God and stuff

None among the gods can equal you, O Lord; nor can their deeds compare to yours. -- Psalm 86:8

We may think we've moved beyond the time when there were other "gods" that competed with the God for our devotion. I would say the contrary. I would say the more globalized we've become as a human race, the more information we have available at our fingertups, the more "gods" have come out of the woodwork to compete with God for our allegiance and devotion.

But instead of taking the form of religious deities, the new gods are simply taking the form of ... stuff. Entertainment, materialism, basically a whole bunch of white noise. We may not live in a time or a society at least in the Western world where there are many other "gods," but we sure have a lot of stuff.

That's not a bad thing, at least not always. The more I personally see of all the absurd stuff out there competing for my attention, the more confident I become that I'm living for the greatest gift in the world, which is the Gospel of Christ, and the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Not because of my own genius or insight of course, but because it was given to me. It's my heritage.

My favorite Catholic writer, Peter Kreeft, once wrote, "We become like the goals we pursue." So if we pursue absurdity, if we pursue white noise, we become the absurd, we become the white noise of celebrity and greed and sodomy, and all that. We know what the white noise is. If we pursue pointless, we become pointless. And I don't want to be pointless.

The question is what is the goal of your life. I know that at least generally for me, I want to make people happy. I want to make people smile. I don't want to just write a blog about stuff that upsets me, which I have done in the past and which would be very easy for me to continue doing. But I don't want to because in many cases that would just upset more people. Not that I want to ignore the problems of the world. But if all I do is talk about what's wrong with the world and I can't inspire people with something better then I miss the forest for the trees.

The world needs good news. The world needs a reason to smile. And I want my life to be that. I want my life to be a life that blesses other people's lives.

And if that sounds at all like what you want to do too, then you and I have one option. We have to pursue God, who "bestows on us every spiritual blessing in the heavens" (Ephesians 1:3).

This is Satan's big lie: that we can become like God by storing up power and knowledge and wealth for ourselves in this world. No, we become like God by pursuing Him. And when we pursue Him, other blessings follow from that.

When we pursue God, we become blessing for others, because we show them the face of God, the face of Jesus.

When we pursue Him, we become like His love: unconditional.

When we pursue Him, we become like His truth: undeniable.

When we pursue Him, we become like His goodness: unshakable.

When we pursue Him, we become like His beauty: inviolable.

Let's pray to Him that we can remember to always pursue Him first, so that we may become more like Him, so we may go out to our neighbors who are living in a world that is drowning in stuff, and give them a reason to smile.