for Jesus. So at the end of every “Law” sermon, after hearing how much you need to obey The Law, you will likely hear a short message about how you need to come to Christ by Grace. It would take me almost ten years after I became a child of God before I would realize that the messages of “Law” and “Grace” are really incompatible, and yet we constantly hear both messages being preached almost simultaneously. My guess is that we are so accustomed to the belief that we earn blessings from God, just like we would earn a paycheck from an employer, and so we find it very hard to really comprehend how God’s Grace really applies to our lives.
The notion that anyone who is blessed is blessed simply because they worked hard for it implies that anyone who is misfortunate is in that state because they did no work hard enough or did not do the right things. But we all know that just because someone is in a misfortunate situation does not necessarily mean that they are living intentionally evil lives. The Bible does say, after all that “He [God] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). There are lots of 'good' people who have been hit by the storms of life without us really knowing why. That’s why the age old question “why do bad things happen to good people” has baffled theologians for centuries.
The formulaic brand of Christianity is problematic because when you add the Grace factor into the equation, you realize that it is ultimately God’s love and mercy that produce the wonders of our lives, such that even when we “work” or do good things, it is God that empowers us to do so. Jesus said, “apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). This mystery of life is difficult to understand, so maybe that’s why we simply have to accept it by faith, since faith is the evidence of things that we can’t see and the substance of our hope. Another reason I think that the concept of Grace is really hard for us to understand is because God’s love is unlike anything that we have ever experienced in our human relationships. People may say that they love us, but there are usually strings attached to that love. A parent’s love for a child is often compared to God’s love, but it still pales in comparison to what is known as “Agape” or God’s unconditional love. This kind of love for us is based on who God is, and not our actions. Even the most loving parent does not love a child as much as God does.
One Biblical story that captures the difficulty in accepting God’s Grace is the one in Matthew 20:1-16. When I have heard teachings on this parable, it has almost always been taken to simply mean that it does not matter how late in life we accept Christ as Savior and Lord, salvation is available to all. But there are more lessons in this parable than we would like to admit. Could it be that we avoid these lessons because they do not align with the popular teachings of the day? Here is the parable in full from the New Living Translation. It is called The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard:
For the Kingdom of Heaven is like the landowner who went out early one morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay the normal daily wage and sent them out to work.
At nine o’clock in the morning he was passing through the marketplace and saw some people standing around doing nothing. So he hired them, telling them he would pay them whatever was right at the end of the day. So they went to work in the vineyard.
At noon and again at three o’clock he did the same thing.
At five o’clock that afternoon he was in town again and saw some more people standing around. He asked them, “Why haven’t you been working today?”
They replied, “Because no one hired us.” The landowner told them, “Then go out and join the others in my vineyard.”
That evening he told the foreman to call the workers in and pay them, beginning with the last workers first. When those hired at five o’clock were paid, each received a full day’s wage. When those hired first came to get their pay, they assumed they would receive more. But they, too, were paid a day’s wage.
When they received their pay, they protested to the owner, “Those people worked only one hour, and yet you’ve paid them just as much as you paid us who worked all day in the scorching heat.” He answered one of them, “Friend, I haven’t been unfair! Didn’t you agree to work all day for the usual wage? Take your money and go. I wanted to pay this last worker the same as you. Is it against the law for me to do what I want with my money? Should you be jealous because I am kind to others?”
“So those who are last now will be first then, and those who are first will be last.”
Matthew 20:1-16 (New Living Translation)
This is a powerful parable and the lessons that can be learned from it go far beyond the obvious. For one thing, the message of this parable is scandalous in many regards because it seems grossly unfair that some workers would be paid the same amount as those who had been toiling all day in the “scorching heat”. But Jesus starts the parable off by saying “The Kingdom of heaven is like…” So this parable has lessons about God’s kingdom and the way He operates. The parable is really about God’s Grace, and I really believe that one of the reasons why Jesus taught so much in parables is because most spiritual truths are not easily defined, but better understood through stories.
Here are some of the lessons from this parable:
1. The first and most obvious lesson is that salvation is not a reward for a life well lived; heaven is not a reward but a gift. We do not become God’s children because we have somehow gathered enough brownie points in life to dazzle God. This teaching can be infuriating, especially to the legalist and Pharisee in all of us. I can hear someone asking “you mean to tell me that I can live like the devil for practically all my life and then simply make some death-bed confession to God and He will just forgive me for all my life’s transgressions? If this if the case, why even bother trying to live a virtuous life?” Well, as unfair as that may seem to the person that has been obedient for decades, it is true, God is not impressed by our virtue, He appreciates humility from the realization that we are who we are because of Him and not our efforts. This parable teaches is that salvation is not a matter of “fairness” as we understand it, it is a matter of how much God loves us. We must remember, when we sin, we hurt God more than anyone else, and He has the right to destroy or annihilate us if He chooses to, but He is merciful and gracious. There are many people – some who sit in church pews every weekend – who have yet to accept God’s free citizenship into his family because they somehow feel like their sins are too gruesome or big for God to pardon. When we can get it really seared into our minds that heaven is not a reward for a life well lived, we will begin to appreciate God’s love and His sacrifice for our sin through Jesus. A few days ago, I got a call from a friend in Boston who lost her youngest brother to sudden heart failure. She was telling me about how everyone was praising her deceased brother at his funeral because he was very passionate about his faith in God. She added that one of her friend’s even commented, “If he does not make it to heaven, none of us stands a chance, because he was such a devoted Christian.” While I understand this popular sentiment, because I have made similar comments about others whom I felt were “super-spiritual”, I now realize that it is not a Biblical comment. My friend’s brother is not rejoicing in God’s bosom because he was super-dedicated to God, but because of the free gift of Grace made available through Jesus’ sacrifice at the cross. As we place our trust in Jesus, we are eternally embraced by a forgiving God who lovingly adopts us into His family.
2. The second lesson in this parable is that God does not operate by our laws of economics. Can you imagine the uproar that would follow if a company or society decided to use this parable as a guide for business and paying employees: no matter how hard you work, no matter your productivity level or hours of service, everyone gets paid all the same. That system would be called unfair, unethical, socialist, communist and every other negative connotation that we hate in our capitalistic society. That’s why this parable is so offensive because it implies that from God's viewpoint "it is not about your hard work, it is about me, the God who has enabled you to succeed.” We love to think that we are self-made and that everything that we succeed in is primarily as a result of our effort. How many times have we heard of the self-made entrepreneur or millionaire? The assumption goes that no one did anything for the self-made person; they worked and earned all they have all by themselves. This is a myth, no one is really self-made – God blesses us with talent, and blesses us with people who help us to fulfill our dreams. Yes, there is personally responsibility in life, but that is not the sole reason why reach our goals; we need God’s strength and mercy every step of the way. The furious workers in this parable were mad at the employer was because they questioned his sense of fairness. Why would he pay people who barely did any work at all the same amount as us? If anything, this parable pierces our egos and sense of pride. This may explain why so few preachers use this parable for their sermons, because it shatters the myth of “earn by performance alone”. No one wants to think that the blessings we get from God are not somehow directly tied into our obedience, so we continue to live under the illusion that it is what we do that compels God. The fact remains, however, that true obedience is only that when it is a response to God’s love, not as a tool with which we think we coerce God into giving us more blessings. God is not a heavenly Santa Claus who blesses us based on whether we are naughty or nice. That makes for a cute story for kids, but it is not theologically accurate.
3 The third lesson from this parable deals with the attitude that we should have towards others when it comes to our blessings. Ultimately God blesses us to be a blessing to others. Take away love and how it influences us to treat others, and then life is essentially without any substance. At the end of the parable, the landowner asks the jealous worker, “Should you be jealous because I am kind to others?” God desires that we be generous towards others with our gifts. In a day and time when prosperity teachings abound, we have almost forgotten the gift of being a blessing to others, blessing them not for vanity sake or as “seed” to get more back, but simply because God’s love moves us to do so. These days when giving is mentioned in many Christian circles, it is done with the motive of “giving to get” or “sowing seed” to reap a huge financial harvest someday. In other words, give so that you can someday reap the good deed of that giving. This is not why God wants us to give. He wants us to give out of an overflowing appreciation of His love for us, not merely as a tool to get more back someday. Giving-to-get is such a popular theological concept today that if you openly refute it, you are likely to be brushed off as someone who is preaching a “social Gospel” that supposedly absolves people of their own personal responsibility so that they can leech on others. Could it be that we love the “give to get” message because it helps to justify our own greed? There is nothing wrong with having material things, but there is a fine line between having things and not being attached to them and having things because they define who we are (in which case the “things” become our gods). We see this all the time especially in America where shopping is the #1 pastime.
We tithe to our local church not to earn blessings from God but so that the church can serve and be a blessing to others. But more importantly, God wants a cheerful giver, not one who does it out of compulsion thinking that God is now somehow obligated to bless us because we give back to Him. I was watching a dateline NBC special days ago about a former corporate financial guru who know runs a ministry called “Ministry Watch”. The mission of his ministry is to hold huge ministries financially accountable. I was amazed during the segment to see how some high profile pastors were justifying their excessive spending habits and exorbitantly lavish lifestyles with the famous notion that Jesus wants us to prosper, as if to imply that prosperity is the number one and only goal of the Christian life. One popular high profile pastor who was featured in the news piece bragged to his congregation about his luxurious lifestyle, “I live in a 25-room mansion, I have my own $6 million dollar yacht, I have my own private jet and I have my own helicopter and I have seven luxury automobiles.” Is it wrong for this pastor to live this way? Not necessarily. Being wealthy is not a sin. Many people misquote the Bible by saying "money is the root of all evil" when the passage really says "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil" (1 Timothy 6:10, italics added). It is our relationship with money that should be in question. But it is interesting to note that many churches are adopting the same motive that basically governs the corporate world where it is assumed that “greed is good” (as quoted by Michael Douglass in his Oscar winning role in the movie Wall Street). We somehow feel that greed can easily be justified as long as we don’t covertly break any rules or use it as an excuse to supposedly spread the Gospel. After all, who can really read the intentions of our heart in a world where you have to know how to “run game” or be “street smart” in order to survive? Success in spiritual circles is slowly being re-defined by the same parameters that are used in the business world, and this should not be the case. Having money is not a bad thing, we need money to survive and do business in life, ministries need money to serve people. But we must be careful to put our quest for wealth in the right context; God wants us to prosper so that we can be a blessing to others. Why would Jesus tell a rich man to go and sell his possessions and give his money to the poor, if He just wanted us to be rich just for the heck of it (see Matthew 19:21)? The rich man’s response to Jesus’ request makes it clear that money had become his idol. Why would Jesus warn us as eloquently as he did in Luke12:13-21 that the essence of life is not primarily about amassing wealth? Too often today when I watch these preachers on TV, I get the impression that the Gospel is simply a means to an end, a means to get wealthy. I think we have it backwards, God loves us and while it is He who gives us the power to make money, it should not simply be for selfish reasons, He wants us to be a blessing to others, not just to show the world that we worship a God who can enable us to live like Donald Trump. Deuteronomy 8:18 says, “But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth….”. When we do remember this, it fuels greater compassion for those who are less fortunate than us and we are compelled to help them not just with pious platitudes but also in deed.
I believe that when we really grasp the message of this parable about the workers in the vineyard, we will be moved to love others with humility and grace, realizing that life itself and all that it entails is a gift, a gift for which we should all be grateful.
“Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”
Romans 5:1-2 (English Standard Version)
Clinical psychologists Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend co-authored an interesting book entitled, 12 ‘Christian’ Beliefs That Can Drive You Crazy. The book, which was published in 1994, deals with some of the popular false assumptions that cause so much damage to hurting people who are seeking genuine hope from God. I won’t go into the details of the book, but will say that it is a priceless asset for ministers or people that have a passion for the healing power of the Gospel. In the book, the authors quote one of their seminary professors, Jack Deere, who made this very poignant statement:
“Law is the easiest subject in the world to preach, Grace is the hardest.”
I agree wholeheartedly with that statement . There probably is no spiritual concept that baffles our minds more than the concept of God’s Grace. Grace just does not make any logical sense. “Law”, on the other hand is easy to grasp because it validates the formulaic methods that we are used to in life. This is why many of us think that Christianity is merely a formula for success in life, when it really is about faith in a loving God; a God whose love for us is greater than anything that we have ever known; a God whose plan for our lives defies logical explanation. These days many people would rather identify themselves as a “Christ follower” instead of a “Christian”, because in this age of increased religious fundamentalism, Christianity carries so many negative connotations with it. Christians are too often perceived to be judgmental, self-righteous, hypocrites or too dogmatic. But this problem exists because we [Christians] do not really understand the basic tenet of our faith: God’s unconditional love for a fallen humanity. Contrary to the popular assumption that God’s love for us is based on our “obedience” to Him, God loves us because it is His nature to love. The Bible emphatically says that He is love (1 John 4:16). The message of God’s Grace is an insult to our sense of autonomy and entitlement because it shatters all the myths that we hear about meritocracy. We like to believe that we live in a an absolutely pure meritocratic society where blessings are earned by hard work and personal effort alone, but the truth is not that simple because we live in a fallen world that is marred by corruption and other sins and so the rules that govern upward socio-economic mobility are skewed favorably towards some more than others. Also, when viewing things from a spiritual perspective, there is no such thing as a pure meritocracy. Whether we admit it or not, we are who we are because of God’s love and mercy.
Most sermons that we hear from pulpits today, especially from the popular ministries on TV, are what I like to call “Law” or “Formulaic” sermons. These sermons emphasize the need to earn blessings from God by obeying Biblical Law. The assumption being that we can fully obey God’s law in the first place (something that is really impossible to do). “Law” or “Formulaic” sermons go something like this: God is holy, we are not, so we must strive to be holy by obeying The Law, and once when we do obey, He will shower us with the blessings that we want. These sermons are packaged differently, depending on the minister, and have different titles, but they are essentially the same. Grace teachings, on the other hand are not very popular because they are the antithesis to “Law” or “Formulaic” teachings. Grace teachings, for the most part, have become mere footnotes added only to win new converts for Jesus. So at the end of every “Law” sermon, after hearing how much you need to obey The Law, you will likely hear a short message about how you need to come to Christ by Grace. It would take me almost ten years after I became a child of God before I would realize that the messages of “Law” and “Grace” are really incompatible, and yet we constantly hear both messages being preached almost simultaneously. My guess is that we are so accustomed to the belief that we earn blessings from God, just like we would earn a paycheck from an employer, and so we find it very hard to really comprehend how God’s Grace really applies to our lives.
The notion that anyone who is blessed is blessed simply because they worked hard for it implies that anyone who is misfortunate is in that state because they did no work hard enough or did not do the right things. But we all know that just because someone is in a misfortunate situation does not necessarily mean that they are living intentionally evil lives. The Bible does say, after all that “He [God] causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45). There are lots of 'good' people who have been hit by the storms of life without us really knowing why. That’s why the age old question “why do bad things happen to good people” has baffled theologians for centuries.
The formulaic brand of Christianity is problematic because when you add the Grace factor into the equation, you realize that it is ultimately God’s love and mercy that produce the wonders of our lives, such that even when we “work” or do good things, it is God that empowers us to do so. Jesus said, “apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). This mystery of life is difficult to understand, so maybe that’s why we simply have to accept it by faith, since faith is the evidence of things that we can’t see and the substance of our hope. Another reason I think that the concept of Grace is really hard for us to understand is because God’s love is unlike anything that we have ever experienced in our human relationships. People may say that they love us, but there are usually strings attached to that love. A parent’s love for a child is often compared to God’s love, but it still pales in comparison to what is known as “Agape” or God’s unconditional love. This kind of love for us is based on who God is, and not our actions. Even the most loving parent does not love a child as much as God does.
One Biblical story that captures the difficulty in accepting God’s Grace is the one in Matthew 20:1-16. When I have heard teachings on this parable, it has almost always been taken to simply mean that it does not matter how late in life we accept Christ as Savior and Lord, salvation is available to all. But there are more lessons in this parable than we would like to admit. Could it be that we avoid these lessons because they do not align with the popular teachings of the day? Here is the parable in full from the New Living Translation. It is called The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard:
For the Kingdom of Heaven is like the landowner who went out early one morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay the normal daily wage and sent them out to work.
At nine o’clock in the morning he was passing through the marketplace and saw some people standing around doing nothing. So he hired them, telling them he would pay them whatever was right at the end of the day. So they went to work in the vineyard.
At noon and again at three o’clock he did the same thing.
At five o’clock that afternoon he was in town again and saw some more people standing around. He asked them, “Why haven’t you been working today?”
They replied, “Because no one hired us.” The landowner told them, “Then go out and join the others in my vineyard.”
That evening he told the foreman to call the workers in and pay them, beginning with the last workers first. When those hired at five o’clock were paid, each received a full day’s wage. When those hired first came to get their pay, they assumed they would receive more. But they, too, were paid a day’s wage.
When they received their pay, they protested to the owner, “Those people worked only one hour, and yet you’ve paid them just as much as you paid us who worked all day in the scorching heat.” He answered one of them, “Friend, I haven’t been unfair! Didn’t you agree to work all day for the usual wage? Take your money and go. I wanted to pay this last worker the same as you. Is it against the law for me to do what I want with my money? Should you be jealous because I am kind to others?”
“So those who are last now will be first then, and those who are first will be last.”
Matthew 20:1-16 (New Living Translation)
This is a powerful parable and the lessons that can be learned from it go far beyond the obvious. For one thing, the message of this parable is scandalous in many regards because it seems grossly unfair that some workers would be paid the same amount as those who had been toiling all day in the “scorching heat”. But Jesus starts the parable off by saying “The Kingdom of heaven is like…” So this parable has lessons about God’s kingdom and the way He operates. The parable is really about God’s Grace, and I really believe that one of the reasons why Jesus taught so much in parables is because most spiritual truths are not easily defined, but better understood through stories.
Here are some of the lessons from this parable:
1. The first and most obvious lesson is that salvation is not a reward for a life well lived; heaven is not a reward but a gift. We do not become God’s children because we have somehow gathered enough brownie points in life to dazzle God. This teaching can be infuriating, especially to the legalist and Pharisee in all of us. I can hear someone asking “you mean to tell me that I can live like the devil for practically all my life and then simply make some death-bed confession to God and He will just forgive me for all my life’s transgressions? If this if the case, why even bother trying to live a virtuous life?” Well, as unfair as that may seem to the person that has been obedient for decades, it is true, God is not impressed by our virtue, He appreciates humility from the realization that we are who we are because of Him and not our efforts. This parable teaches is that salvation is not a matter of “fairness” as we understand it, it is a matter of how much God loves us. We must remember, when we sin, we hurt God more than anyone else, and He has the right to destroy or annihilate us if He chooses to, but He is merciful and gracious. There are many people – some who sit in church pews every weekend – who have yet to accept God’s free citizenship into his family because they somehow feel like their sins are too gruesome or big for God to pardon. When we can get it really seared into our minds that heaven is not a reward for a life well lived, we will begin to appreciate God’s love and His sacrifice for our sin through Jesus. A few days ago, I got a call from a friend in Boston who lost her youngest brother to sudden heart failure. She was telling me about how everyone was praising her deceased brother at his funeral because he was very passionate about his faith in God. She added that one of her friend’s even commented, “If he does not make it to heaven, none of us stands a chance, because he was such a devoted Christian.” While I understand this popular sentiment, because I have made similar comments about others whom I felt were “super-spiritual”, I now realize that it is not a Biblical comment. My friend’s brother is not rejoicing in God’s bosom because he was super-dedicated to God, but because of the free gift of Grace made available through Jesus’ sacrifice at the cross. As we place our trust in Jesus, we are eternally embraced by a forgiving God who lovingly adopts us into His family.
2. The second lesson in this parable is that God does not operate by our laws of economics. Can you imagine the uproar that would follow if a company or society decided to use this parable as a guide for business and paying employees: no matter how hard you work, no matter your productivity level or hours of service, everyone gets paid all the same. That system would be called unfair, unethical, socialist, communist and every other negative connotation that we hate in our capitalistic society. That’s why this parable is so offensive because it implies that from God's viewpoint "it is not about your hard work, it is about me, the God who has enabled you to succeed.” We love to think that we are self-made and that everything that we succeed in is primarily as a result of our effort. How many times have we heard of the self-made entrepreneur or millionaire? The assumption goes that no one did anything for the self-made person; they worked and earned all they have all by themselves. This is a myth, no one is really self-made – God blesses us with talent, and blesses us with people who help us to fulfill our dreams. Yes, there is personally responsibility in life, but that is not the sole reason why reach our goals; we need God’s strength and mercy every step of the way. The furious workers in this parable were mad at the employer was because they questioned his sense of fairness. Why would he pay people who barely did any work at all the same amount as us? If anything, this parable pierces our egos and sense of pride. This may explain why so few preachers use this parable for their sermons, because it shatters the myth of “earn by performance alone”. No one wants to think that the blessings we get from God are not somehow directly tied into our obedience, so we continue to live under the illusion that it is what we do that compels God. The fact remains, however, that true obedience is only that when it is a response to God’s love, not as a tool with which we think we coerce God into giving us more blessings. God is not a heavenly Santa Claus who blesses us based on whether we are naughty or nice. That makes for a cute story for kids, but it is not theologically accurate.
3 The third lesson from this parable deals with the attitude that we should have towards others when it comes to our blessings. Ultimately God blesses us to be a blessing to others. Take away love and how it influences us to treat others, and then life is essentially without any substance. At the end of the parable, the landowner asks the jealous worker, “Should you be jealous because I am kind to others?” God desires that we be generous towards others with our gifts. In a day and time when prosperity teachings abound, we have almost forgotten the gift of being a blessing to others, blessing them not for vanity sake or as “seed” to get more back, but simply because God’s love moves us to do so. These days when giving is mentioned in many Christian circles, it is done with the motive of “giving to get” or “sowing seed” to reap a huge financial harvest someday. In other words, give so that you can someday reap the good deed of that giving. This is not why God wants us to give. He wants us to give out of an overflowing appreciation of His love for us, not merely as a tool to get more back someday. Giving-to-get is such a popular theological concept today that if you openly refute it, you are likely to be brushed off as someone who is preaching a “social Gospel” that supposedly absolves people of their own personal responsibility so that they can leech on others. Could it be that we love the “give to get” message because it helps to justify our own greed? There is nothing wrong with having material things, but there is a fine line between having things and not being attached to them and having things because they define who we are (in which case the “things” become our gods). We see this all the time especially in America where shopping is the #1 pastime.
We tithe to our local church not to earn blessings from God but so that the church can serve and be a blessing to others. But more importantly, God wants a cheerful giver, not one who does it out of compulsion thinking that God is now somehow obligated to bless us because we give back to Him. I was watching a dateline NBC special days ago about a former corporate financial guru who know runs a ministry called “Ministry Watch”. The mission of his ministry is to hold huge ministries financially accountable. I was amazed during the segment to see how some high profile pastors were justifying their excessive spending habits and exorbitantly lavish lifestyles with the famous notion that Jesus wants us to prosper, as if to imply that prosperity is the number one and only goal of the Christian life. One popular high profile pastor who was featured in the news piece bragged to his congregation about his luxurious lifestyle, “I live in a 25-room mansion, I have my own $6 million dollar yacht, I have my own private jet and I have my own helicopter and I have seven luxury automobiles.” Is it wrong for this pastor to live this way? Not necessarily. Being wealthy is not a sin. Many people misquote the Bible by saying "money is the root of all evil" when the passage really says "the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil" (1 Timothy 6:10, italics added). It is our relationship with money that should be in question. But it is interesting to note that many churches are adopting the same motive that basically governs the corporate world where it is assumed that “greed is good” (as quoted by Michael Douglass in his Oscar winning role in the movie Wall Street). We somehow feel that greed can easily be justified as long as we don’t covertly break any rules or use it as an excuse to supposedly spread the Gospel. After all, who can really read the intentions of our heart in a world where you have to know how to “run game” or be “street smart” in order to survive? Success in spiritual circles is slowly being re-defined by the same parameters that are used in the business world, and this should not be the case. Having money is not a bad thing, we need money to survive and do business in life, ministries need money to serve people. But we must be careful to put our quest for wealth in the right context; God wants us to prosper so that we can be a blessing to others. Why would Jesus tell a rich man to go and sell his possessions and give his money to the poor, if He just wanted us to be rich just for the heck of it (see Matthew 19:21)? The rich man’s response to Jesus’ request makes it clear that money had become his idol. Why would Jesus warn us as eloquently as he did in Luke12:13-21 that the essence of life is not primarily about amassing wealth? Too often today when I watch these preachers on TV, I get the impression that the Gospel is simply a means to an end, a means to get wealthy. I think we have it backwards, God loves us and while it is He who gives us the power to make money, it should not simply be for selfish reasons, He wants us to be a blessing to others, not just to show the world that we worship a God who can enable us to live like Donald Trump. Deuteronomy 8:18 says, “But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth….”. When we do remember this, it fuels greater compassion for those who are less fortunate than us and we are compelled to help them not just with pious platitudes but also in deed.
I believe that when we really grasp the message of this parable about the workers in the vineyard, we will be moved to love others with humility and grace, realizing that life itself and all that it entails is a gift, a gift for which we should all be grateful.
posted by Stephen O. | 10:46 AM
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