And EVERYTHING In It!

Mike Hosey, Elder

The historic and influential philosopher John Locke said that all wealth is the product of labor. Of course, he is correct, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure it out. If you have your own business you know this well. And if you’ve worked your way through college, or some kind of training for a good paying job, you also know this is true.  Further, it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a terrible paying job in a sweatshop, you’ve figured out that in most cases if you want any level of wealth, you’re going to have to work for it. The Bible even confirms Locke’s idea that personal industry produces wealth, and a lack of it produces want (Proverbs 6:6-11).

But Locke’s idea needs some qualification. The idea that our work produces for us wealth that is entirely ours is wholly unbiblical. The idea that “I sweat for it and made it, therefore I should be able to spend it however I want” is an idea that does not align with the Bible, and frankly, keeps us from using the wealth “we make” in ways that fully please God.  Consider, for instance, Deuteronomy 8:18.  In that verse we are explicitly told that it is God who gives us the ability to make any wealth in the first place.

But if that isn’t enough, consider that the Bible also tells us that God owns the Earth and EVERYTHING in it (Psalm 24:1 NIV).  Everything in it includes the wealth you were empowered to produce!

If you don’t get the mindset that “your” wealth actually belongs to God, then it’s going to be a lot harder for you to part with it when God asks you to spend it on something other than your own pleasures. And it will be difficult for you to understand that God will give you other pleasures that are greater than anything you could exchange your wealth for.

The idea that God owns the wealth that you temporarily hold is both liberating and constricting.  It will force you to spend it wisely and constrict your spending, and it will liberate you from a fear of letting it go. 

So be sure to remember God (Deuteronomy 8:18) in all your finances.

If You Can't Forgive Others Then You Can't Fully Love Anyone

Mike Hosey, Elder

Truth is sometimes noticed and practiced by even pagans and non-believers (Matthew 5:47). Consider the following quote from a decidedly non-Christian thinker: "Without forgiveness, life is governed by an endless cycle of resentment and retaliation."

You probably know that truth yourself if you've spent any reasonable amount of time evaluating your life and experiences. If you haven't forgiven someone, then you are very likely mired in either resentment, or even hatred of that person, or you are either openly, secretly, or unconsciously scheming to execute retribution, or to exact revenge. Such a state of mind is the opposite of love. You cannot love someone and not forgive them. Therefore, forgiveness is an act of love.

And it is a fairly difficult act of love because it means relinquishing any claim you have on punishment for a particular person. In effect, forgiveness means deciding to no longer hold a particular sin against a particular person. This "holding back" is so difficult that another non-Christian thinker, Mahatma Gandhi, noted that, "the weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong." He was right. As a true act of love, forgiveness is a true act of selflessness. It does, however, have benefits for the self.

If you can, get your mind around this: If everyone is made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), and if we are to love others as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:39), even those who don't deserve it (Matthew 5:44), then when we choose not to forgive someone, we are creating a resentment for an image of God, instead of working to bring that image to its proper glory. And since we are disobeying God because he has told us to love them (Matthew 5:44), we are not loving ourselves very well either, because loving ourselves means being committed to our own wellbeing, and our own wellbeing is always best seated in obeying the will of God.

A few paragraphs ago, I stated that you can't love someone and not forgive them. I'll now add to that. If you can't forgive others, you can't fully love those closest to you who don't need your forgiveness, because there will always be a piece of you devoted to resentment and hate. If you want to live a life of real love, if you want to love your family and your friends to the fullest extent possible, then you must learn to forgive others.

Love Thyself And You WILL Love Thy Neighbor!

Mike Hosey, an Elder

One of the consequences of sin in the world is that truth gets lost in a twisted jungle of briars, thorny vines, and weeds.  In the midst of all of those briars and thorns and weeds, Satan likes to plant fakes and decoys to keep us from seeing the real truth. Take love of self for instance.  Satan, through the wisdom of the world, has taught so many of us to place self-love into one of two extremes.  We are taught either that love of self is completely wrong, selfish, and unpleasing to God, or as is more often the case, that it is higher than any other kind of love, and that it is best manifested by experiencing those things that please us. Neither of these extremes even approach the truth. Jesus tells us that the second great commandment after loving God with everything, is to love our neighbors as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:39). Think about that.  How can we love our neighbors as we love ourselves, unless we first love ourselves?

Realizing that we are all sinners, some of you religious folks at this point might cry heresy.  But there’s nothing heretical about it.  We’ve already learned in recent weeks that we should look to love in all the wrong places.  What’s a more wrong place than one’s own sinful heart.  And besides, Jesus plainly said to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  But His teaching relies on a proper understanding of love.  If love is being committed to the well being of another person, than loving oneself means being committed to the well being of oneself.  And that means knowing what is best for oneself.  This, of course, means knowing what one’s worth is, and what one’s purpose is, and what one’s true needs are.

So what is our worth? Romans 5:8 tells us that God showed his love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. If that’s true, then we must be worth something very great.  The Bible teaches us that we are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27).  Again, we must be worth something very great.

If all these things are true, then being committed to our own well being means serving and reconciling ourselves to the one who made us, suffered and died for us, and keeps us alive each day. If we recognize these things, we will love God and shun sin. And when we do that, we won't be able to keep ourselves from being committed to our neighbors.

Showing Love Better Than the World

Mike Hosey, Elder

If love means being committed to the well being of another person, then the Bible employs that meaning in a very radical and counter-intuitive way. 

Consider, for instance, how most of us view who should be the object of our love. Most of us intuitively understand that such commitment should be applied to those for whom we have affection. It just makes sense to us to apply commitment to our spouse, or to our brother, or to our first-tier friends and family.

But the Bible simply does not stop at those people for whom we feel affection.  In the face of what seems like common sense, Jesus tells us to love our enemies, to pray for those who persecute us, and to do good to those who hate us (Matthew 5:42-48). Combine that teaching with His command (Mark 16:15) for us to go out into all the world, and one gets the idea pretty quickly that we should be looking to love in all the wrong places.  Jesus instructs us quite plainly in that Matthew passage that if we love only those who love us, then we are no better than the rest of the pagan world.  

If Jesus is our example, then we must acknowledge that we are to love people like he does.  That means that we are to love those who don’t deserve it, who are unlovable, who are often wrong, dirty, smelly, grumpy and broken. We are to love like Jesus did – self sacrificially.  Commitment (or love), after all, isn’t proven when things are pleasant and easy.  It is proven when things are hard, and distasteful.

And who knows how our love --  our commitment – will soften them, and perhaps bring them to a place where they see Jesus.

The strongest Christians I know are those who realize how committed Jesus was to them even when they were living in ways that He found totally repugnant and distasteful.  Perhaps we can have a similar effect on a smaller scale when we look to love people in all the “wrong” places.