“…all are yours, and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.”
1 Co 3:23
This is a very simple logic, isn’t it? We are of Christ, and Christ is of God, therefore we are of God. In the same way, what God possesses belongs to Christ, and what Christ possesses belongs to us, therefore what God possesses belongs to us as well. Being children of God, we do have free access to all things since they are our Heavenly Father’s possessions.
To many of us, this idea is probably in theory only, not in practice. We may be rich, but don’t really know how to access our wealth, therefore we all lead our lives as paupers.
Whether we are rich or not has a lot to do with our capacity of enjoying the good things in life and has very little to do with the number of our possessions we happen to own. If we lose our appetite for food, all the delicacies from the peak of the mountain or the depth of the sea (山珍海味) will not make our mouth water at all. In this aspect, the rich ones are the poor people with a big appetite for food, not the wealthy who have lost their craving for delicacies. Good food certainly can be purchased with money, but the appreciation and enjoyment of it is a gift from God, which cannot be bought.
We seem to have devoted a lot of our time and energy trying to earn more money so that we can buy whatever can be purchased, neglecting to take time to smell the roses, which is absolutely free, or lose sight of the beauty of nature that changes daily yet remains constant. We may get to the point when we are able to afford buying paintings by famous artists, but have absolutely no appreciation for the art works done by the greatest Artist in the entire universe.
We are what we perceive ourselves to be, and being rich or poor is in fact a matter of perception. We can all become enormously wealthy by cultivating the way of seeing and the ability of appreciation. The simple truth is that we don’t have to possess to enjoy. Of course we do have to possess a fast car in order to taste its speed and excitement, but if I venture to guess, the joy of walking in the woods sure beats speeding down the autobahn any day.
Sweets ruin our appetite for a regular meal, yet we continue to dig into them as if they were the solid food that we need to sustain our lives. Sweets turn into junk if we have too much of them. They don’t make us strong, they make us fat, and we are well aware that the obese are not necessarily rich. In our passionate pursuit of wealth, I am afraid we may have all become obese spiritually and physically and have lost the capacity for true happiness. We devour the dessert as if it were the main course and lose the desire for what’s good and wholesome for our body and soul.
Most people can afford buying a ticket to view the grandeur of the Grand Canyon, but only a few of them can possess it by appreciating the Canyon for what it is. It may take years to hone the skill, but it’s well worth the effort, for they are the wealthy few who can take the Canyon home after they witness the natural wonder. We don’t have to be Bill Gates to own the Grand Canyon.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Boasting
“So then, no more boasting about men!”
1 Co 3:21
I have always thought this popular Chinese saying pretty funny. “It’s a fearful thing for men to be famous and for pigs to be fat (人怕出名豬怕肥.)” Why is this case? We understand that when a pig become fat, it will soon be turned into bacon and pork, but there is no harm for a person to become famous, is there? Do we all harbor a secret desire to become some sort of celebrity?
We want people to boast about us, don’t we? Not many of us can become rich and famous, therefore we attach ourselves to people who have achieved the desirable status and boast about them and worse off, we even bow down to them.
I don’t know which position is more precarious. To worship or to be worshipped. If I venture to make a guess, I think the letter is in a more severe peril than the former. One put himself in danger by practicing idolatry, but a person puts the masses in danger by allowing himself to be worshipped. We ought to do all things possible to keep ourselves from being idolized. We may think otherwise, but deep in our heart, we all have a secret yearning to be adored and admired, and we are constantly do things to make it a reality either consciously or unconsciously. Put us on stage before a group of people, and immediately our instinct kicks in and we start to draw attention to ourselves by performing. That’s why we become self-conscious in such occasion because we want to look good, to be well-thought of, and to be considered as a celebrity.
Those of us who are in “performing” ministry are specially susceptible to this kind of temptation. How many golden-tongue heroes have we created after the Protestant reformation when the pulpit was lifted high in our worship services? Church hopping has become a popular phenomenon because Christians seem to leave no stone unturned searching for a star preacher with oratory skill when they get to a new town, and many of them go to church not to worship and to listen to the voice of God, but to hear the voice of men.
What do we do to avoid this deadly peril?
We need to know there is such danger before we take any measure to avoid it. Unfortunately very few Christian workers are aware of this risk and continue to do things to promote themselves in their ministry. In the name of serving the Lord, they in essence are serving themselves and gratifying their secret desire of which they may or may not be conscious.
We Christian workers need to go through the cross before we step behind the pulpit to speak or to sing for God. We will always be egotistic if our ego isn’t crucified. As laypersons, we must avoid idolizing men and creating heroes to be worshipped by abstaining from boasting about men. Glorification of men is a very dangerous thing.
1 Co 3:21
I have always thought this popular Chinese saying pretty funny. “It’s a fearful thing for men to be famous and for pigs to be fat (人怕出名豬怕肥.)” Why is this case? We understand that when a pig become fat, it will soon be turned into bacon and pork, but there is no harm for a person to become famous, is there? Do we all harbor a secret desire to become some sort of celebrity?
We want people to boast about us, don’t we? Not many of us can become rich and famous, therefore we attach ourselves to people who have achieved the desirable status and boast about them and worse off, we even bow down to them.
I don’t know which position is more precarious. To worship or to be worshipped. If I venture to make a guess, I think the letter is in a more severe peril than the former. One put himself in danger by practicing idolatry, but a person puts the masses in danger by allowing himself to be worshipped. We ought to do all things possible to keep ourselves from being idolized. We may think otherwise, but deep in our heart, we all have a secret yearning to be adored and admired, and we are constantly do things to make it a reality either consciously or unconsciously. Put us on stage before a group of people, and immediately our instinct kicks in and we start to draw attention to ourselves by performing. That’s why we become self-conscious in such occasion because we want to look good, to be well-thought of, and to be considered as a celebrity.
Those of us who are in “performing” ministry are specially susceptible to this kind of temptation. How many golden-tongue heroes have we created after the Protestant reformation when the pulpit was lifted high in our worship services? Church hopping has become a popular phenomenon because Christians seem to leave no stone unturned searching for a star preacher with oratory skill when they get to a new town, and many of them go to church not to worship and to listen to the voice of God, but to hear the voice of men.
What do we do to avoid this deadly peril?
We need to know there is such danger before we take any measure to avoid it. Unfortunately very few Christian workers are aware of this risk and continue to do things to promote themselves in their ministry. In the name of serving the Lord, they in essence are serving themselves and gratifying their secret desire of which they may or may not be conscious.
We Christian workers need to go through the cross before we step behind the pulpit to speak or to sing for God. We will always be egotistic if our ego isn’t crucified. As laypersons, we must avoid idolizing men and creating heroes to be worshipped by abstaining from boasting about men. Glorification of men is a very dangerous thing.
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