Our Values

A wise sage with keen insight into the human condition stated centuries ago that the love of money is the root of all evil. Many contemporaries sigh in relief at this observation, claiming that they do not love money, so money itself is not the culprit in their lives. In fact, most would say that the lack of money is the real culprit. Our values, our lifestyles, and our priorities, however, argue in favor of the sage's wisdom. Whether we are rich or poor, too many of us think that more money is the solution to our deepest needs. Why else would a person on the borderline of poverty spend valuable resources on lottery tickets? Why else would people degrade themselves and others in the lucrative pornography industry? Why else would up-and-comers mortgage their futures on status symbols like palatial homes that exceed their needs or expensive SUVs that guzzle more of their resources? Why would corporate executives defer compensation they don't currently need while keeping employees on minimum wages and fighting to keep those wages as low as possible? Why else would investors buy speculative stocks at astronomical valuations? Why else would government officials compromise their integrity and destroy their reputations through graft and corruption? Why else would drug dealers or brewers destroy lives by promising empty happiness and a shallow good time? Why else would shysters prey on the elderly? Why else would companies foster inferior and sometimes hazardous products on the public? Why else would we think that consumption is the road to wealth and prosperity? In reality, too many of us spend our lives in pursuit of things that will not satisfy. We accumulate. We try to scramble to the heights of wealth and influence. We over-consume. We bend the rules. We cut corners. We anesthetize ourselves to the pain in our hearts and souls by doing everything to the extreme. By staying busy, staying engaged, staying distracted, we ignore the spiritual hungers within us. We prefer the near netherworld of Prozaced emotions, drug-induced highs, or alcohol-binged stupor to the harsh realities of our own emptiness. We think we can redeem ourselves by money, fame, excitement, glamour, and satiated appetites. We even experiment with eclectic spiritual practices that draw from ancient superstitions and pseudo-scientific psychobabble, trying to find some comfort for flubbed opportunities, frazzled nerves, and fizzled relationships. All of us know that no amount of money can buy the really important things in life. And we certainly can't buy the things that endure beyond this life. When the stock market crashes, when the pink slip arrives, when the incurable disease hits, when the debt load brings repossession, foreclosure, or bankruptcy, what's left? For too many people, the answer is nothing. Too many give their precious and limited time to the tangible things that can disappear in the blink of an eye rather than to the things that endure. Jesus said, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also" (The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 6, verses 19-21, New International Bible). Jesus also taught that life does not consist in the abundance of possessions. He drove that point home with a parable about a wealthy man who planned to build more warehouses to store his abundant possessions while thinking to himself, You have plenty of good things laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink, and be merry. "But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?'" (The Gospel of Luke, chapter 12, verses 15-21, NIV). How then do we store up treasures in heaven? Some would say that the ways are as varied as the religious and philosophical sentiments of our world. A more compelling way, from my perspective, is to recognize that human solutions must yield to divinely revealed solutions. If God ultimately is the One we must please, we do well to hear what God's expectations and requirements are. Humanity cannot earn or deserve God's favor. When we speak of God, we are not speaking of a super-human being somewhat like ourselves. God is not one order above us, nor is God distilled in our own beings. God is above and beyond all that we can know. As Creator of all that exists, God is so separated from us and unknowable to us that we cannot use our own knowledge and intuition to discover God. Rather we must depend on God to initiate communication with us. We can catch glimpses of God in the handiwork of creation -- and those glimpses are enough for us to recognize that God is -- but creation alone is not sufficient for our understanding. Our human tendency is to make concrete that which is abstract, to substitute the tangible for the spiritual. Rather than seeing the Creator in creation, we tend to turn the created into the Creator. All of the things to which we devote ourselves -- from primitive cultures that worship natural objects to modern humanity that gives itself to materialism and wealth - are shams and hollow substitutes for the true God. Without true knowledge of God we have no way to please God. While humanity has been great in formulating ethical principles on one hand and ignoring them on the other, moral goodness defined from a human perspective will not earn us credit with God or gain God's favor. Indeed, left to our own resources and ignorant of what God expects of us, we deserve nothing more than death. God has revealed the only means by which we can enter into relationship with God. Dependent on God's initiative, we can only know and respond to God's intentions for us through what God reveals to us. Throughout history God's self-disclosure has come to many people who were open and receptive to God's revelation. Through their experiences and their writings, these specially chosen people recorded God's nature and purposes based on the interactions they had with God. While those records are helpful and insightful, they could not adequately and decisively reveal God's full nature as a personal God who is actively engaged in creation and is working for intimate relationship with us, his creatures. To reveal himself, God chose one special person, fully human yet perfectly representing and revealing all that God is. That person was Jesus Christ, a man born through God's special intervention over 2,000 years ago. The God that Jesus embodied and revealed is a loving Father who loves all people. Indeed, so radically different is God's love and the grace that God offered through Jesus that those with preconceived notions of God and his ways rejected Jesus and in the end put him to death. God allowed that death because it demonstrated the full extent of God's love and had the power to convey God's grace to all who would accept it. God confirmed the life, ministry, and death of Jesus by raising Jesus from the dead and setting him up as the eternal mediator between God and humanity. The account of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection is recorded in the Bible, a book that contains the helpful and insightful experiences of Jesus' forerunners as well as the powerful testimonies of his immediate followers. Through his continuing spiritual presence in the world, the message of the Bible continues to reveal God and his intentions for humanity and all creation.  How can you enter into relationship with God? While the means for entering into relationship with God is as simple as ABC, the radical transformation of your life that results from your encounter with God's grace will require a lifetime to express. Relationship with God is not merely some transaction that suddenly changes your status; it is a call to become a learner, a follower, a disciple of Jesus Christ. It is an encounter with such a gracious love that it compels, yes even demands, a reorientation of your life from self to God and others. Here is the simple process to begin that journey. Accept that you cannot in your own power save yourself. You are far from God. Your life is empty and fruitless without him. You know that you do things everyday that are the opposite of the loving, unselfish person God created you to be. You must look to God for your salvation. Believe that God has provided a way for you to be saved through Jesus Christ. Believe that God loves you so much that he took the initiative to reveal himself fully and completely through Jesus. Believe that through Jesus' life, ministry, death, and resurrection God provides a way for you to know him personally and intimately. Believe that God has removed all barriers that separate you from him and has provided a way for you to have abundant life now and life with him beyond death. Confess your faith in God through Jesus Christ. Become a learner, a follower of Jesus. Share your experience with others. Make your confession public by following Jesus' example in baptism and aligning yourself with other believers in whose fellowship you can grow and be strengthened in your faith. Commit your life to loving and sacrificial service to God and to other people. Perhaps you began reading this without knowing the direction this page was going. Maybe you are confused and have lots of questions about what you have read. Maybe you are repulsed by the idea that a stock market Web site would even have a spiritual focus and concern. What you have read is an invitation to dialogue. Feel free to correspond with me. Share your reactions. Disclose your concerns. Convey your decisions. Reflect on why you have reacted as you have. I hope some truth, some basic understanding of the underlying values that are necessary to balance life, will have touched you and stirred you to thought, reflection, prayer, or decision. Mostly I hope that you will find the purpose and meaning that have sustained my life in good times and bad through faith in Jesus Christ.

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