SILVER SPOON DNA

Compared to most of the world, the average American Christian is born with a silver spoon not in their mouths, but in their DNA.

Next time you are close to your computer try this: Type in a Google search “poverty in Indiana” and click on images. Scroll through to get a good look at all the pictures, graphs, and nicely dressed people. Go back up to the search and delete the last two letters off the back of Indiana and hit enter.

The images are stark and disturbing. As country club Christians, we don’t think in terms of this kind of physical poverty. Unless you have been to a place like India, you’ll be like me and won’t understand the reality behind the pictures.

We have grown so accustomed to our prosperity it is difficult for us to even imagine a poverty that threatens the basic necessities of life such as food, clean water, and shelter. This is evidenced by our lifestyles, and to some degree how our kids are answering those questions. Hold on Jonah, where is the pursuit of prosperity directly condemned in the Bible? Well, I can’t give you a verse without ripping it out of its context.

But here’s where it becomes a problem as I look at the whole of Scripture. The pursuit of prosperity becomes a problem when use it to glorify ourselves instead of God and when we desire it more than Jesus. For most American Christians, prosperity is running through our veins. We are born in to it, we grow up with it, we think we deserve it, and we assume we are entitled to pursue it solely for our own comfort and pleasure.

We see it how our kids answer those four questions. The underlying question is this: Why do we want to be what we want to be when we grow up? Will it make a lot of money? Is it because our parents want us to?  Or, is it because God wants us to? Is our motivation first and foremost to bring God glory? Is our motivation to really use who were are and what we do as a platform to tell a dying world about our loving savior? Is it really? At any cost?

            Or is our motivation to make for ourselves a most comfortable living that ends up blinding us from who God called us to be? My DNA test came back positive. My heart is so torn between the comforts of this world and the call of my savior to reach a dying world. This life is so short. Eternity is so long. I’m reminded that for all of us there is a time to die! The time is now!