Steve's Letter: Everything Else is Small Stuff!

A friend of mine sent me a copy of a letter submitted to the St. Petersburg Times (Florida) in response to the paper's query about how readers would "fix the economy."

One letter was addressed to the President of the United States and suggested that, instead of giving billions of dollars to companies who will squander it, the president should send a million dollars to each person in America over a certain age in the work force. It would include millions of people.

It sounds like, given the trillions that are being spent by the government now, it could be a fairly cheap solution to the nation's economic woes.

The million dollar gift would have three stipulations.

First, the recipient must immediately retire. (Several million job openings.)

Second, the recipient must buy a new American car. (Several million new cars sold.)

Third, the recipient must buy a new house (Several million new houses sold.)

Not bad.

For maybe several trillion dollars (getting to be routine spending for the government), the employment crisis, the auto industry crisis and the housing crisis would be fixed.

Hmmm. Maybe!

When I read that, I thought about the "simple" ways Christians tell other Christians to deal with their lives. The man's simple advice about the economy might work...but often the "simple" answers we get from other Christians won't. And trying to follow that Christian admonishment often creates an undue amount of guilt.

"If he was my son, I would kick him out!" he said to his friend.

"If he was your son, I would kick him out too," replied the father. "But he's not your son, he's mine, and love makes it messy."

There is probably no place where the advice from other Christians is more often used and more difficult to follow than in the words, "Just trust God."

How does one do that? What does it mean to trust God? It sounds like good and biblical advice and I certainly don't have anything against trusting God. But sometimes telling someone to trust God is like telling a drowning man or woman, "Just swim." He or she already knows that.

Let me give you some refreshing words from Jesus. In Matthew 6, Jesus gives his followers some good words about anxiety. He reminds them that God is a God of "little things" (birds and flowers) and is faithful there, and that his followers were a lot more valuable than the birds and the flowers. Jesus tells his disciples to seek the kingdom (v. 33) and God would take care of the rest.

Then Jesus says (v. 34), "Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

I love those words because they recognize the problem, to wit, troubles yesterday, today and tomorrow. But then Jesus says two things that are very important. He says first, you can't do anything about the troubles and, in fact, there is very little you can "fix." Play the cards as they are dealt, do the best you can with what you've got, and "let the devil take the hindmost."

A number of years ago, I wrote a book on the sovereignty of God, If God Is In Charge.

(That was part of a trilogy on the Trinity that took me years to complete. It also includes If Jesus Has Come and, on the Holy Spirit, Follow the Wind. I know, I know, I'm not above pushing books whenever I can.)

At any rate, I told the editor at Thomas Nelson Publishing that we could save a lot of time and money if we got the title right. I told him we could title it, If God Is In Charge...What the Hey? Then we could, since that was what the book was about, just market the title without having to go through the hassle of a book.

He didn't think much of the idea and was kind of shocked at what I said. (Okay, I didn't use "hey"...it was a little stronger than that.) But nevertheless, what I said was true. If God is in charge of this mess, I don't have to try and do things above my pay level. I have to just do what I can and trust that God is in it. The "trusting God" isn't a volitional thing I have to work at. It's the only alternative I have. That, I suppose, is one of the reasons we have "unfixable" things in our lives.

Then Jesus said one other thing. He said "Seek the kingdom."

That's doable too. It doesn't mean that I'll get everything right, fix the problems causing anxiety, have all the answers, or even do the seeking right. I can seek the kingdom (try and see God and all that he does) in my day, and Jesus promises that God will be there.

And not only that. When I even seek to seek the kingdom, I'm seeking the kingdom.

At Thanksgiving, when we're called to be thankful, perhaps what Jesus told us to do is what Paul meant when he said that we were to give thanks in all things (Ephesians 5:20). Thanksgiving is the recognition that God is God and is in all things (both the good and the things we don't perceive as good), and seeking the kingdom in all of it.

Just before I came into my study to write you, I did an interview for our talk show (SteveBrownEtc.com) with Cathleen Falsani, the award-winning religion columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times. She has written a new book, The Dude Abides: The Gospel According to the Coen Brothers. (If you're into film, you'll really like this book.)

At any rate, Cathleen was talking about how the Coen Brothers' movies (O Brother, Where Art Thou?; No Country for Old Men; The Big Lebowski, etc.) deal with questions of theodicy (i.e. justifying God). We talked to Cathleen about that subject and discussed how hard it is to believe without having all the answers to the great questions of pain, evil and suffering. Then I pointed to the fact that we did believe and that reality was one of the best arguments for the existence of a good God.

Cathleen said, "I'm okay with that."

Me too. In fact, in doing the doable ("accepting the dark" and "seeking the kingdom"), God shows with understanding, forgiveness, mercy and love. He really does.

Everything else is small stuff.

That's it?

Yeah, that's it. It's doable and probably a lot more important than fixing the economy.

But still...it would be nice to get the million and to have the freedom of not working, to say nothing about the new car and the new house.

It's just that, while it might fix the economy, it probably won't fix me.

I get "fixed" (as much as possible in a fallen world) when I recognize the fallen world for what it is, accept it and my powerlessness, and then seek the kingdom. In other words, in thanking God for and in all things.

He asked me to remind you.

In His Grip