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LAST BUT NOT EASIEST #8

DREAMS AND DESIRES AND DIVING BOARDS

Dr. Tony Evans, who pastors at Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship, tells an anecdote about a man who came to church one weekend looking very discouraged and sad. The pastor noticed and asked him: "Hey, what's the matter?" And the man said, "Oh, my uncle died two weeks ago, and he left me $75,000."

Well, that was mixed news, and the preacher tried to comfort him. Then the man added: "Then last week my aunt died too, and she left me $50,000 more."

And the preacher said, "Wait a minute. I don't get it. Two weeks ago your uncle died and left you $75,000. Then a week later your aunt dies and leaves you another $50,000. So why are you so sad?"

And the man answered: "Because this week NOBODY died."

Do you ever feel like that? You get a big windfall, but it's not quite enough. Then another windfall, and it STILL isn't enough. And you begin to feel that no matter how big a score you might hit upon, it'll NEVER be enough. There can't be enough rich-uncle deaths in the family to bring you LASTING joy and happiness.
We've been discovering in this radio series on coveting that the Bible says more about it than we imagined. It's there in the Tenth Commandment, of course, but the New Testament is also rich with counsel on this hugely important topic. Over in the book of James, which is a very practical letter, we find this in chapter four:

"What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You want something but don't get it. You KILL and COVET, but you cannot have what you want."

Psychologist Leonard Felder, author of a wonderful book called The Ten Challenges, describes covetousness this way:

"To covet is to yearn with SO MUCH longing that you feel you'll never be complete and whole unless you satisfy this desire."

But as we've been discovering, both through case histories and the Bible itself, this is a fruitless quest . . . to satisfy "(quote) this desire." You CAN'T satisfy it! You can't get enough STUFF, be it money or power or trinkets and toys. The quest never ends.

Some of you might be familiar with a bestselling story that came out a few years ago, entitled A Simple Plan. There's probably no better depiction out there of the raw, downward spiraling power of sin . . . especially the twin sins of covetousness and greed. Several friends hiking along in the snow stumble onto a half-buried, crashed single-engine airplane with a couple of bodies inside it. Also a duffel bag with something like four million dollars inside it. They debate back and forth: what do we do with this money? Do we turn it in? Do we call the cops? Do we split it three ways? They decide to keep it: four million dollars in hard cash, probably from some drug deal cut short by the collision in the snow.

This man goes home and begins to ask his wife a "hypothetical" question. You know the kind. "Honey, if we found a bunch of money – like several million dollars – what would we do with it? Would we keep it?" Well, the spouse is indignant. "No way! We'd turn it in. That'd be the only thing to do with four million hypothetical dollars." And she's very sure of herself, of her conscience. He points over to the kitchen table and the duffel bag. Four million dollars. REAL dollars. Forty thousand hundred dollar bills. REAL bills, not counterfeit. Not play money. That's really Ben Franklin on the front of those bills – piles and piles and piles of them.

And do you know what? INSTANTLY she's in. INSTANTLY. "Where can we hide the money? How long do we have to keep it in the attic? Why do we have to split it three ways? Can't we give the others just a few bucks to keep them happy, and keep the rest for ourselves?" As the story is told, greed asserts itself INSTANTLY. "I want that money. I need it. I deserve it. My life – which was fine ‘as is' ten seconds ago – would be UNTHINKABLY drab now if I couldn't keep that four million dollars."

Well, I won't relate the whole story, because it is one WRENCHING portrayal of the power of sin in a person's life. People end up dead before it's over; several lives are destroyed by the overwhelming grip of covetousness.

It's no wonder that the Apostle Paul lifts up the standard almost to heaven in his letter to the Christians living in Ephesus. Listen to these words of challenge:

"But among YOU [the Christians] there must not be even a HINT of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, OR of GREED, because these are improper for God's holy people."

Did you notice? Not a HINT of greed. It's God's ideal that this deadly temptation should be completely foreign to His people.

And the difficult thing is that, instead of being foreign to us, greed and covetousness seem to be BUILT IN to our systems. It's like that little musical thing that plays when your computer fires up Windows. It's just in there before you take your first breath in the delivery room. "That baby's bassinet is bigger than mine. He's got better pacifiers. He's got prettier nurses. I have the dumbest looking dad peeking in the window of the nursery." We begin coveting before we're home from the hospital.

I mentioned the other day a kind of right-to-the-heart essay written years ago by C. S. Lewis, from his book, Mere Christianity. And he suggests to us that it all boils down to pride. We want what our neighbor has because we're proud. We covet things that aren't ours because of how they would make us feel or seem more important, especially if we can get things by getting them AWAY from our neighbor. And of course, pride involves NOT trusting in God and being thankful for the things He HAS chosen to give us. In fact, as Lewis puts it, pride actually involves a kind of declaration of war on God and His ideals and plans for us.

"Pride always means enmity," he writes. "It is enmity. And not only enmity between man and man, but enmity to God."

But then he goes on to paint a picture of possibilities. Could we simply ABANDON the chase for things, for feeding and stroking our egos? Could we possibly just STEP OFF the roller coaster of desire, of wanting more and more and more blow-up toys and kiss-up friends? It's like there's a diving board out there called SELF . . . and we're invited to simply jump OFF that board and only trust in God for our being, for our identity, for our very lives. Here's how Lewis puts it:

"If you really get into any kind of touch with Him you will, in fact, be humble – delightedly humble, feeling the infinite RELIEF of having for once got rid of all the silly nonsense about your own dignity which has made you restless and unhappy all your life. He is trying to make you humble in order to make this moment possible: trying to take off a lot of silly, ugly, fancy-dress in which we have all got ourselves up and are strutting about like the little idiots we are."

Maybe the apostle Paul had some of this "strutting about" persona – back when he was still Saul, the ambitious persecutor. I mean, this guy was zealous to throw Christians in jail. He loved to push his way around, make himself seem important by locking up people who seemed to have something he didn't have. He was in the Sanhedrin, which was a group FIXATED on positions and power and upward mobility.

And then Saul, now Paul, took that leap of faith. Right off the diving board. "I'm willing to be a FOOL for Christ," he wrote later. "If I'm rich – or poor – it's okay. If I'm well-fed – or hungry. If I'm free – or in prison." It didn't matter anymore. His identity was in Jesus Christ. "For to me, to LIVE . . . is Christ," he wrote . . . and you can tell that he means it. The chase is finally over. The endless pursuit of personal glory: over. The deriving of "ID," of ego, of self-worth from your own resumé: over.

And you know, friend, this leap off the diving board has to happen 365 times a year. Maybe 365 times a DAY too. In a later chapter, C. S. Lewis comes back to this very question.

"The terrible thing, the almost impossible thing," he writes, "is to hand over your whole self – all your wishes and precautions – to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. . . . The . . . real problem of the Christian life . . . comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All YOUR wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals."

That's true, isn't it? Climb the ladder! Lift yourself up! Knock your enemy down! Go! Go! Go! Try to find an airplane with four million bucks in it so that you can wear the "millionaire" tag on the lapel of your Armani suit for a few years before they bury you IN that suit. These desires, these selfish, self-centered thoughts and aspirations rush at us like wolves every single morning, the minute the alarm clock goes off.

So what's the answer? Here's the rest of Lewis' suggestion:

"The first job each morning consists in simply shoving them all back; in listening to that OTHER voice, taking that OTHER point of view, letting that OTHER larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day. Standing back from your natural fussings and frettings; coming in out of the wind."

If I can borrow the title, it really IS "A Simple Plan."