Spiritual Poverty

What would you say is your most valuable possession, the one thing you wouldn’t trade for the world?

When I was in college I didn’t have any money and I remember the feeling of wanting a car, any car.  At one point I remember thinking I’d trade anything for it.  But when I got that car, I no longer wanted it because honestly it was a piece of crap. So what changed?

My perception.

When I was five, twenty-five cents was a lot of money.  When I was fifteen, twenty-five dollars was a lot of money.  When I was twenty-five, twenty-five thousand dollars was a lot of money.  When I was thirty-five, two hundred and fifty thousand dollars was a lot of money. Again what changed was my perception.  And what surprised me was that the more money I had, the more money I wanted.  What I had was never really enough.  Consumption is what we’re taught to do, right?  But I noticed the older I got the more it began to fail me.  Money didn’t really satisfy me.  It simply allowed me to choose my problems.

Did I want a high mortgage?  Did I want a larger car payment?  Did I want to keep up with the Jones’?

When I made the choice to follow Jesus, I began to recognize how much He simply wasn’t as consumed with money as I was.  In fact he was likely to ask me to give more and more of it away.  Kind of backwards from what I have thought all a long.  Instead he placed a premium value on my soul.  This was interesting to me.  I began to ask why.  And then I read verses like this:

Then Jesus went to work on his disciples. “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for? (Matthew 16:24-26)

And I began to ask if I had traded my own soul.  And to be honest, I had.  Money meant security, but that very security seemed to cut me off from those around me.  With money I could build bigger fences.  I could avoid the distinct truth of how I had cut myself off from relationships. My own stuff had blinded me to the reality of my own brokenness.  Wealth allowed me to refuse to see what had been imprisoning me.  If I needed a pick-me-up to feel good I just went and bought something.

Jesus began to teach me to give generously, which seems really stupid at first.  What could possibly be served by giving the money away and typically to people I didn’t know.  But what surprised me is that giving generously and even blindly had its way of putting me in touch with who I really am.  I am designed in His image.  I am designed to love.  And money has a distinct way of taking care of people’s needs in a very real way.  It’s very pragmatic that way.  And when I began to give, I began to connect to something deeper. In the giving I began to receive a very different gift, my own soul.

And if I have a soul…that means everyone has a soul.  And if mine is valuable…then everyone’s is valuable.

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This post is part of a Synchroblog on poverty.  A list of participants is below:

Phil Wyman at Phil Wyman’s Square No More
Adam Gonnerman: Echoes of Judas
Cobus van Wyngaard: Luke: The Gospel for the Rich
Lainie Petersen at Headspace
Steve Hayes: Holy Poverty
Jonathan Brink: Spiritual Poverty
Dan Stone at The Tense Before
Jeremiah: Blessed are the poor… churches…
Alan Knox: Boasting in Humiliation
Miss Eagle: Poverty and the Hospitable Heart
Jimmie: Feeding the Poor

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