Defining the Blessing of God

I'm going to talk like a geek for a few sentences. I hope no one minds. Being a geek is what I get paid for; “it's what I do.” Anyway, here goes.

On my job, I recently had to specify some electrical power protective relays for generator and transformer protection applications. I was basing my selection on guidance that I had been given to base my design around Schweitzer or General Electric Multilin products. But I got to talking to a fellow engineer who told me about another company's protective relays – how good they were and how easy they were to program, as well as how much less they cost than the Multilin products. I already knew a fair bit about Multilin and Schweitzer products, but I knew very little about the this other company's relays. So, being intrigued, I checked out the other company's website (I'll call them Company X).

The home page of their site has a tab titled, “About Company X.” It also has a tab dedicated to the founder's artwork. Though I get paid to be a geek, I also have a human side, and am always curious to find out more about the non-engineering side of engineers who have additional sides to their personalities (some engineers don't). (BTW, the last time I took the Myers-Briggs test, the results indicated that I should have been a psychologist or tutor instead of an engineer.) I checked out the founder's art (he's actually pretty good) and a few other things; then I read the “CEO Message” from the founder's son. A few sentences caught my eye and made me stop and think (don't worry; I soon kicked myself in the pants and got back to work). Here's an excerpt of the “CEO Message”:

“There are those in this world who believe that the only way to get ahead is to look out for #1 first. God's Word says - NOT SO! We are to humbly serve others first. We are to treat the other guy like we want to be treated. We're to consider his welfare above our own. None of us meet these goals to perfection, but if these aren't our goals, then we don't meet them at all.

“A business, subject to the Lord, based on these goals cannot fail. God won't let it. In fact, He promises, 'Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap.' Now what CEO could resist an offer like that!

“So, when we regard our customers' needs more highly than our own and act accordingly, then God blesses the business more abundantly than we could ever imagine. If we look out only for #1, that's exactly how many we've got on our side. When we care for others first to the Glory of God, we have all the creation power of the universe on our side. May we at Company X always keep this foremost in our minds.”

Now I've never met the CEO, but I do know the reputation of his products, and I believe that he is a reputable, hard-working, honest man. But his portrayal of the blessing of God aroused questions in me, because what he said about blessing seems to be typical of the idea of blessing which is standard in many evangelical circles nowadays – namely, that the blessing of God on someone's life is seen primarily in their material prosperity.

I have a few problems with that idea. First, it seems to me to be a peculiarly American idea, although I cannot rigorously defend this statement, since I haven't studied world history deeply enough to state such a thing categorically. Yet when I think of the bits of history I remember from college and high school classes taken long ago, it seems that the Christianity of other places and other times regarded this earthly life as a time of suffering and trial, and reserved the hope of a better existence for the hereafter. Indeed, Dmitri Orlov says the following in his book Reinventing Collapse: “(The message of the Russian Orthodox Church)...has always been one of asceticism as the road to salvation. Salvation is for the poor and humble, because your rewards are either in this world or the next, not both. This is rather different from Protestantism, the dominant religion in America, which made the dramatic shift to considering wealth as one of God's blessings, ignoring some inconvenient points rather emphatically made by Jesus to the effect that rich people are extremely unlikely to be saved. Conversely, poverty became associated with laziness and vice, robbing poor people of their dignity.”

Orlov's observation is a good one. According to many spokespersons of modern American evangelicalism, material prosperity is the sign of God's blessing, and poverty is a sign of failure of some kind in those who are poor. Yet what does this say about the many poor saints throughout history? What does it say about the many poor and suffering Christians who live now in foreign countries? What does this say about a person like Dr. Paul Brand, a poor missionary doctor in India who discovered the neuropathic damage caused by leprosy and invented treatments for leprous patients, yet who refused to get rich from his discoveries? Indeed, James 2:5 says, “Listen, my beloved brothers. Didn't God choose those who are poor in this world to be rich in faith, and heirs of the Kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?”

But there's an additional problem with identifying the blessing of God as receiving ever more material wealth. The fact is, as many have said many times, that the world is running against functional, structural limits to consumption and economic growth. Much of the growth that has taken place over the last several decades has come at the expense of the environment and the poor of the earth. There is therefore not only a moral danger in living large; there is also the practical matter that living large will not be possible for many people for much longer. The comfortable, affluent way of life of First World citizens – of Westerners – of Americans – is coming to an end, to be replaced with something a lot less comfortable, something quite a bit more rugged.

That new existence which is coming upon us is something for which most American evangelicals are ill-prepared. Indeed, it's hard to find Christian bloggers who openly and honestly discuss Peak Oil and climate change, or the immoral nature of excessive consumption. We don't tend to think realistically about these things, and when we think about them at all, we tend to think that God will work some miracle to prevent us from having to suffer or live more simply. I think it's time we all grew up. Part of that growing-up will be a repentance from materialism (“Don't lay up treasures for yourselves on the earth, where moth and rust consume, and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consume, and where thieves don't break through and steal...” - Matthew 6:19-20, World English Bible), and a new, accurate understanding of what the blessing of God actually is in this day and age. I don't claim to have that new understanding, but I'm working on it.

Now perhaps the CEO of Company X has this accurate understanding, and I simply misinterpreted his “CEO Statement.” Also, I don't mean this in any way as a criticism of this company's relays. I too think they provide a lot of value for the money, and the next time I have to specify a protective relay for medium- or high-voltage applications, I will look first at this company's products. And I am sure that the company CEO is a very charitable person, and it would not surprise me to find that he gives very generously of his material resources to help the less fortunate. It's just that I think we American evangelicals need to start looking at things differently. Please kindly consider this post as the chicken-scratches of a guy who's trying to figure all of this out.