Counter CultureSýnishorn

Wealth

The comfort of riches is a subtle trap. It has a numbing effect on our lives that can eventually paralyze us spiritually. Not only are we often unwilling to move out of our comfort zones, taking steps of faith in God and compassion toward others, but we also may not even be aware of those needs and opportunities. We can even be lulled into a religious routine that blinds us to anything outside ourselves.

This tendency is something of which I became painfully aware in my own life. Let me give you a personal example. In the eyes of the world (even the church world), my family was living the dream. But deep down inside I had this sinking feeling that we were missing the point.

Conviction came to a head when our friends John and Abigail came to visit us in Birmingham. Years before, John and Abigail had sold everything they had and moved their family (with four young girls) to a North African country to declare and demonstrate God’s love in the midst of massive poverty. They were back in the United States for a few months, and during that time they spent a couple of days with us. They shared stories of ways God was providing for their needs and the needs of the people they were working among. They spoke with great joy, even as they shared about the suffering they’d seen and the struggles they’d experienced. 

As I listened to them in my large house, surrounded by all the comforts I’d acquired, I knew my friends possessed a faith with which I was unfamiliar. They never made a comment about the extravagance in which we were living, but I was cut to the core by a sacrificial compassion I saw in them that I didn’t see in me. Sure, I was a pastor (and a successful one by all the standards the church culture around me had set) who read, studied, and preached God’s Word. But when it came to the poor, I was word and talk, devoid of deed and truth. My lack of concern for the poor was a clear sign of a fundamental problem with my faith.