Thursday, September 17, 2020

Monger

Throughout my life I (and I'm guessing you) have encountered a lot of people who have tried to sell me something. Through this process, I've developed a pretty healthy sense of scepticism when someone says to me, 'This is not a sales call..."

Yeah, right.

It's not that I don't understand economics, marketing and selling, but it seems like business is so, I don't know, invasive, you know what I mean? Telemarketers, television advertisements, thousands and thousands of promotions in my email box and on the web pages I visit. Heck, supposedly my phone is listening to me (that is so weird to write) to eavesdrop so that businesses can get a headstart on what kinds of things I might buy.

This is frustrating beyond belief. I've come to a point in my life when I'm pretty happy with the things (and the amount of things) that I've been fortunate enough to place into my house, but every time someone tries to see me something, I get this... itch that I can't scratch. I have this worm that wriggles through my conscience that says, a little bigger TV would make your life better, a better bottle of wine, maybe a vacation in a galaxy far, far away.

So, I give into the temptation to listen to TVmongers, winemongers, vacationmongers, any kind of mongers that will distract me from the despair that seems to grip the world and squeeze the love out of it. The current and best selling monger is the fearmonger. 

Let's face it: fear sells, and it's very convincing.

As Christians it can be very easy to buy into this. When Jesus said that there would be persecutions, struggle, and lives rife with pain, death and loss, it's easy to fork over a lot of emotional and relational capital to build walls of safety. But the great lie in this advertising is that the purchase does not actual inoculate you from any of these things. It only reinforces the reality that life is short and the things we purchase are for less valuable than the people we share them with.

The opposite corollary is what we, as the human race, should be selling. Actually, we should be giving it away.

We should be hopemongers.

The fearmongers circle like buzzards hoping that this present generation will give into fear. They hope that the corpse of collective humanity falls down, pulseless, stricken dead by the despair-pill it has swallowed. But as Christians, we understand the polar opposite, that the life giving force of the Gospel written in Paul's words gives hope: "You are a new creation. The old has gone, the new has come." 

In Christ, fear doesn't have to control us. Our selfish natural tendencies don't have to buy into the fear mongering. Satan has no power over the one who has already been made new.

Here is hope. And I give it to you for free.

Notice how Paul speaks to the people of Rome who suffered exactly the same things that we are today - even more! Persecution, sickness, temptation to give into idolatry, fear of the future:

Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We have also obtained access through him by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.

And not only that, but we also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that afflictions produce endurance, endurance produces proven character and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us, because God's love has been pour out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.

Hopeongering in a world full of the opposite. And it's not even for sale - it's given away for free because the price was paid for by the giver of hope.

If there is anything worthwhile holding onto today, I hope you can take hold of the hope in Jesus.


1 comment:

Rob McCarthy said...

Amen Brother!
Now I'm off to my music room to count all my guitars :)
Rob

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