I DARE YOU TO ASK A HIGHSHOOLER THESE QUESTIONS!

I love asking highschoolers these questions in this order:

The first question is this: What do you want to be when you grow up? Each person will always fall in one of two groups. The first group will look me straight in the eyes and say without any hesitation, “engineer!” or “architect!” or “accountant!” The other group will drop their head and look away with shame and mumble, “I don’t know…”

I proceed to the second question. “What do you think your parents want you to be when you grow up?” The first group will squint his eyes as the gerbil in his head wakes up and frantically jumps on the wheel. He’ll respond with a little less enthusiasm, “engineer.” or “architect.” or “accountant.” The second group looks at me with utter dread as if he were sitting guilty on the witness stand with his right hand in the air.

I ask the third question, “What do you think the Lord wants you to be when you grow up?” Both groups without fail look at me like wide-eyed raccoon staring at fast approaching headlights in the middle of a country road in the middle of the night - horn blaring.

These questions bring to light some startling realities. I think we would like to say that our goal is for our kids to be who the Lord wants them to be, but this is not how our kids are responding to the questions. Are they responding with this goal in mind?

 “When I grow up I have to go to the best school I can, pick the best major I can, so I can get the best job I can, so that I can make the most money I can, and have the best benefit package I can, so I can live as comfortably as I can, and take the nicest vacations I can, and retire as early as I can, in the warmest weather I can.”

 But before we let them declare fine art as their major, you might want to read “Silver Spoon DNA”.

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!