Mammon

When I say that we need to put away mammon and turn back to God, I can hear the objections already. And I get it. Mammon is fun. 

It's fun to be part of a travel team, even if that team plays on Sundays. It's fun to get your buddies together and go to the game or to the racetrack, even if that means leaving church a little bit early. It's fun to take a day trip to the amusement park and make memories with the kids; they probably would have forgotten that Bible lesson anyway. 

Mammon seems like all the stuff that makes our lives feel full. 

And I'm not going to go all hard-core here and say that we should only do church activities; we live in the world, and we are meant to live in the world, and we are meant to participate in our lives and be a witness in the world and we can't do that if we're not part of the things that are going on around us. 

The problem is when we fill our lives with the world and then try to squeeze God into them. The problem is when we reach the point that we're willing to give up church - church activities, worship services, Sunday school, youth group trips, senior outings, fellowship opportunities - for the things we've bought into in the world and we are not equally (or more) willing to give up the things we've bought into for church (and church activities, etc.). 

If you're more willing to hang out with your buddies drinking beer than you are to hang out with your small group, that's a problem. If your kids never miss a game, but miss church for four months in a row, that's a problem. If you've got season tickets and you're never in the pew instead of the stands, that's a problem. 

What it says is - I'm willing to give up God for some fun in the world, but I'm not willing to give up my fun for a closer relationship with God and His people. 

We use all kinds of things to justify this. The church isn't a building or a place or a time; it's the people. But if you're not with the people in the place at the time, then you're losing a big chunk of your argument. The church is the people, not the person. You are not the church by yourself. 

We say that we paid money for whatever we have from the world, and we don't want to waste our investment. But do you also give money to the church? Are you wasting that investment? Have you given your heart to Jesus? Are you wasting your opportunities there? 

We say that others are counting on us, that we committed to be part of something and if we're not there, we're letting everyone else down by our absence. Hate to break it to you, but you're letting me down when you're not at church, too. The church depends on your presence - your talents, your fellowship, your encouragement. People miss you when you're not there, and it's a very real loss. 

So none of our excuses hold water. They're just that - excuses. They're just what we say when we're not willing to say that we chose mammon over God. 

And just as a side note - if the world is more "fun" to you than God, then you haven't met God. It makes me really sad to hear folks justify their double-mindedness by saying that God just doesn't bring joy to their lives or make their lives feel full the way mammon does. If that's the case, you don't know God. 

Anyway, rant over. Just some thoughts I wanted to share this week, as my heart was heavy with them.  

Double-Minded

There are some who will say - why can't we do both? Why can't we love on mom in the morning and then go live our lives in the afternoon? And the answer is simple: you can, but it's really, really hard. 

We are a people who struggle with double-mindedness. Give us something we want to do more, and it's all we can think about. Give us the excitement of something coming later, and it's hard for us to be in the present moment. Maybe you're making breakfast in bed for mom, but you're thinking about the game later. Are you really, then, present to mom? Or is it obligatory? Can anything come from your heart if your heart isn't even in the same place as your hands? 

It's true about the church, too. If you don't believe me, ask yourself when was the last time you thought about what you were doing after church. Did you make lunch plans? Have a family reunion? Know what time the game starts? Need to mow the yard? Whatever it is, whenever we have something else on our schedule, we spend our Sunday morning checking our watch. Wanting to make sure we're not about to miss that other thing because of the thing we're doing now. 

And when you're constantly thinking about that other thing you definitely don't want to miss? You miss the thing you're supposed to be doing in the moment. 

You start timing the sermon. You start counting the choruses. You start criticizing the benediction. You step out a couple of minutes early to "go to the bathroom," but you really just want to be first in line to pick up your kids from class so that you can get in the car quickly and be one of the first out of the parking lot so that you don't have to wait another minute so that you can drive across town, pull up to the squawk box, and beat that other denomination to Wendy's because you've got things to do this afternoon. 

Did you even hear the sermon? 

Are there echoes of the worship in your ears? 

Or are you just stressed out because you've been obsessing all morning about the next thing, while missing the more important thing, which is the thing right in front you? 

Maybe we should start calling you Martha. 

Are you getting it? You can't be truly invested in any moment if you're thinking about the next one. You can't be loving mom if you're thinking about where you need her to take you later. You can't be loving God if you're thinking about what you're doing after service. You can pretend all you want. You can think you're somehow better than the rest of the human race, that you're somehow more capable of a good solid single-mindedness, but the truth about our creation is that we have to have space if we're going to fill it, and if you've only given a small space to something, you can only fill it with small things in small ways because the bigger things are pushing on it from every side and squeezing the experience right out of it. 

We cannot be present and facing forward if there's something tapping on our shoulder all the time. We're just not capable of it. 

That's why we have to be diligent about setting aside time - real time. About creating space - real space. About making sacrifices - so that we clear out all the things that want to press in and take away what's sacred...or what should be sacred. We have to sacrifice our idols - those things that have become too sacred to us, those things that have taken away our ability to be present to the things that ought to be more important but simply aren't any more. 

We have to be willing to put away mammon and turn back to God.  

Sacrifice

The truth is that when you squeezed mom in on her own day, then ran off to do the things you'd normally do on a Sunday (which is no longer church because, hey, priorities), what you really said was that your priority is the other thing. You squeezed mom into your regular schedule because you're nice like that, but then you turned and ran off to your "real" life and dragged her along and what that says is that she's not worth a sacrifice. 

You're not actually willing to give anything up for her. You're not willing to miss anything for her. You're not willing to lose an opportunity for her. You're not willing to "waste" an investment for her. 

You're only willing to give her the free time that you have in an already-busy schedule, then ask her to help make sure you make the rest of your obligations for the day. 

And this is what's happening with the church. This is why I get so animated about the ways that the world makes us so busy on Sundays and tells us it's okay. 

Because what the world is really saying is that if you want to honor God, it's okay to just squeeze Him into an empty slot in your schedule and give Him a little recognition, then move on to your obligations, your commitments, your opportunities... 

The world has made God not your obligation, not your commitment, not your opportunity. 

And you haven't even noticed.

But be honest - you stopped sacrificing for God a long time ago. 

We've lost touch with it. We don't live in an Old Testament world. We aren't required to bring ram, lambs, and male goats and the corresponding grain offering with its pour of wine. Most of us don't even understand all of the sacrifices made by God's people historically. We just focus on the sacrifice that God made for us, and when it's all about this, then we become the center of our own faith. 

God bridged the gap. God paid the price. God made it possible. So faith takes so much less from us today than it did before the Cross. At least, that's the way we're living. God just loves us, and He wants us to love Him, and all of a sudden, it's easy to convince ourselves that we can love Him from anywhere, doing whatever we want, so why shouldn't we be somewhere else on Sunday morning. 

I can love God wherever I'm at. 

I can love mom wherever I'm at. 

Except...we can't. You can't love both God and mammon. And the truth is that whatever you're making sacrifices for, that's what you love most. 

So if you're sacrificing the fellowship to go play ball, you love ball more than you love God. It doesn't matter what you say. It doesn't matter what justification you want to put on it. At this point, a lot of folks have a laundry list - I committed; I invested; I promised. Okay, great, but you're supposed to be committed, invested, and promised to God, too, and you forsook that. You tried to give Him less and call it even, but you're not willing to do that with your other activities. So plain and simple, you value them more. 

It's a hard truth, but we have to swallow it. 

You love most what you're willing to sacrifice for. And if you're not willing to sacrifice, then maybe you don't love it as much as you thought you did. 

Multiverse

We live in a world that expects us to multi-task, to always be doing more than one thing at a time. To be answering work emails and answering phones and shuffling papers. To be driving and texting. (That's illegal where I live, but it doesn't stop anyone.) To be exercising and listening to an audio book. I'll confess and say that at times, I am quite adept at washing the dishes while I am cooking and making more dirty dishes. We are being taught that simply doing one thing at a time is not enough. 

That's a discussion in and of itself, and we'll probably have it one day this week. 

But what sparked me to start to write this reflection was the realization that the world doesn't just expect us to multi-task any more; it's asking us to multi-prioritize. It's asking us not just to do more things at once, but to place an emphasis on more than one thing at a time. To experience, to honor, to value, to celebrate more than one thing at a time. 

I was struck by this on Mother's Day. Specifically, I was struck by the number of mothers on my social media feed who were posting about the activities their kids had on Mother's Day - ball games, recitals, concerts, contests, etc. 

I have written before about how the world has been coming for our Sundays. About how sports leagues are intentionally scheduling on Sundays and families are choosing between sports and church, often choosing sports while trying to tell their kids with their words how important church is...while showing them that sports are actually more important. The world has convinced us it is okay to forsake meeting together if we have something more fun to do, something we've committed to, something we've paid for or otherwise invested in. (Never mind, of course, that we were supposed to have committed to and invested in the church first and foremost.) 

But on Mother's Day, I saw so many of my friends being mothers - taking their kids here and there, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, and squeezing in a real quick breakfast or a few seconds to open the card their kid made them. 

And it just struck me what the world is doing. 

The world has gotten so busy, so fast, so full of itself that we used to take a whole day to celebrate mom and to let her relax and now, she gets a couple of hours and then we fill the rest of the day with other priorities. Honestly, she's lucky if she even gets a couple of hours. She gets a moment, then it's gone, then it's back to business as usual because the world doesn't stop any more. 

And when the world doesn't stop, it doesn't want you to stop, either. It wants you to squeeze in as much as you can and it tries to tell you that it's still meaningful...it's just meaningful with other things that are also meaningful. 

And all of a sudden, you're not just multi-tasking, you're trying to multi-prioritize and honestly, friends, you can't. You cannot fully appreciate a moment that you're trying to squeeze in before the next one. 

You cannot serve both God and mammon. 

It's not possible. 

It's a tension I wrestle with quite often, as I make deliberate decisions to avoid the traps the world is setting. But it broke my heart to see it play out so powerfully on a day we set aside to love someone who means so much to us. Are we really so busy that we can't even take a single day - a whole day - to just stop and love someone? Truly love someone? Are our schedules and our things and our commitments and our investments and our activities and our opportunities that important? 

The truth is.... 

Cindy

For a season in my life, I was scraping money together by taking odd jobs, selling handmade crafts, and rescuing trash. That was back when you could set big trash items out at the curb any old time and the trash would be sure to take them. 

I had rooms in my house full of my finds. Stuff that I walked by with my dog, then went back to retrieve when my hands were free. Stuff that still had some life left in it or...as was the fad of the time...could be restored and repurposed. I had visions for what things could become, but I didn't have the funds for the materials to get them there, so I just picked up the trash and pitched the vision and hoped someone else would pick it up for a few dollars. 

At one point, I had this really neat set of solid wood end tables. Funny story - I picked up the one end table, thinking it was cute and seeing all of its potential, and then it was months, or maybe more than a year, before I stumbled upon the second one and realized it was a perfect match. (Matching end tables sell so much better than a single one.) 

I posted my set and waited. 

And waited. 

And waited. 

How could no one see the beauty in these that I saw? A matching set! In great condition! A little work, and they'd be spectacular. 

Then, Cindy sent me a message. "Do you still have the end tables? How much did you want for them?" 

$17, I told her. I still remember the exact amount. There was something I wanted to buy for my mom for $17, and it was important to me to find it. When I tell you that I was scraping by in that season, I mean it. She said we had a deal, and she would pick them up in a day or two. 

A day or two later, Cindy showed up on my porch, checkbook in hand, and wrote me a check for $34. 

No, no, I told her. That was $17 for the set, not for each table. I only needed $17. I immediately felt guilty for somehow miscommunicating and accidentally overpricing my items. ($34 felt like a LOT of money to me at the time. Even for solid wood.) 

She shrugged and said, "The check's already written." She tore it off and gave it to me. I kept protesting, and I'm not sure I even helped her carry the tables to her car at that point because I was busy arguing. She looked at me and said, very matter-of-factly, "It's all God's money anyway. We're just passing it around," then picked up a table and started walking away. 

I struggled with that for a long time. To be honest with you, I still struggle with that. I still feel like she overpaid me, even though my rational brain knows she got a good deal in the market of the day. 

But I have never forgotten those words she spoke. In fact, you might laugh if you knew how often I say them to myself in my own head. 

I'm in a better place financially now than I was in that season, and I have the opportunity to be generous. I have the opportunity to provide and to do things I wasn't sure back then I would ever be able to do. And as I consider how to be a good steward of what God has given me, I still have those words in my mind. They help me to decide what to do with my blessings. 

It's all God's; we're just passing it around. 

And so, I try to do my fair share of passing. Knowing that someone, somewhere may think they're taking advantage of me, but that's not the case at all. I'm giving freely from what was never mine in the first place.