This morning we begin a four-week journey dealing with the stewardship of life. Over the next four weeks we’ll take a look at the futility that comes from longing for more in a culture of enough, then we’ll take a look at the power of debt to cause stress in our lives. In week three, we discover the freedom in generous living, and finally we’ll focus on why tomorrow matters. Let’s begin with discovering “When Less is Best.”
In 1987, Irish rock band U2 had its second number 1 hit—I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For. Listen to words from the chorus: “I have climbed the highest mountains. I have run through the fields. I have run, I have crawled, I have scaled city walls. But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”
Lead guitarist the Edge (yes, that’s his real name) called that song a gospel song even if it doesn’t sound like one. The entire song captures the spiritual searching expressed by the writer of Ecclesiastes throughout the book, and is particularly poignant in the passage we read this morning because that song (more than almost any other) describes our culture today. How many people are searching, running, scaling, looking for something but not finding it. I still haven’t found what I’m looking for. Too many of us are searching for the something in the accumulation of things.
Everything around us shouts that we are a culture of more. A typical supermarket in the United States in 1976 stocked 9,000 items; today that same market carries 30,000 different items. Why? Because we have an almost obsessive belief that more is better. The more options we have, the better, right? Solomon, the richest man in the world at the time thought that, too, and spent much of his life striving for more. Still, it left him feeling empty. He didn’t find his contentment in possessing more.
Why is God concerned with our drive to accumulate more and more? Let me offer thre reasons briefly. One reason is because our drive for more damages our relationships. James 4:1 says, “What causes fights and quarrels among you? Do they not come from your own desires that battle within you? You want something, but don’t get it, so you kill and you covet. You can’t have what you want so you quarrel and fight.”
We find an encounter in 1 Kings 21 involving a king named Ahab who wanted a piece of land adjoining his property. He had this huge palace but he wanted this little garden plot that belonged to his neighbor Naboth. Ahab offered to buy the land but Naboth refused so Ahab, as the story goes, became sullen and angry. His wife Jezebel saw him like this and arranged for Naboth to be put to death. Once Naboth was dead, Ahab took the land he wanted.
That’s an extreme example, but the drive for more can damage our relationships. It’s the preoccupation with other people’s things that is at the root of much of the crime in our society. Remember the story of a carjacking in a Northern Virginia shopping mall. An elderly grandmother had been given a gun by her son for protection. One day after she did her shopping she returned to the car to find four guys seated inside. She dropped her shopping bags and drew her handgun, proceeding to scream at them at the top of her lungs that she had a gun and knew how to use it. The four men hopped out and ran like mad. The lady proceeded to load her shopping bags into the back of the car and get into the driver’s seat. Then she discovered her key wouldn’t fit the ignition. You know where this is going, right? Yeah, it wasn’t her car. She loaded her bags into her car and drove to the police station.
The sergeant to whom she told the story nearly doubled over in laughter and then pointed to the other end of the counter, where four guys were reporting a carjacking by a crazy grandmother. Desiring more damages our relationships.
A second reason is because desiring more damages our finances. We buy more than we can afford because we want more than we need. We can live as contentedly on $30,000 a year as we can on $300,000 a year because contentment has to do with our wants, and we can just as easily want more than we have on $300,000 a year as on $30,000. Where is our heart? That is the question. When we combine the philosophy that possessions bring happiness with our society’s easy access to credit, we have the recipe for financial devastation. Someone once said that credit cards let you start at the bottom and then dig yourself a hole.
Did you know that the average American has four credit cards with an average credit card debt of $9,000? The average interest rate for bank cards is 18%. Let’s do the math. If the average American pays the minimum monthly payment on his/her $9,000 credit card debt, it will take 30 years to pay off, and the total amount paid on the debt will exceed $29,000. A lot of people are in a hole because they are consumed with desiring more, and their finances are in shambles. We’re currently offering FPU as a means to help with that problem. We’ve got 13 in our current class, and we’ll be offering another when that one is done.
Finally, desiring more damages personal happiness. When Ahab coveted Naboth’s land he was sullen and frustrated. A constant desire for more left him unfulfilled and depressed—just like Solomon writes in Ecclesiastes.
Marty Seligman, professor of psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, conducted a study of depression, and discovered that people born after 1945 are 10 times more likely to suffer depression than people born earlier. That’s strange since today we have so many more possessions, and life is more comfortable. Primitive cultures don’t show many cases of depression. An example is the Amish in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. That community shows depression occurring at roughly one fifth the rate it occurs among the people of Baltimore, Maryland.
Seligman acknowledges the problem is complete self-centeredness. We become so focused on getting what we want that it leads to unhappiness and un-fulfillment. The more we have the more we want, and the more unhappy we become!
That raises another question: Why do we have this unhealthy drive for more? One reason is advertising. We are constantly bombarded with ploys to get more stuff. We log onto the internet and it’s full of ads. I was listening to a podcast last week on big data, and the guest was talking about how ads that show up on our Facebook page and other websites are tailored based on places we’ve shopped or surfed online. Every time we click, someone is watching. The average American is exposed to 5,000 advertisements a day. Slowly but surely we’re eaten by the monster of more.
We are also susceptible to a lack of contentment because our self-esteem is closely tied to the accumulation of possessions. We determine a person’s worth by what they own. If someone says, “How much is he worth?” we immediately reduce the answer to dollars and cents. We have to have this car or these clothes because everybody else does and everybody else must be happy (at least according to Facebook). Well guess what? They may have those things, but it doesn’t mean they’re happy or content. And, it certainly doesn’t mean they are worth more.
What’s the cure? How do we become contented people and put an end to this obsession for more? There are three things we can do. First, we can OPEN OUR EYES. We need to realize that stuff is not going to fulfill us. We can acknowledge that in our mind but make no attempt to change our lifestyle. In our souls, we know that things can’t bring happiness, yet still we look for fulfillment in possessing more.
The most toured home in America is the White House. Does anyone know the second most toured home in America? It’s the 23 room home of the King of Rock and Roll - Elvis Presley. (thank you, thank you very much). Graceland is toured by hundreds of people every day, and it brings in 15 million dollars a year by those looking at the cars, clothes, airplanes and records. Few people in his time made as much money as quickly as he did. Certainly, no one else had so much fame and popularity. Elvis seemed to have it all. But what is all that stuff? If you go fifty yards from the back door of Graceland you find a tombstone. Aug. 16, 1977, 42 years old. An overdose of pills. Battling depression. Things did not do it for him, and though he had as much as anybody, he said at one point, "I would give a million dollars for one day of peace."
We need to open our eyes and realize that nothing in this world is going to fulfill our desires. Solomon would echo that sentiment. Jesus, too, says in Mark 8:36, “What good is it, to gain the whole world, and forfeit your soul and what can a man give in exchange for his soul.”
John Ortberg tells the story of living in Chicago with his wife and three small children. As you might guess, when they went out to eat, there is only one place they ever wanted to go, “the shrine of the golden arches.” His children were convinced they had a McDonald’s-shaped vacuum in their souls, and they always want the same thing. It’s the same thing our kids want, and it’s a combination of the food--about which they really don’t much care, and a little prize. It’s not much of a prize, really, just some cheap little plastic thing, but in a moment of marketing genius, the folks at McDonald’s gave it a name. They called it the Happy Meal. We aren’t just buying McNuggets and a toy. We’re buying happiness.
Ortberg says every now and then he tried to talk them out of it. He even offered them a dollar so they can buy their own toy and come out ahead. But, the chant goes up, “We want a Happy Meal.” So, he buys them the Happy Meal, and it makes them happy for about a minute and a half. The problem is that the happy wears off. He says you never hear of a young adult coming back to his parents and saying, “Gee, Dad, remember that Happy Meal you gave me? That’s where I found lasting contentment and lifelong joy. I knew if I could just have that Happy Meal, I would be content for a lifetime, and I am. Thank you. There’ll be no need for therapy for this boy.” In fact, the only one that Happy Meals bring happiness to is McDonald’s. Why does Ronald McDonald have a silly grin on his face? Twenty billion Happy Meals, that’s why.
You would think that sooner or later, the kids would catch on to this deal and say, “You know, I keep getting these Happy Meals and they don’t give me lasting happiness, so I’m not going to be a sucker any more. I’m not going to set myself up for disappointment anymore.” But it never happens. We keep buying Happy Meals as adults, only they cost more, and they’re shinier and brighter. It’s not only a kid who is so naive as to think that contentment can be acquired through some kind of external acquisition. But, the world keeps telling us that happiness is always just one more Happy Meal away. We first need to open our eyes.
Secondly, we need to SHARE WITH OTHERS. The best way to wean us away from stuff is to let go of some of it. If we want contentment we need to learn to let go of some stuff. One of the by-products of giving stuff away is we learn that we can get by on less. By letting go of our money and some of our conveniences, we find that we don’t need all that stuff to be happy. We can get by on less. That’s the essence of what Solomon says in verse 6: “Better to have one handful with quietness than two handfuls with hard work and chasing the wind.” There is a reason Solomon could say one handful is better. If I’ve only got one hand full, I have another to help someone else. Contentment comes when we are willing to share with others.
Finally, we need to PRIORITIZE. We don’t have a material shaped hole on the inside. We have a God-shaped hole. Things will never fill that hole. Only Christ can. When we call on Jesus, He will forgive all our sin. He will make you brand new. He is what we’re looking for, the very emptiness we may experience today is what's driving us toward him.
The Apostle Paul tells us the secret to true contentment in Philippians 4:11-12, “Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to get along happily whether I have much or little. I know how to live on almost nothing or with everything. I have learned the secret of living in every situation, whether it is with a full stomach or empty, with plenty or little. For I can do everything with the help of Christ who gives me the help I need.”
“I have climbed the highest mountains. I have run through the fields. I have run, I have crawled, I have scaled city walls. But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.” Until now!
