Tag Archives: giving

Give Before Taking

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Advent has begun. If you’re paying attention—if you’re attending a Church that’s paying attention—its purpose is easy enough to understand. The depraved world needed a Savior. That Savior was born in Bethlehem. He submitted Himself into the vulgar crassness that rots humanity to its core. In the filth of a manger, He was born the kindliest servant of all—born to redeem the whole world from Sin. That Savior, Jesus, is coming back again in glory. When He does, it won’t be in meekness but rather in great might. He’ll come as the Judge—the Pantocrator. And just as the Creeds declare, His kingdom—all cases determined, and the one world-consuming verdict announced—will have no end. Those who are His own will be with Him in eternal glory. Those who are not won’t.

These are the converging views of Advent. Both are vistas of promise. Both bear features of warning.

Inherent to warning is preparation. Advent prepares us, which is one reason it serves as the first season in the new Church Year. One needs only to consider the Gospel reading for the First Sunday in Advent—Matthew 21:1-9—the account of Christ’s entrance into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Here the Church Year’s lens is polished, and we see clearly what each event throughout the rest of the year means. Jesus came to die. Why? Because we needed God to act. We needed Him to send help. And so, He did. He sent His Son to take upon Himself human flesh. The Old Testament more than alerted us. Saint Matthew did, too. He saw its fulfillment and then reminded, “Behold, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a beast of burden” (Matthew 21:5 [Zechariah 9:9]). Saint Matthew says on the First Sunday in Advent, “There He is. There’s your King. God is moving. He’s acting. In a few days—Good Friday—you’ll see the fullest measure of His concern for the world. He’ll go to war. It’ll be bloody. But He’ll win, and the whole world will be bought back from the brink of lostness.”

If you are at all familiar with what I’ve written in the past, then you’ll know it’s a regular thing that I urge Christians to view the world through this lens. Observing the world through the sacrifice of Christ is more than revealing. It’s world-altering. In an Advent sense, it’s preparatory.

For one, when we know the seriousness that caused God’s action on our behalf, we become aware of the dreadful cause’s subtle trajectories in life. I’ll give you an example that came to mind last week.

Right after Thanksgiving, the world celebrated Black Friday—a day that ushered humanity into a long weekend of buying and then buying some more. Several days of non-stop purchasing faded into Cyber Monday, another day devoted to getting and consuming more.

Now, I know the innards of these days-long events are multifaceted. Some people use them to buy for themselves everything they’ve ever wanted. Others take advantage of the discounts in preparation for Christmas gift-giving. Some do a little bit of both. Keeping these things in mind, I’m less concerned with reading the hearts of consumers as I am the order of things. The world betrays its need for a Savior when you consider the sequence of its priorities.

Over several days, we take, take, take before arriving at Giving Tuesday—a singular day set aside for charitable giving. In perspective, it’s estimated that $20.4 billion was spent this year from Black Friday to Cyber Monday. $3.1 billion was exchanged on Giving Tuesday. It also appears that end-of-year tax deductions were a “determining factor” to more than half who gave. In other words, many might not have given at all without the self-interested “taking” of personal tax benefits, making the giving much smaller.

Again, the point isn’t to judge hearts. It’s to observe. Clearly, taking outweighed giving. But now, consider the order of things.

God gives. He does this first. And even when He’s found taking, His giving far outpaces it. The wonderfulness of this generous love establishes a standard: first fruits giving (Numbers 15:20-21, 18:12-18; Romans 16:5; 1 Corinthians 16:2, 15; and the like). We give, then we take. In other words, perfect love first aims outwardly before it ever thinks to aim inwardly. Jesus is the epitome of this standard. Saint Paul calls Christ the first fruit (1 Corinthians 15:20). Saint James does the same (James 1:18). By faith, having been remade into the likeness of Jesus, Christians are made aware of this better order. And so, by the power of the Holy Spirit at work within us, we know to give before getting (2 Corinthians 5:17). We know it is better to give than to receive (Acts 20:35).

The world has reversed this, once again betraying its need for rescue. “Self” is loved before others. Sinful man takes before giving. When you think about it, this mirrors the earliest events in Eden. Eve fell into Sin. As a result, the natural order for exchanging things shifted. She first got what she wanted, and then she gave to Adam. She took before she gave. From there, her giving—and all humanity’s giving—would be naturally contaminated.

The point: our need for a Savior runs deep. Not only do we see and experience it in the more apparent horrors of life, but it’s found churning in the guts of the so-called good things we do (Isaiah 64:6). There are traces of it in our charity. Even our charity needs fixing.

If you’re paying attention, Advent’s first image—the Son of God’s Palm Sunday procession toward the cross—preaches this, too. Jesus traveled along through the streets awash in praise. Those praises so easily turned vicious. Still, Advent is preparing our hearts for celebrating this ever-determined Lord’s arrival in Bethlehem to reverse the course of this gross tendency in all of us. It does this while also preparing us for the Lord’s final return in what promises to be an eternity-piercing moment capping the complete reversal of Sin’s destruction once and for all.

It was Saint Ignatius Loyola who prayed so devoutly, “Teach us, good Lord… to give and not to count the cost; to fight and not to heed the wounds; to toil and not to seek rest; to labor and not to ask for any reward, save that of knowing that we do Thy will.”

Those are substantive words. Those are Advent words. They’re a description of the One who came to accomplish them, and they’re hoped-for fruits of faith among God’s people—a desire to give faithfully and generously, to serve before being served, to love before being loved, to give before taking. We do this while we await the Lord’s return in glory.

We can only arrive at this better view of giving through the Gospel. May this view be yours, both now and always.

As Seen On TV

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I went to Meijer in Hartland this past Friday, and while making my way to the hardware section to find a replacement bulb for the lamp on my desk, I overheard a rather animated child begging his mom with tantrum-like sounds to buy him a particular item he’d discovered on one of the end caps. I don’t know what the item was, but from his insistence, it sounded as though he might die if he didn’t own it.

I’m guessing it was some sort of fantastical device—like a teleporter—because at one point he called out something like, “I saw it on TV, and it’s the coolest thing ever!” Indeed, a teleportation device would be the coolest thing ever.

But whatever it was, I couldn’t help thinking I was experiencing the male version of Veruca Salt from “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” and that this child’s exuberance was likely triggered by commercial advertising. In a passing moment between mind-numbing segments of his favorite TV show, the emptier compartments of his developing cerebrum had been stirred to entrancement by the possibility of owning a product the TV had convinced him he needed for experiencing true joy. And here it was in all its glory, well within reach of his Wonka Bar-stained fingers.

But Mom said no, and then continued, “Now you know what to ask for from Santa for Christmas.”

The child’s response was by no means subdued. He wanted it, and he made sure everyone within earshot knew it. As for me, I grabbed the lightbulb I needed and walked away wondering how she plans on wrapping the kid’s gifts. I hear it’s challenging to wrap coal, not only because it’s lumpy, but because it’s so dirty. The dust alone prevents the tape from adhering to the paper as it should. Ask my kids. It’s always the easiest of their gifts to unwrap.

Anyway…

The funny thing is, for as much as any of us may have wanted to chastise little Veruca, none of us is immune to the psychology of advertising. It was Stephen Leacock (in my humble opinion, Canada’s version of Mark Twain) who said something about how advertising is pretty much the science of arresting human intelligence long enough to squeeze some money from it. If you think about it, he’s right. We all have items in our homes to prove those moments of arrested mindfulness—those things that demonstrate just how powerful the world can be for reaching into our lives to convince us that what it offers can be our all-in-all for joy.

But now, admit it. Many of those things the world sold you are now consigned to miscellaneous junk boxes littering the shelves of the basement storage closet.

Digging a little deeper into this, I get the sense that for many, impulse buys aren’t the only proof that the world has reached into our lives in this way. Far too many in our world appear to base the value of their lives on whether or not they get the new car or the new boat or the new furniture, or whether or not the kids have all the right fashions and all the latest tech. So many are living their lives and measuring their personal value according to the seemingly infinite (and yet false) promise of joy that the world labors tirelessly to attach to things.

Now, don’t get me wrong. There’s nothing inherently wrong with buying a new car, just as there’s nothing inherently wrong with your kids having nice things to wear. The problem emerges when these things become the sole source for our identity and happiness. When this occurs, the old saying becomes true: “God sends the meat, but the devil sends the cooks.” God is the giver of everything we have, but the devil has his ways of making us see and interpret these gifts according to very different standards. These things become less representative of the kindness and generosity of a God who loves us, and more about our deservedness or our supposed self-made successes.

Again, don’t get me wrong. God gives us our reason and our senses in order that we would use them to their fullest potential, and by them we should seek to do our best in all things. You certainly won’t accomplish anything unless you act. And odds are you won’t be successful unless your acting is born from genuine effort. In fact, I have a piece of paper taped to the bookshelf beside my desk that heralds this very point in its extreme. It bears a quotation from Calvin Coolidge, and admittedly, much of what I do in life is in subscription to the basic premise of his words. Maybe I’ve shared it with you before. The quotation reads:

“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. Nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not. The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”

To be clear, Coolidge used the term “omnipotent” in a hyperbolic sense. What he meant in context is that when it comes solely to man’s capacity, persistence is where the bulk of our muscle is to be located. And as I said, I wholeheartedly agree with him. Still, as Christians, we know and do all of this acknowledging the One who is the giver of both the tangibles as well as the intangibles. We rest in the mindfulness that all we have is from God, and no matter how hard we may work to get it, He was the one who gave us everything required to do it, even the drive. In the end, the source of our joy, even as it may be interwoven with certain things or abilities, is always located in Him alone.

And so, it is to Him we are thankful at all times and in all circumstances (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18).

But deeper still, this has me pondering something else.

As we’ve already established, everything that we are and everything that we have is from God. The Word of God declares this (Romans 11:36). But as we examine that same Word and we find ourselves getting into the grittiest, most molecular details, we realize that of ourselves the only thing we ever really bring to the table in any circumstance is the Sin-nature (Psalm 51:5; Ecclesiastes 7:20; Romans 3:10). That’s not so great. And yet, far too often it’s the Sin-nature at the steering wheel when it comes to the handling of God’s gifts to us—namely, what we give back to Him in thanksgiving. In other words, we often find ourselves giving back to God the pittance that remains from everything else we first gave to the devil, the world, and ourselves. That’s not so great, either.

I know I may be a little ahead of myself, but for those of you who know me, you’ll know I’m the kind of guy who finds value in making New Year’s resolutions. As I’ve written in other places, resolutions for personal betterment are by no means a bad thing. In fact, I commend all willing to try. Even Saint Paul encouraged Christians to practice reaching higher in their Godliness (Colossians 3:1-4). The New Year is on the very near horizon (thankfully), and with that, I’m already making plans to reach higher. One of the things I intend to do (which I do pretty much every year) is to re-evaluate my stewardship. I want to get better at it. I want to be more mindful.

I don’t know where you fit into this discussion, but I’m pretty sure that all of us could reach higher in this regard, too. As a pastor, I certainly know some long-term, impactful ways for giving back to God in thankfulness for His loving kindness. They’re not necessarily things you’ll find on an end cap at Meijer, and yet they’re the coolest things ever. I say this because they will provide greatly when it comes to securing the Church’s borders in a time of increasing persecution, while at the same time they’ll serve to extend the Gospel to that same persecuting world in desperate need of hearing the Good News. I’m here to tell you I’ll be taking aim at and ramping up my efforts to support those kinds of efforts here at Our Savior in 2021. Maybe you could think about doing so, too.