Anderson, South Carolina
There are those really intelligent people who seek answers to the fundamental nature of the universe, most notably high energy particle physicists. A primary tool in their quest for knowledge are vast multi-billion dollar machines that throw inconceivable amounts of energy at very tiny targets, obliterating them. The detritus from these high-energy encounters is instructive to them
As it happens, on a recent overseas journey I met one of these very smart physicists who seems to be probing something besides the world of quarks, neutrinos, muons, and other nuclear tidbits of the inner universe. She has projected a high energy beam of questions my way from her lab in Geneva and I am now scrambling to find out if her experimental results are going to find my theology for life wanting. It is amazing how a simple seven word sentence can set of a cascade in my experience, challenging me to probe deeply into my personal motivations and behaviors. She simply asked, “What about the rest who need more?” in response to my speaking of recent epic blessings in my life, severely challenging my life theology, which will most likely be found tainted with materialism and prosperity thinking. As an experimental physicist, rather than a theoretical one, she is not going to let me get out of this easily. That Geneva lab she works in can keep up high energy beams for a long time.
My first defense to her:
There most certainly is a powerful responsibility that comes with ‘being looked out for’ by God if that is, in fact, what is happening. I hesitate to say that is what is happening because to do so is too close to the American prosperity gospel, which I detest. If I am given anything extra or come into abundance in any fashion whatever, I have a great responsibility to ask exactly your question, “What about the rest who need more?” If I am honest, at least a partial answer to that question is always immediately before me. Something always presents itself that enables me to do something about the rest who need more.
If I have extra food, which I always seem to, then do I find disabled people or addicts who need it, families that are out of work? If I have extra money, even if only inconsistently, do I use this to buy rice for one hundred and five street orphans in India every month? Do I use my physical abilities to build houses for poor people in the ghetto? To go work in a community kitchen and pack seven hundred meals, for people that will never see the outside of their prisons of disability and poverty again? Do I use my knowledge of sound engineering to create inspiring music for Haitian people in the poorest land in the western hemisphere? Do I try to write things that will uplift those who are in poverty of spirit? Do I take the abundance of flowers I always seem to have to those who don’t have the first petal and live in a bleak prison of disability? I attempt to live the entirety of my life always asking your very question, “What about the rest who need more?” If you are happy that “God has chosen to look out for me”, be so simply because it allows me to pass things through.
There was a magnificent book written some years ago called Pay it Forward, putting forth the idea that the way to produce world transformation and equity is to gift the disenfranchised with things for which there is no possibility of payback. When we gift someone with something and there is no possibility of repayment, we simply ask them to pass the favor on to someone else who will never be able to repay either. We create a dynamic in the world that is hospitable to community building.
You may recall that my first real dilemma about winning two first class tickets on British Airways was finding someone to gift the other ticket to. In the most profound way I wanted to give that journey to someone who would never ever have a possibility of such an experience. It was beyond frustrating to leave that $15,000 ticket on the table when no one was forthcoming. It was a bit surreal to realize that many people felt they did not deserve to have such an experience and backed off from it. Sadly, most simply felt it was too good to be true.
What is absolutely clear is there is simply no place for hoarding of any kind. Things grow hideously stagnant when confined. If I horde my money, my larder, my talents, I will most certainly become a prisoner in a type of poverty of soul that reaches to the core of my being. This kind of poverty has become endemic in our secular material culture. The Dead Sea is dead precisely because it has no outlet whatever. My goal is to be as the grand waterfalls I recently visited, fresh, abundant and generous of substance, giving away all that passes through me.
If I am granted to live in a gilded mansion, do I leave the gates forever open and invite others to come in and enjoy the experience of five courses on crystal and sterling? If granted a wondrous piece of German engineering to drive, do I invite others along for the ride so I can see the sense of wonder in their faces, and make sure they see no smugness or haughtiness in my own? Do I keep the Old Masters to myself or make sure they speak across the centuries to thousands? Do I make sure the struggling art student on the pavements of Trafalgar knows she is right for following her dream to challenge Botticelli?
I can easily see why you “wouldn't like it if God chose to do that for me”. If honest, we are then compelled to keep asking the hard questions you pose. Even harder, is having the integrity to pay attention to the answers. Your severely challenging questions are most helpful. If I cannot answer them or at least try to come to terms with them, then it is time for me to take time out and make an honest assessment of what kind of journey I really am on. I might be headed nowhere at all.
“Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.' Then the righteous will answer him, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?' And the King will answer them, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.' "Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.' Then they also will answer, saying, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?' Then he will answer them, saying, 'Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.'
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