A GATED COMMUNITY: Money can bring a false sense of security.
- Amos 3:15.
- Some aspects:
a. We use it separate ourselves.
- You see this physically in the way in most places neighborhoods are divided by income. We’ve reached a certain level and so we don’t have to hang out with those from the lower classes anymore.
b. It makes us feel more powerful.
- We feel like we have more influence and power because of our money.
c. We use it to push down those beneath us.
- Whether on purpose or as an unintended consequence, we step on those beneath us. Why? Because we’re interested in maintaining the status that we’ve attained.
d. We can’t imagine these “solid” things falling apart.
- What we have is so real, so substantial – there’s surely no way that this whole lifestyle could fall apart.
- How much of our sense of security is economic?
- It might be a lot more than we care to admit.
- Over time, we get vested interests and build up portfolios. Hopefully after a while we have a little (or big) buffer against everyday money stresses. We can start focusing on that as our security.
- But what if, like in the Great Depression, all that disappears as the economy tanks?
- Scary thought: God may not be on your side in this dispute.
- We presume that God would always want to protect what we want to protect. Obviously, God would want to protect our position and property, right? Not necessarily.
- Here, as in many other places in the Scripture, we see that God is on the side of the weak. When we, as noted in 4:1, “oppress the poor and crush the needy” it gets God’s attention.
HOW DO WE LIVE WITH OUR SECURITY IN GOD?
1. Be generous in how we give.
- Generosity is an antidote to materialism.
- We need to push back against the desire to hoard money by being generous.
2. Be modest in how we live.
- We need to be careful about grabbing for ever increasing lifestyles just because we might be able to afford them.
- We should ask ourselves what we need rather than what we want.
3. Give the poor a fair shake.
- We need to think beyond ourselves and be concerned about those at the bottom.
- This doesn’t automatically mean, as some would immediately presume, that we have to encourage people to get generous welfare benefits for not working. We need not encourage shiftlessness. But we should desire that those who are poorer than us are able to care for their families.
- Even if we have a lot, we usually feel as if we never have enough. We always need a little more.
- I’m reminded of the Habitat for Humanity founder asking a group of pastors how big a house had to be to be sinful. The response: “A little bigger than mine.”
