Buying the Blessing of God
I remembered a thought that I’ve often had over the last few years, and thought I’d write it out to see what it looks like.
If motives matter (and they do) then what are our motivations in doing “churchy” things? What are our motivations for going to church and being moral? What are our motivations for doing the right things, rather than doing the wrong things? As a Christian, our morality should always be grounded in the fact that while we are by nature immoral, God chose to sacrifice Himself so that we could be viewed as morally righteous before Him. So we as a result have a new additional nature (as well as the old), and in response try to live in a good (righteous) relationship with Him, and live in the ways that He established for us.
Unfortunately, if we are not very careful, we can easily fall into the trap of appealing to human’s sinful selfishness in order to motivate them to “do right”. How do I know this? I’ve done it, and experienced it. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt (shoot, the whole uniform).
There is a gigantic but unseen gulf, that separates valuing the benefits of living in right-relationship with God, and living in right-relationship FOR the benefits that it yields.
Consider the following contrasts:
Do I live morally (or try to) because God has restored me to Him, and this is normal and natural for a child of God, or do I live morally because I want to stay out of trouble, and want my kids to turn out ok?
Do I go to church because I want to actively engage in being the missional body of Christ in reaching the world, or do I go because I’m hoping my kids habitually continue going to church as adults?
Do I serve at the local church because I have a heart for helping people, or do I value being seen and known in the church as “spiritual”, or a “leader”?
Do I want my children to live for God because I want them to know the joy of living in right-relationship with Him, or do I fear embarrassment and ridicule if they don’t live well?
Do I give money to the church because I really don’t place a high value on superficial financial or material wealth, or do I fear judgment (from God or man) if I don’t…or maybe even worse, maybe I actually believed the horribly misleading church billboard that said, “Need more money? Try tithing.”
I could ramble on for a while, but you get my point: there are good motivations for living in right-relationship with God, and then there are self-serving ones. And it matters which one is your true motivation. And all of us have some degree of poor motivations. As I’ve become more acquainted with God, and what it is like to truly experience Him in His Word, in prayer and in worship, I’ve seen my poor motivations become replaced by truer ones. I’m beginning to see now that His presence is the greatest gift He has ever given us, and all of the other things are secondary at best. Thank you, God!
So time for a minor rant: we really shouldn’t be dangling the secondary, yet desirable, results of living in right relationship with God as motivations for people outside the church to “give it a try”. This could also look like your praising yourself for having those secondary blessings, and attempting to tantalize others outside the church into “trying God”. That is seriously the equivalent of giving your kid a twenty for acting like they love you, and then, once they get hooked on the twenties, they have formed a habit of acting like they love you. It may be effective at getting your kid’s behavior to look ok, but it doesn’t change their heart and will likely result in a hugely dysfunctional relationship. By the same token, if we motivate people to “try God” because He will give them a good marriage, with good kids, and they will be financially secure, we risk them missing the big idea, the central idea, of the Gospel, which is God miraculously restoring us to Him by an immeasurable act of grace. If we aren’t careful, we turn our theology of God into a magical vending-machine that spits out blessings when we insert good works.
The all-too-often by-products of this:
- Children grow up to be young adults, and leave church or the faith because they don’t see where there is anything in it to gain. Don’t blame them for leaving if you’ve trained them to choose God because of what He will give them in return.
- People who leave the faith, but return when they want something from God. For me, this looked like my bringing my family back to church because I wanted my kids to be good, moral people. By the way, God was gracious enough to give good kids, but not without rocking my world along the way to reveal my idols to me (reminder that idols are usually good things turned into god-things).
- People leave the faith who make all the right moves, but God sends them adversity rather than prosperity. God doesn’t live up to “His part of the deal”, so they bolt. Don’t yell at them for not sticking it out if the premise that you’ve built for getting people into the church is that they need God so that they can “get the blessings” that God has to offer. You sold the deal, don’t get miffed when people discover it was a bill-of-goods and run.
Be quick to sniff-out this flavor of prosperity-gospel, and squash it. Smoke from this fire:
- Too much chatter about the church having all of the answers that people need for “successful living.” Not sure if you’ve looked around lately, but the church is a dang mess (and rightly so, given that it is full of a bunch of humans). Someone who is sold this load of poop will quickly figure out something isn’t right once they get to know people in the church. Usually accompanied by explanations for the “bait-and-switch”.
- Too much chatter about personal choices and sacrifice for God resulting in everything being just grand. Our choices absolutely do matter, but the reality is that God has a plan for our life that is meant to BRING GLORY TO HIM, not necessarily bring comfort to us on earth. If your church is promising you a great spouse, great kids, great job and financial security in exchange for your servitude, they simply aren’t preaching the same promise as Jesus Christ, who promised that life on this planet would likely be a trainwreck for his disciples. Again, look for the explanations for the “bait-and-switch”.
- Too much focus on how to extract practical application out of every passage, with disregard for the theology behind it. Another way of saying this: the Bible being presented as the “roadmap for life”. Ummm, no. The Bible is the history of man’s failure, and the grandness of God’s grace and glory in rescuing us.
So what’s my point? Biblically, we need to be clear and teach that we are called into the Kingdom of God for God’s glory, not our earthly blessing. Using earthly blessings to lure and attract people will at best be revealed as a gimmick once they are exposed as being secondary. At worst, the earthly blessings become idols.
