“The strange feeling of success.”

H,

I keep thinking of the old scorn with which any kind of material success was held in our Christian circle. It was branded as wrong to make progress on earth because it meant you had taken your eye off the great ball of making heaven. It also meant that you had made some compromise with the fallen world, you had taken one of the devil’s offers and now you had the world but only that. Add to that the odd story of the man who met Jesus knowing who He was and declaring same but failing to make that truth more important than property and you have a real picture of how strong the pull of the things we own can be.

We do not even have to go that far. A brief glance into our own forays into owning stuff and we can see tales of making the thing more important than the reason for the thing. We know how a few notes in the pocket can make us defensive against the real suffering in the world. Wealth has this side note to it. It aims to protect itself. It is always telling you how much you need to protect. It tells you to avoid waste at the price of sharing. It tells you to multiply it with ‘wisdom’ with the stinging memory of lack hanging in the ominous background. It tells you that you are special, that you have somehow scaled the impossible wall and so you are a leader amongst your peers. It tells you poverty is a curse and prosperity is a blessing so the sinner-saint dynamic is in place on some level. Tithing, giving, serving, following and believing are tricks of the trade. Wealth gives reason to the anarchic state of modern life. Tragedy becomes a failure to follow kingdom principles.

The strange feeling of success cannot be measured by the temporal wave of the present state of things. We aspire to live on the higher plane of things. Success, in the general sense, is not enough for the Christian and it is certainly not required for the Christian life. It has no advantages and is no sign of favour. It might be a sign of purpose but not much more. The point Christ was making to the rich man who had much was this: everything material is subject to the spiritual purposes of love in God.