What is a blessing?

What is a blessing?

Parents have the unenviable task of shaping the lives of their children. It is a fine line to walk between equipping them with the tools they need to live effective, efficient, energetic, and rewarding lives and imposing on them our own unfulfilled needs, hopes, and dreams. We want them to be the best they can be. But they have to depend on us to get there.

God has the unenviable task of shaping the lives of His children. Thus far, only his oldest boy, a fine young man named Jesus, has met the challenge. The difference between God and earthly parents is that the will of God, what we might understand as hopes and dreams of the Christian faith, are what we need to live effective, efficient, energetic, and rewarding lives.

Without Jesus, left to our own devices, we are hellbound for destruction, carrying the weight of just punishment for our sins. Thank you Lord that we are with Jesus. Grace, love, mercy, forgiveness, these are the blessings we receive to shape our lives more fully into the life God wants us to lead.

That life is to glorify God. Salvation did not come as a nice thing to do for us humans, it came as a means for us to live out that work we have, glorifying the Almighty. I remember a theological discussion talking about how we are hard wired for that glory. We will worship, it is in our spiritual (and maybe physical DNA). If not God, then something else.

Which leads to my concern with Prosperity Theology. A business analyist at the beginning of our depression (not great thankfully) spoke of 'consumer confidence' as being the key indicator of economic health. Put another way, that is faith in the economic system-not faith in God or Christ, but in the economic system, the free market system, capitalism. And in this system, our worship is not measured by the sounds of our voices lifted in praise to God, but in the acquisition of the currency of the free market system, money.

The richest nation in the world has a terrible problem with money. It has replaced God as the means to our survival. Much Christian religious practice has re-developed itself around the almighty dollar, needing it, promoting it, seeking it, all in God's name of course, to provide a veneer of divine respectability.

Maybe poverty is a real blessing for us, stripping away that which replaces God and forcing us to acknowledge our dependance in real terms, not just the comfortable venacular of a Sunday worship service. Maybe pain and misery are blessings to us, make us identify with those for whom pain and misery is the lot of life. To be homeless is to understand their plight?

Unlike cigarettes or alcohol, our dependance on money cannot be cut off cold turkey. Such is the problem with food addictions, you have to eat. But maybe God is blessing us with hard times to remind us that He is in control. Maybe God is blessing us who have with those who have not so that we can exit the self-centered world of our own delight, and truly reach out as a sister or brother in the world.

What is a blessing? Who gets to name it?

Give to get Given To?

Stewardship as a part of discipleship, it makes sense. Coming to church, reading Scripture, personal time of devotion, giving to the church, part of the Christian experience. But I get uncomfortable with the proclamation of tithing. Tithing is Scriptural, it is where I believe stewardship should aim, but . . . and this but is significant.

But, a number of discussions of tithing present with preaching that if we give and give generously to the church, we will in turn be blessed by God. There is a very fine line there. Yes, I believe that the Lord cares for His people. Yes, I believe that the Lord will help tithers 'figure out' their budgets. But to promise blessings in return for giving? The implication for me is financial blessings. That walks very close to, if not over the line of 'prosperity theology'.

Prosperity theology, as I understand it, is a promise that if you love and obey God, your divine reward will be financial prosperity, will be material satisfaction. The two go hand in hand to 'measure our faith'.

I am listening to church growth and leadership resources, looking for ways and means to grow church. These resources have come to the line of promising God's blessings for giving . . . and then what? When does an assurance of God's blessing become a promise of prosperity in return for faith? When do we depend on the Lord to help us support our church and when does it become a form of works righteousness? We work for God so God blesses us?

I struggle with that one.