Thursday, July 23, 2009

How Much Do You Need? The Danger of Coveting, Part 32 of 60

TEXT: "You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s" (Exodus 20:17).

"You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, his male servant, his female servant, his ox, his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s" (Deuteronomy 5:21).

In Luke 12, Jesus made a statement that I’d like to see on the masthead of every newspaper. I’d like to see it flashed every 15 minutes on television. And I’d like to hear it introduced as the word from the sponsor on the radio. Jesus declared, “Beware of covetousness. A person’s life does not consist of the things he or she possesses.”

What things was Jesus talking about? Just things. Big things and little things. Things to wear. Things to drive. Things to live in. Things to put on our table. Your life, Jesus said, doesn’t consist of the things you possess.

Yet in a myriad of ways we are told in our society that life does consist of the things that we possess. We read that in four-color ads in our magazines. We see it a hundred times a week on television. We hear that message over and over again on radio. You need this thing. You must buy that thing. You can’t live without this other thing. Yet Jesus came to tell us that that is a lie, that life does not consist of the things that we possess.

It’s because we have believed that lie that America is involved in the greatest junk business that the centuries have ever witnessed. It’s junk, you know.

Yesterday’s new car becomes today’s trade-in and is on tomorrow’s junk heap.

Yesterday’s latest fashion hangs unused in your closet today and tomorrow is stuffed into a Goodwill bag.

Yesterday’s mansion becomes today’s boarding house and tomorrow’s slum.

We’re like the donkey that has the stick extended in front of it, and on the end of the stick is a carrot. Every time the donkey moves, the carrot moves. It’s always there, always promising, but never delivers. That’s why Jesus came to tell us that life does not consist of the things we possess.

It would be easy then to assume that poverty is better than wealth, or that God opposes our having possessions. Anyone who knows the Scriptures, knows that’s not true. Many of God’s great saints were people of great wealth: Abraham in his day was wealthy. Joseph was one of the top three men in Egypt and undoubtedly had great wealth. David and Solomon were wealthy kings. When Job came to the end of his ordeal, he was rewarded with seven times what he had before the ordeal began.

The point is that Jesus in warning us about accumulating things, does not say that wealth is wrong. He does say that wealth is dangerous. It’s a bit like the fly and the flypaper. The fly lands on the flypaper and says, “My flypaper.” When the flypaper says, “My fly,” the fly is dead. Wealth can be dangerous, but it is not wrong. What matters is whether wealth becomes an end in life so that you covet it and want more and more of it, or whether it becomes a means in life to benefit not only yourself but others.

Let me tell you two stories. One is out of the recent past and the other out of the more distant past. They both tell us about men with money. One lived for it, and the other used it to enrich the lives of others.

Michael Lewis, in Money Culture, recounts a poignant story to illustrate the lust for money and power that characterize our times.

One night, Stephen Joseph, a partner of the now bankrupt Drexel Burnham, made what seemed to be a routine business trip to Minnesota and stayed for drinks with a client. In the course of the evening, Joseph happened to mention how much he expected to be paid. The number made an impression on the client’s seven-year-old son who was eavesdropping on the staircase.

Two days later, the boy handed his father an essay he had prepared for school. It was titled, “What I Want To Be When I Grow Up.” It almost perfectly captured the mood of our day. The boy wrote this: “I want to be an investment banker. If you had 10,000 sheres [sic] I sell them for you. I make a lot of money. I will make a lot of money. I will be a millionaire. I will have a big house. It will be fun for me.”

Contrast that modern story with this from the 17th century. It is about Louis de Greer, a Belgian Calvinist who fled from the Inquisition. He landed in Amsterdam at a time of great prosperity for the Dutch business and trade. There he soon became a famous businessman and banker. Harvard University’s Simon Schama explains that de Greer strictly followed Calvin’s program of low rates of interest for the poor. He described de Greer in these words:
“Louis de Greer, who was both an ardent Calvinist and an energetic entrepreneur, managed to accommodate a dignified lifestyle with pious expenditure in just these ways. Even though he stocked his home with fine nutwood furniture imported from France and Italy, his self-tithing for the poor was widely known, as was his sincere help for Calvinist refugees from central European theaters of the Thirty Years’ War. When in 1646 he drew up his will for his children and heirs, he admonished them to ‘fear God and keep his commandments and think on the poor and oppressed; then you shall enjoy God’s blessings.’ And he reminded them that when he had come to the Republic in hard-pressed times, he had made an oath before God to give 200 guilders a year to the poor for every child of his own. God had heard his prayer and had prospered him, and he, in his turn, had kept his oath. He commended his children to do so in their turn.”

Note the contrast between these two men. Both were prosperous and successful. Neither thought that money was evil or that prosperity was to be avoided. But for one, prosperity was a means of acquiring and consuming. For the other, it was a means of saving and giving to those in need.