An audio version of this sermon can be found on the church web site.
The Secret
1 Timothy 6:6-19
One of my favorite activities is to read the book section in the Sunday paper. As a rabid bibliophile I’m always looking for something new to read.
It’s interesting to me, though, what makes the cut and what people are shelling out money for. Frequently, one of the books on the list has to do with some kind of self-help topic—some secret that will make life better if you follow it.
These days it’s a book aptly titled The Secret. It’s been on the list for some 37 weeks. According to the book jacket, “As you learn The Secret, you will come to know how you can have, be, or do anything you want. You will come to know who you really are. You will come to know the true magnificence that awaits you in life.”
I was in the bookstore the other day so I opened it up. The Secret goes something like this:
The basic idea draws on the Law of Attraction — our feelings, thoughts and desires attract and create actual events in the world and in our lives. While hidden to most, the true secret to success and happiness has only been adopted by the cultural movers and shakers over the centuries who have realized that positive thinking invites positive experiences.
The underlying message of The Secret is simple. In short, we are the creator of our universe. Your desires can determine your reality. In terms of your dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” In other words, it’s all about you. With huge media exposure, thanks to culture-queen Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, the Today show and Larry King Live, the book is flying off the shelves.
The trailer to The Secret movie (yeah, there’s a DVD, too) summarizes the worldview this way: “This Secret gives you everything you want: happiness, health, wealth. You can have, do, be anything you want.” The film itself encourages people to “Act on impulse … the universe likes to move quickly.”
Whatever that means.
At any rate, I bought the book and decided to give it a shot. Here’s one of the suggestions: “Starting with something small, like a cup of coffee, is an easy way to experience the law of attraction in action. Powerfully intend to attract something small. As you experience the power you have to attract, you will move on to creating much bigger things.”
OK, so I decided to try that. All day on Wednesday I thought about a vanilla latte—my favorite coffee drink. I mused on a vanilla latte, considered the latte, powerfully sent messages out into the Universe that I wanted a latte. I fully expected someone to walk in randomly and bring me a latte.
Well, apparently “the Universe” was having download problems Wednesday. I had to settle for a little decaf from the office coffee maker (which I had to make myself, by the way).
Now, I agree that everyone should engage in some positive thinking. Lord knows that I need to do better at that. I’ll admit that I’m a bit of a pessimist sometimes. Maybe that comes from being drilled in the military to always hope for the best but expect the worst. You could say I’m a trained pessimist, but you know what a pessimist really is, don’t you? A pessimist is an optimist with experience!
Pessimists can take something from The Secret and other books of its ilk and that is to think positive thoughts. The problem, however, has to do with where those thoughts are directed.
Read The Secret and you discover that it views the universe (note, not God) in terms of a Genie who says, “Your wish is my command.” The universe is designed to give us whatever we want and never questions our commands. In fact, says the book, the universe is basically a catalog—“You flip through it and say, ‘I’d like to have this experience and I’d like to have that product and I’d like to have a person like that.’ It is You (capitalized always in the book) placing your order with the universe.”
That universe, too, is devoid of a moral center. Basically, The Secret is focused on living and acting in anyway that makes us feel good. Morally, speaking, the universe doesn’t demand anything from us.
In fact, says The Secret, this kind of “name it and claim it” worldview has been prevalent since the beginning of time and practiced by philosophers and even religious figures. Interestingly (and shockingly) the author even attaches philosophy to Jesus. She quotes one book that says that Jesus and other biblical figures were actually millionaires themselves “with more affluent lifestyles than many present-day millionaires could conceive of.”
I nearly spit out the decaf when I read that.
Is it little wonder, though, that these books are flying off the shelves in this country? America was, after all, founded on the idea of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Thing is, those have been ordered in reverse. The pursuit of happiness seems to be an all-encompassing American dream. You could even say that it’s become it’s own religion (which is essentially what The Secret promotes). People will sacrifice their lives and, to a degree, their liberty in order to achieve the ever-illusive goal of having it all. They’re so desperate for it that they’ll spend their last dime on drivel like The Secret to find the quick fix, the instant score, the painless way to happiness.
It would be the ultimate understatement to say that the Bible challenges this worldview.
It’s hard to imagine that a story like the rich man and Lazarus in today’s Gospel lesson would come from a person “with a more affluent lifestyle than many present-day millionaires could conceive of.” Read the Gospels and you see that Jesus seemed to have it in for those who rely on and pursue wealth. The rich man (who is never named) ignores the poor Lazarus at his gate, even though he has an abundance he could share. Death is the great equalizer in the story—not even wealth can keep you from it and you can’t take it with you at any rate. In the end the rich man learns that getting everything you want isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be.
Paul picks up this theme in his letter to Timothy. Rounding out this pastoral pep talk, Paul closes with words that speak to the meaning of life: “There is great gain in godliness combined with contentment” (v. 6).
In other words, if you want to think about something, if you want to gain something, think about turning your thoughts and actions toward God. Paul puts it this way in Colossians 3:2 – “Set you minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.”
Here’s where Paul blows the whistle on The Secret. He speaks very plainly here—no secrecy at all. First, he says, if your thoughts are only designed to become things (as The Secret says) you’re in deep trouble because possessions are always transient and impermanent. All of our stuff stays here (v. 7).
Put another way, Paul points to the fact that tombs don’t have closets and hearses don’t tow U-Haul trailers.
We have to remember that our soul was never designed to be satisfied by what is temporary. Jesus said to “store up treasure in heaven.” If we’re thinking on the “things above,” if we focus our thoughts on God, then our emphasis isn’t about getting stuff from a benevolent Genie. Instead, we become focused on how our money can fund those things which have eternal impact.
We’re not called to sit in the mansion on a hill waiting for the things we want to come to us—we’re to walk down the driveway to meet the Lazaruses and others who have real needs.
Which leads to the second point Paul is making—people seeking godliness are called to consider the real difference between wants and needs. We need food and clothing (v. 8). We may want (v. 9) many other things which can lead to temptation and sin (v. 10). The goal is to be content with our needs and not order life around all of our wants.
Some might consider Paul to be a bit too Spartan here. But consider Maslow’s famed hierarchy of needs. It moves from basic human physiological needs (food, shelter, etc.) to more advanced emotional ones such as self-esteem, respect and creativity. While a BMW, for example, is a nice dream car, it doesn’t make any of Maslow’s levels of needs, much less Paul’s.
In terms of godliness with respect to money and possessions, Paul says pursue your needs, but not all of your wants. It’s really about making choices. Sometimes those choices are hard, but our choices around wants vs. needs really do define us. Tyler Wigg Stevenson wrote a book titled Brand Jesus: Christianity in a Consumerist Age. We did an interview with him in the current issue of Homiletics and I like how he defines this:
“Consumerism offers a deeply individual existence. There’s a “you” and whoever that is is defined by what you take into yourself…A mature Christian knows that we are not the center of the universe. There is an old order of things, and a new order in Christ. A new kingdom is breaking in. The question is, ‘Where am I going to be?’ Am I going to be ‘in Jesus’ or am I going to be in and of this world?”
For Paul, that choice gets centered around what one does with money. In verses 9-10, notice that loving money is pitted against godly contentment. It seems to be a theme in the Scriptures that pursuing riches and pursuing God are issues of either/or not both/and. Jesus made it an either/or in Matthew 6 and Paul does it here.
Note carefully that Paul is not recommending happiness, but contentment. Happiness is an emotion; a state a person can be in. Emotions, however, are transient. Happiness usually depends on circumstances, which makes it more elusive. If we believe we’ll be “happy” if only we could have X, what happens when X is attained? Sure, it makes you happy for awhile, but then I start thinking about Y. Happiness is kind of an existential hamster wheel—we run hard to get it but we never catch up to it.
Contentment, on the other hand, is a trait —it is a state of being. The Greek word for “contentment” carries with it the notion of sufficiency — “enoughness.” It implies satisfaction, and the Bible uses it prescriptively. In other words, people can be happy, but they should be content.
This makes Paul’s commendation to Timothy one of encouraging a spiritual discipline: “Young Timothy, in the face of a culture of money lovers, choose to be content. Choose sufficiency. Choose satisfaction. Choose ‘enoughness.’”
Finally, Paul isn’t merely promoting abject asceticism here. Rather, there’s a note that obedience carries with it life fulfillment. Financial simplicity allows one to avoid certain life discomforts: senseless and harmful desires, ruin, destruction, piercing with pain and uncertainty. Think about it—if you don’t have a lot of stuff, you don’t have to worry about it all the time.
But more positively, financial simplicity carries several “happy” descriptors in this passage: great gain, rich provision, enjoyment and a good future foundation. Paul’s instruction to those who are rich in verse 17-19 lays it out: “Don’t set your hopes on riches, but on God who provides everything we need. If you’re going to be rich, be rich in good works, be generous, and put your treasure in places where it has an eternal impact for God’s Kingdom.”
Do that, says Paul, and you’ll really discover the secret of “the life that is really life.”
Now you may be thinking—wow, that’s a tough message for the rich. But I’m not rich. Really? Here’s an interesting fact: If you have just $2200 in assets you are in the top half of the world’s wealthiest people. If you have $61,000 in assets you are in the top 10% of the world’s wealthiest people. And if you have more than $500,000 you are in the top 1%.
Think about that a minute. If you only need a couple of thousand dollars to be considered rich, what does that say about how poor most of the world is? Indeed, on average, half the world lives on less than $2 a day. Don’t think you’re rich? Think again!
The rich man and Lazarus story doesn’t seem so remote when put in that perspective.
The secret to life isn’t found in having more. Biblically speaking, life is not about you. God isn’t impressed with your stuff, your house, your bank account. Life is about a relationship with God—a relationship that should be reflected in everything we think about and everything we do. The secret to life is really living for God, living simply, living generously, living contentedly.
Living simply, living contentedly, will look a whole lot different to the rest of the culture. I wonder what would happen, say, if the people of Park City Community Church decided that they weren’t going to keep buying into the idea that life is about the pursuit of happiness. I wonder what would happen if we all decided to live more simply, live more generously, and focus hard on the “godliness that leads to contentment.”
My guess is that our neighbors would think us mad—but we’d be quite the opposite. Imagine not being faced with a mountain of debt, a house that costs a fortune to heat, a car that’s so expensive that the parts are hard to come by, and a lifestyle that forces us to always be on the go and have the latest. Imagine giving away so much of your money to the real needs of others that your accountant worries that you’ll be audited by the IRS for deducting such a huge percentage of income come tax time. Imagine being so passionate about the needs of the world that our discretionary time and energy is spent doing things for God’s Kingdom instead of pleasing ourselves.
You want to send out some thoughts? Send those thoughts out to God and see what happens.
Sources:
Byrne, Rhonda, The Secret. New York: Atria Books and Hillsboro, OR: Beyond Words Publishing, 2006.
“Got $2,200? In this world, you’re rich,” MSN Money Web Site, December 13, 2006.
Williams, Ken, “Positive Thinking: The Latest Version,” Homiletics, September-October 2007, p. 7.
