Materialism Part III

Matthew 7:11, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, (then) how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!

In my continuation of Materialism I would like to offer as a definition that Materialism is a desire that keeps God from being able to fully bring prosperity into an individual life. With prosperity being that place of not only all sufficiency but an abundance for every good deed. As I set out to define these terms as I struggle with the Holy Spirit and their implications to my life I find myself running head long into the idea of giving gifts.

Mind you I have been raised in the church since birth. I have heard hundreds of sermons on the importance of tithing, and where the tithe goes, and all of that. When I speak of gifts I am speaking of something the tithe includes, but perhaps not with the religiosity of it. My years of tithing was done religiously, and based largely on objective knowledge, guilt, and pride. The result is that tithing did not in and of itself bring prosperity as at the height of my tithing and still lost virtually everything. Outside of giving religiously, and I have never really been a gift giver. I certainly don't walk through a store and think... oh So & So would really enjoy that. I should get it for them. To be truthful when it comes to purchasing my mind mainly focuses on necessity, and that even goes for giving gifts to family members or friends. 

Gary Chapman wrote a book called The 5 Love Languages. In it he surmises that there are five love languages, and that each person receives one or a few better than the rest. Likewise we as individuals speak one or a few languages better than the rest. Those 5 languages are Words of Affirmation, Acts of Service, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time, and Physical Touch. For me I speak Affirmation and Service. On the receiving side I enjoy the same but feel guilt, shame and obligation to receive Gifts, and abhor touch from anyone but my wife and children. And herein lies the problem and the focus of the Holy Spirit in His pursuit to get me over materialism.

The scripture above says the Father “gives.” (think about that)

The Father “gives what is good.” (gifts)

But what is really hitting me in this moment is that this scripture starts with an “if.” Have you ever heard of an if/then statement? If party A will, then party B will… Do you see where I am going? If I… know how to give good gifts (then) how much more WILL your Father… give… If I will give gifts then the Father will give gifts. Think what you want, but that understanding is revolutionary for me. When I know what giving good gifts is, then God will give His gifts... that is what I am seeing in this scripture. 

How can I give gifts if I am unable to receive gifts, and unable to receive them because I wrongly feel it is taking from someone rather than a blessing being made by my Father. This warped thinking of receiving a gift is taking from someone naturally leads to giving a gift as having an element of either needing repayment or feeling like being stolen from. Does that make sense? If I think receiving a gift is taking from someone then giving a gift is taking from me.

God has spent YEARS teaching me to receive gifts. And I can honestly say I have learned more about “receiving gifts” in the past few days than the past eleven years. But a transition has come for me.

Rabbi Lapin said, if you want to be prosperous, you have to be a giver. He said it was important because God’s plan includes financial interaction, but also that giving helps us to unclench our fist. In other words, giving helps us to overcome materialism. Giving helps us keep money in it's proper (good) perspective as spiritual rather than material. 

Up to this point in my life I have dismissed “gift giving” as simply a love language that God did not give me. I never saw a concern for it because after all Gary Chapman correctly points out that not every one speaks gift giving as love. But Christ did give gifts, and if I am to be more like Him then I am going to have to love with gifts as well. 

Today God is saying to me that gift giving is a love language I am going to learn to speak very fluently… in love, not in any hopes of gain. In fact I started my lessons today.

I have $20 in my wallet to give to someone in need. I am going to try to give $20 to someone every week. On top of that, we have a new employee at work. As a gift to him I took him to lunch today and spent and additional $20 as a purposed gift. My boss came in after lunch to talk about the new guy, and I told him I took him to lunch, and we had a good conversation. My boss reached into his wallet and gave me $20.

I thought momentarily, you are trying to steal my blessing. Then clearly the Holy Spirit interjected… no, I am turning your $40 or giving into $60. God made money right before my very eyes. 

Materialism Part II

Genesis 2:12, “The gold of that land is good…”

Genesis 13:2, “Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold.”

John 6:7, “Phillip answered Him, ‘Two hundred denarii (days wages) is not sufficient for them to receive a little.”

Matthew 6:33, “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these (material) things will be added to you.”

Continuing in my battle for perspective and truth regarding materialism I fully understand that gold, which is nothing more than a storehouse of wealth and formerly used as money, is here on earth created by God and it is good. Godly men of old and new possessed wealth. But one might also argued that there were godly men who also lived in intentional poverty like John the Baptist and some of the prophets. So it is a good thing, but I have a hard time believing that God intended excessive wealth for every Christian or Jew for that matter that gets life right. There is much more argument that there is a promised sufficiency, and even a little more than sufficiency.

So if some are blessed with extraordinary amounts of wealth by God and others not, what is this issue of materialism that has come alive in my spirit? Why can I be so focused on accumulating rewards, rather than focused on the tasks. The English language defines materialism as a desire to accumulate material goods, so if we accumulate goods without having desired to do so are we therefore not materialistic?

I can’t speak for you, but as far as my concern goes my issue with materialism is completely one of priority. Seek first the kingdom of God, Jesus said. Too often I am seeking the paycheck, the reward, or the result. When Rabbi Lapin says, “money is a measure of what one human being does for another” it immediately causes me to think of marketing plans, of how I am inform, trick of otherwise sell my wares… not for the benefit of the consumer mind you, but for an increase in my personal income and consumption. Rabbi Lapin would argue like Christ that if you focus on doing for others the money will naturally follow. 

Lapin said, “we are a spirit in a body.” But as I struggle with materialism I realize that I too often default to the perception that I am a body with a soul. With this thinking I am not in alignment with how God knows me, and more so I allow the body with its desires to overrule or take priorities too often. This is not to say that I am evil, because I am not, but these differences from Christ at this point are keeping the kingdom of God from growing inside of me.

Lapin said something else that is just now starting to hit home in the area of materialism. He said “money is made, not taken.” When someone tried to bless you with some money have you ever said, “I can’t take your money?” If you have then you struggle with the same warped perception that I have.

Money… wealth… is not in any way limited to physical bank notes in the form of dollars and coins. If I am blessed with money through paycheck or gift I have not taken ANYTHING from anyone. At that point it has been “made.”

Let me use Lapin illustration to prove this point. A man knocks on a woman’s door and ask her if she has anything she is not using that she can give away. She replies that there is an old table out back waiting for the garbage man to take away. The man then asks, how much will it cost to haul off.

The woman replies, “$5.00”

The man offers the woman $5.00 for the table to which she gladly agrees. At this point the woman has increased her wealth by $10.00. $5.00 in cash that she received, and $5.00 that she did not have to spend.

The man goes to the hardware store and spends a $1.00 in materials to fix it up. They have now increase by $1.00 or at least the profit of it. He then finds a different woman who is looking for a table. She is planning on spending $20.00 for a table but the man convinces her to buy his for $10.00. Now how much has the $16.00 in cash become in terms of wealth? 

$10 for the first lady plus $1 for the hardware store plus $10 in savings for the second lady plus $4 for the man. $16.00 became $25 of real wealth.

But if we get into the trap that money is taken and not made, then our conscious does not allow us to receive the full blessing of God. We don’t perceive it as something made out of thin air, but rather that we have taken from someone else. Improper thinking is that money is finite, and for us to have it means someone else has to do without. This is very much an issue and subconscious thought process that I am now fighting every day.

To reiterate this point… most money is a number on a page anyway. Are you aware that for every ten cents that you deposit in the bank that the bank can then go out and loan a dollar? And so the bank loans a dollar, borrowing the difference in your deposit and the rest from the Fed. The Fed in turn gets the money from the treasury, who… prints it. You have just been give a micro lesson on GDP. But the spiritual point is money is spiritual as Rabbi Lapin points out. It is not material.

My struggle with materialism is first that my motivation for my work is a paycheck, when it should rather be who can I help today and let the paycheck come. My second struggle is understanding that money coming to my hand is a blessing from God in all its forms and from all its sources… providing of course I didn't steal it somehow. I am not taking money. I am making money. Even when that money is given to me. Better yet, I am not making money, but God is blessing me with it each and every time.   

There is more to all of this and the coming posts will continue with Materialism, Community, & Redemption.

Materialism

Genesis 11:4, “They said, ‘Come, let us build for ourselves a city, and a tower whose top will reach into heaven, and let us make for ourselves a name, otherwise we will be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.”

On Sunday May 19, 2013 Jim Spivey in his blog quoted Glenn Beck on the Tower of Babel. Here four days later I am still convicted by the quote.

“GLENN: So here it is. The Tower of Babel as most people know it is these people got together and the king said let’s build a tower and it will reach the sky and it will reach heaven and then God got pissed off and came down and destroyed them, confused their language and they all scattered. That’s really not the way the story goes, and it’s important that you understand the story. It has affected us do you know that Bugs Bunny actually used to call Elmer Fudd Nimrod? And do you know why? He used to call Bugs Bunny was the one that really made Nimrod really popular because Bugs Bunny was the one that called Elmer Fudd Nimrod, Nimrod, Elmer Fudd was the hunter. He wasn’t a king at first. He’s first described in the in Genesis as a hunter, but not a hunter of animals. A hunter of men. A hunter of people. And the people, after Noah, they all, they get off the boat and they do what two and two do and they make four and six and et cetera, et cetera. And so then they repopulated the Earth. And they’re all focused on God. And that’s when the first time an oppressive government, the idea of a totalitarian leader comes to the forefront, and it’s done by a hunter of men, Nimrod. And what he says is he gets together and he says to everybody, "Hey, let’s build bricks." Why would you say let’s build bricks? Does that sound like anything anybody would want to do? Let’s build bricks? Oh, and then we’re going to build a big tower and it will reach heaven.

If you were really somebody who was an electric speaker, you would say let’s build a tower to heaven. Let’s build this giant tower, and we’re all going to work together on it. Now, what does the tower represent? The tower represents what we were talking about with, like, Elton John. His intentions are good. The average person wants to do the right thing. The average person wants to help the poor. They want to live in harmony. So if you give them a grand idea, people will do it and they’ll do it for the right reasons. It’s why I’ve said be careful on social justice. Social justice has been perverted. It is a perversion of the gospel. The gospel is go help. Not, "Let’s get everybody together and build bricks. Oh, and we’ll build a tower to the sky."

So what is the brick? Bricks especially I live in Connecticut. Stones, those great stone calls, they’re all different and they are all made by God and they are all made differently. And when you build these stone walls or a foundation, all of our churches back in colonial days, they weren’t bricks. They were all stones. Stones are all different and they are all made by God. The stones represent people. So do the bricks. Nimrod says let’s make bricks. He’s talking about people, let’s make them all equal, let’s make them all exactly the same. Because then everybody is equal, everybody will have the same and they will be interchangeable. And what did they use as mortar? In the ancient Hebrew, mortar, the word "Mortar" actually means "Materialism." So materialism. It’s what holds the bricks together.

Let me ask you this question: What is holding us together as a nation? What’s holding us together as a nation quite honestly for a long time has been our materialism. It has been, as Rabbi Lapin said last night on TV, "Hey, let’s all just get together and watch the Super Bowl," but we watch for the commercials. That is what holds us together. What used to hold us together was our common history, our common love of God, our common understanding of freedom. We don’t even understand freedom. We don’t celebrate freedom anymore. It’s all about materialism. If you take away our mortar of materialism, do the bricks stay together? What binds us? Our materialism is about to disappear. That’s why we must replace and put real mortar between us. We must break ourselves out of what they’re trying to build now and that is everyone is exactly the same. We’re all the same. We’re all bricks. No, we are not. We’re all stones. And we can put ourselves together. And it is our common understanding of freedom and the Constitution and values and principles that bind us together and hold us together. That is the mortar.

Nimrod also is a guy who builds this up and he’s building on a grand scale. Well, God comes down and he sees it, and according to Genesis he sees it. But there are two names for God. In the English Bible it’s just God. But in the ancient Hebrew there’s two names for God. One is the happy go lucky God. The other one is the, "you don’t want to see me; I’m in a bad mood" God. The bad mood God is not the one that comes down to confuse people’s language. The benevolent God does, the happy name for God. He’s not punishing the people. He is setting the people free by destroying the Tower of Babel, by confusing their language. Now, what does it mean that I language? Not the same, again in the ancient Hebrew. There’s language and tongue. The tongue is the language, is what we would say is language. The language is the things that make them all the same. The languages are their tribal customs, their you know, it’s like everybody being from New York City. It’s different here. The language New Yorkers speak is different than the language that they speak in Iowa. And so what did he do? He came down and he confused their language to where they couldn’t understand each other anymore. And they were scattered. And they became stones again and not bricks. At the same time one of the big enemies of Nimrod was Abraham. And Abraham brought back the idea that God exists, God is your master, not a king. And if you have that personal relationship with him, if you trust him and have a personal relationship with him, you will be fine.” http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/48240/

In this Glenn Beck is making an argument against government. Jim celebrated his recognition of being stone rather than a brick. And I was convicted of materialism… or was I?

So many things are converging right now in my spirit. For weeks community has been a word I am hearing but if fills me with confusion as it appears to be a direct assault of my “loner” mentality and comfort zone. Overlaid on community is materialism, and the “guilt” I feel as I struggle financially. And a third layer or topic very much alive and calling in my spirit is “redemption.” All three topics are murmurating around me. All my thoughts and questions of God fall on one of these topics. I know what God is doing. He is in the middle of changing my perception and preconceived notions about community, materialism, money, and redemption. What I don’t know is what He is trying to change them too.

Day’s before Jim sent out this piece from Glenn Beck we met with a group of men in a bi-weekly meeting we have. One of the members is wealthy, and at the end he shared with us a recent trip to a Mecum Auto action and that how he kind of was caught up in the frenzy and the stroking after buying one car, and ended up buying four. From my perspective I heard a man that at the drop of a hat spent $50,000 on a whim, and all I thought is what I could do with $50K, and frankly became jealous. Particularly in light of needing $8500 for an a/c unit and no practical way of getting it, and insufficient savings to pay for it out right. Then as always on Saturday I was jealous again that someone won the $590 million dollar powerball other than me. It makes me wonder if I will ever get past the place of just enough, or worse almost enough.

Is it God’s intent to leave me in a perpetual storm, though the waves have calmed substantially in the past couple years?

Am I a faithless Israelite doomed to live out my days in the wilderness because a giant or two frightened me?

And so I went searching for the origins of this interpretation of the Tower of Babel and found that it originated from Rabbi Lapin the author of “Thou Shalt Prosper.” A book that I bought many many years ago when it first came out, but never ready. (murmuration). Which led me to youtube where I watch a four part series of Rabbi Lapin discussing the principles of the book.

Now I write all of this not for you to glean some new theology, or truth but for you to see the journey I walk with Christ. The confusion I feel is Him having pulled away. Not because of sin, but because He is growing me once again. As I cry out, “where have you gone.” I hear at different times, materialism, redemption, community. All things standing in the way of our closeness.

And it is not materialism that stands in the way, but my preconceptions on materialism. It is not community standing in the way, but my dislike for community and lack of understanding about its importance. Redemption draws us to God, so that cannot be in the way, but my notions of redemption that are wrong prevent this next evolution of my soul and character.

And so I write a little of this process of God drawing, teaching and conforming me.

Continuing... several things popped out of the videos of Rabbi Lapin. Some of which I believe, and some of which I can immediately prove false. Still other things drew me in having never heard them before. For example… “ Money is spiritual.” Oh boy do I see that as its lack keeps me in the constant state of stress relief through prayer. But primarily that money is made not taken. That in transactions money grows. All of which I understand on a GDP level, but something I never really considered from a blessing from God standpoint.

Rabbi Lapin did say prosperity comes when we are obsessed with other’s needs, wants, and desires. And this certainly is true with a product that is successfully marketed, but also compatible with what Jesus said in Matthew 6:33, “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these (material necessities) will be added to you.”

Rabbi Lapin says a lot of things that all are mulling in my head. For example, “Money is a measure of what one human being does for another.” And “Money is a mechanism for God to do kindness from one human to another.” And “Work is making things better for other people.”

Something he said that I don’t agree with is that “money turns problems into expenses” and we all know that there are a host of diseases, injuries, and aliments for which no amount of money can solve. There also is nary a relationship that is more than patched up by money. No… money turns money problems into expenses. Yet expenses are why we have problems with money… so now I’m confused.

Rabbi Lapin said that giving is a common trait among the prosperous. And I know that not to be true either. In my profession I look at thousands of tax returns for individuals. Very few of the rich give to charity anything at all. As far as tithers go, I barely remember a few. But of those that I know personally, if I think about it, they are “givers.” If fact, I might even say that their love language is giving gifts as I have seen many buy their employees expensive gifts. I have seen them donate to causes that are not the church, or necessarily tax deductible. So perhaps there is something to this giving aspect that I have lost.

He made another comment in passing. He said, “An essential act of redemption is financial.” (murmuration) There's that word "redemption" again, but without explanation. It also happens to be a key buzz word of the rich car buyer above.

Lapin said God created a world of binding and connection. (Community) (Murmuration). His example was salt. NaCl… individually Sodium (Na) and Chlorine (Cl) kill a human. But together as sodium cholirde they have wonderful results. Using this he said that “connectiveness” is important to prosperity. In an expanding community of people that “know you, like you, and trust you” there is no lack of prosperity.

Do you think it is a coincidence that materialism/prosperity/money, redemption, & community have ALL been used in congruence by Lapin?

And yet even as I write this the term “prosperity” seems so dirty, disgusting, and evil. And herein lies one issue I know that I must overcome. Somehow in seeing money for what it is… spiritual. If I can see the truth of it's spiritual nature then I can find the place to celebrate with those who God blesses with it. When I see that He invented it back in Genesis, giving it to Abraham then I can somehow understand and see “money is a mechanism for God to do kindness from one human to another.”

But I am not there yet. I know that we have a responsibility to be responsible. I know that He is trying to teach me to sleep in the storm. I know that He is trying to show me the truth about community, redemption, and materialism. I even know that all of this is secondary to knowing Him. And lest I forget He sends Oswald Chambers to murmurate that as well. “Matthew 6:25, ‘…do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on… If we have received the Spirit of God, He will squeeze right through our lives, as if to ask, “Now where do I come into this relationship, this vacation you have planned, or these new books you want to read?” And He always presses the point until we learn to make Him our first consideration. Whenever we put other things first, there is confusion.

“. . . do not worry about your life . . . .” Don’t take the pressure of your provision upon yourself. It is not only wrong to worry, it is unbelief; worrying means we do not believe that God can look after the practical details of our lives, and it is never anything but those details that worry us.”

The destination is never the point... it's all about the journey with Him.

Selah