Do we allow what should be gifts from God to incorrectly shape how we view the world and the people in it? Do our blessings cloud how we look at people in need? As American Christians, we cannot allow the fact that more than a century has passed since the 1918 Battle of Ambos Nogales, one of the last major military engagements on the contiguous American mainland, to diminish our compassion for those living in war-torn countries. While later events such as the border fighting of 1919, Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Attu, and September 11 remind us that our nation has not been untouched by warfare and tragedy, most Americans have never experienced the daily reality of living in a war zone. Our safety and wealth give us even more reason to care about a place like Ukraine, not less. Living in Bel Air should give you more reason to care about Skid Row, not less. Living in German Village should give you more reason to care about the Hilltop, not less. If God has blessed you, it should give you a reason to pass that on to others.
[Jesus] saw the insidious idolatry that wealth generates and warned against its utter incompatibility with serving God (Mt 6:24; Lk 16:13). It was not so much wealth in and of itself that Jesus condemned but rather its tendency to produce an attitude of complacent self-sufficiency (Lk 12:15–21). Self-sufficiency is the diametric opposite of the prime quality needed for entrance to the kingdom of God—humble dependence on God in faith (Mt 6:19–34).
Wright, C. J. H. (2014). Knowing Jesus through the Old Testament (Second Edition, p. 230). IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press.
Wealth has been one of the great dividing lines between people for thousands of years. To allow this to divide Christians is to ignore the call on our lives to be set apart from the world. To allow it to divide Protestant Christians is to ignore a major reason Luther left Catholicism. We may as well have kept paying our indulgences. Let those at the top tell us what to do. Tell us how atonement works—demand we pay for something that was already paid in full.
Our job is to serve Jesus and share the Gospel with everyone. It does not matter where they’re from or where they are now. It does not matter if their net worth is -$10,000 or $100,000. Being a Christian means loving your neighbor and preaching the Gospel. That’s it. We don’t have the authority to draw lines that Jesus would have knocked down, for we are all nothing without God. Our self-sufficiency is the oldest lie the devil ever told—wealth, power, knowledge, love. These things may make us feel as though we have what we need and we can do it on our own. Where the rubber meets the road, this is wrong, because the only thing that makes us righteous, and the only thing that ever could, is submitting ourselves to our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ of Nazareth.
Jesus went on to make these comments:
If you’re honest in small things,
you’ll be honest in big things;
If you’re a crook in small things,
you’ll be a crook in big things.
If you’re not honest in small jobs,
who will put you in charge of the store?
No worker can serve two bosses:
He’ll either hate the first and love the second
Or adore the first and despise the second.
You can’t serve both God and the Bank.Peterson, E. H. (2005). The Message: the Bible in contemporary language (Lk 16:10–13). NavPress.
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