Art imitating real life????
So, here we are getting ready for the weekend. You might be planning your schedule and thinking about a place for dinner tonight. Well, if you live in the Pittsburgh area, you might want to head up to Denny’s Beer belly Pub for burger and fries. Wait, check that. Maybe just the burger. Check out the story of a man who ate a 20.2 lb burger in under 5 hours.
Now I think this is pretty cool and gross at the same time. But as I approach Sunday morning and finish preparing my message about the materialistic mindset in our country I can see how Brad night of burger gorging resembles how we indulge and gorge ourselves here in the U.S. And you know what really grabs me is that It ‘s no different in the church and among God’s people.
There’s no doubt that our government’s recent bailouts of banks is symptomatic of the core condition of the hearts of people in this country. Hearts that find a sense of entitlement when it comes to getting more and more stuff. In the church, we consistently live life as though we believe that Jesus doesn’t want us to really go without. We even have thoughts that if we are “freakishly” frugal we won’t be relevant to the world around us. Well I think the picture of Brad Sciullo eating that burger “for fun” is art imitating real life. We crave things that we cannot afford to have even to an excess that is beyond our ability to care for it all.
But, as Christians, we have sold ourselves on the idea that it’s ok to have stuff as long as we still give a “percent“ to God. (That’s our church tithing mantra.) But friends, that’s not what Jesus teaches us in Matthew 19 when He responds to a rich young man’s request.
Now, I do not believe Jesus is saying that all Christians need to sell everything they have. But I do believe that for those of us who would even ask that question, we need to seek out what God would have sell instead of figuring how little to give and still get “in” with Jesus. Take a few minutes in your weekend schedule to ask God to show you what He would have do to reverse the corrupt notion that you and I need more stuff. If we have truly been changed on the inside by Jesus, we will certainly respond to the needs of people even as Jesus modeled it. And it won’t happen if we are more committed to things than to living out the heart change that God has brought to out lives, a change that moves from the inside out. (Just like that burger did the next day in Brad’s life:)
