Meaningful Returns

“Our income is going up, but we really don’t want our lifestyle to change.” Someone said that to me, yesterday. I wish more people would say it, and mean it.

A stake in the ground. A definition of “enough.” A commitment to contentment. A life lived with open hands instead of clinched fists.

One of the symptoms of artificial poverty is that you go around griping about perceived slights and made-up “hardships,” and that you live, generally, in unfounded fear of change. People who complain the most about taxes are people who make lots of money. People who complain about the attempt to protect minorities don’t have parents and grandparents who lived under Jim Crow, and don’t acknowledge that non-whites are still systemically oppressed in this nation. People who complain the most about a lack of “religious liberty” are self-proclaimed Christians who have never seriously had their religious freedom challenged (and who are typically doing the challenging). People who are most afraid of immigrants are all only a handful of generations removed from some country not called America. This is, unfortunately, the way artificial poverty works. I usually talk about it primarily in monetary terms, but that’s really only a symptom of a deeper problem.

Fear is ever present in our financial decisions, regardless of our relative wealth, and that’s because Fear is ever present. It’s a function of the world we live in, of the way our bodies are wired. But there is always a choice in front of you, a choice between letting Fear guide you over and over again–to self-preservation, to clinched fists, to wall-building–or acknowledging your fears while intentionally being guided by our mutual dependence on one another and, I’m convinced, on a God who loves us more dearly than we know.

The first choice is easy and most people choose it. The second is hard, but it leads to unbridled Joy. I hope you’ll choose it with me.