Our Obsessing Over More and Despising of Less

WE WAKE UP ONE MORNING, restless about where we are in life, dissatisfied with ourselves. We wonder where we can go from here, what more we can do to satisfy our longings or get more out of life. Our dissatisfaction may be rooted in a salary we think is too small, a home we think too humble, a marriage that is not as fulfilling as we had hoped—or something else we imagine is the cause of our discontent.

We look around and see people who seem to have more than us, or better lives than us, and it strikes us as unfair—even wrong. We could look deeper and search our souls. We could allow ourselves to see the gifts of God already at our fingertips. But our attention is drawn instead to what others have and we don't, and we covet it.

What accounts for this? Why do we want to be more than we are and have more than we have? Why this craving to be better than the next person, in one way or another—more respected, better looking, more successful, more prosperous, more ethical, more holy, more talented, more honored, more erudite, or more "together"? What are we really grasping after here? And why?

I suspect that on some level what we seek is significance, a recognition of our worth and acknowledgment that our life has value. No one wants to be a lesser person or, far worse, a nobody. So we desperately seek some form of self-enhancement, hoping it will give us significance.

In a materialistic society, this desperate search for significance leads to an all-consuming pursuit of wealth. In the world of marketing, record sales. In the world of politics and sports, winning. In the academic world, being published. In the world of entertainment, becoming a media idol. In the world of the church, having one of the largest and fastest-growing congregations. In the world of our personal faith, receiving recognition of our admirable devotion to matters of the Spirit. This obsession with more tempts us every direction we turn.

How Jesus Sees It

If we study the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth, we are shocked to learn that he gives no positive acknowledgment of such attainments as markers of genuine significance. Quite the contrary: He warns against their deceptive seduction. Wealth easily distracts the mind and consumes the heart. Success tempts us sorely to think more highly of ourselves than we ought, positioning us for a fall. The adulation of fans and admirers tricks us into a dangerous lack of self-awareness. The drive to succeed and be admired as a church leader cloaks an arrogance no less deplorable for the religious language and coating.

If we study the life of Jesus, we are shocked even more by his disdain of wealth, status, adulation, and fame. He's born dirt poor and chooses to stay that way. He spends his time almost exclusively with the poor and marginalized; people of status have to impose upon Jesus, or make an appointment with him during off hours, or arrest him in order to have a conversation. When people, after seeing his messianic charisma and miraculous power, try to get him to lead a rebellion against the Roman occupiers, he slips away. He orders people not to publicize his works and increase his fame. He remains in the relative obscurity of Palestine for almost his entire life. And frankly, he shows little or no deference for people in high positions, secular or religious; in fact, what he says about them usually brings them down a few notches.

If we want to take Jesus seriously, we must come to terms with his opposition to our obsession with more and bigger claims. And we must see the true Jesus beyond the Jesus we've dressed in the values of our grasping, success-driven culture.

A helpful place to begin is to understand how we have come to embrace so fully the moral shallowness of a culture that wants "more and bigger for me." How has this seduction grown to have such a grip on us? What lures us to strive for the top and define our significance by position, power, or possessions? And how does this seduction distance us from God?

A Mindset of Scarcity

The overriding assumption supporting this drive to the top, to have more and to be better than others, is the mindset of scarcity. It is a mindset that assumes there is never enough for everyone, and we always need more. There is never enough food, never enough money, never enough resources to make us secure, never enough positions of prominence, never enough respect to go around.

The result is a deep dissatisfaction with what we have, and this creates a desperate desire for what someone else has. If there is not enough to go around, I will probably want what you have. World empires are built because nations believe they must have more land, resources, and influence. Some corporations exist solely to acquire other corporations and assets to increase their market share, wealth, and prominence. The addict lives in continual fear there won't be enough of whatever it is that he or she craves and overindulges when the fix is available, whether it's alcohol, drugs, food, work, power, or some other hit. Churches and denominations compete for market share of potential new members, as if there were not enough people to go around. If we believe there is never enough, we think we always must have more.

It seems clear this is the conclusion at which we have arrived. We believe we are too insignificant, too small, and therefore we must expand our reach in a world of limited opportunity. We think our worth is measured by our position on some scale of comparative value, whether the scale is power, wealth, status, fame, influence, respect, social prominence, moral uprightness, or ideological purity. What drives us is to be higher or the highest on the particular scale or scales we use to measure our personal value. We define our lives by these scales of our choice, and we measure our success—indeed, even our significance—by how high we think we are on those scales. As a result, life becomes a race to the top, and seeing so many below us is our security and perhaps even our secret pleasure. There is nothing wrong with the drive to exel, but Jesus warns us to take a hard look at the scales of value we use. As he said to the high achieving Pharisees, "What is highly valued by people is deeply offensive to God" (Luke 16:15b). This ought to give us all pause.

What we inevitably discover is that the higher we go and the bigger we become in these ways, the more we weigh ourselves down and incapacitate ourselves for a life journey that is actually worth taking. Hopefully, we begin to suspect life is not an accumulation of the rewards and recognitions of our success. We may even uncover a surprise: our letting go of these things brings us closer to the real substance and significance of life. As Jesus said, "He who loses his life will save it" (Luke 9:24).

Holding tight to a "never enough" worldview means believing, down deep, that neither God nor anyone else will provide for your needs. Never enough breeds suspicion and fear. It either leads to a preemptive strike or to a resigned paralysis. We grasp for power and position or we give in to our helplessness. When buying into the mindset of scarcity, we remove ourselves from its opposite: the abundance of grace. By letting go of such desperation, we open ourselves to the possibility of discovering a gracious God we can trust, a God who cares for us and is there for us.

A Limited Shelf Life

The pursuit of bigness results in a heavy investment in things that are temporary and cannot last. It is similar to stockpiling items with expiration dates on shelves. To use a metaphor of Jesus, it is like storing grain in bigger and bigger barns only to have the grain spoil over time, useless to anyone.

World empires eventually become unwieldy and unsustainable and collapse. Huge business conglomerates become overly complex, lose their focus and their edge, and begin to sell off more and more assets in order to survive; and if they do not reinvent themselves into a leaner and refocused enterprise, they slowly fade away or go bankrupt. Megachurches are in danger of succumbing to the hubris of their success, and without their rediscovery of humility and refocus on a mission outside themselves, they are eventually left vacant. Anyone with a high public profile can lose it overnight because of shifting landscapes in public tastes, political power, new ideologies, or personal moral failure.

For all human beings, the thought of losing whatever status, power, or prominence achieved thus far in life is frightening. Jesus predicts the downfall of prominent religious leaders in Jerusalem, along with the destruction of their temple, the central symbol and presumed enduring monument of their religious authority. The shelf life of their strong position in the community was about to expire. The threat of losing their status was enough to frighten the leaders into forming a plot to have Jesus killed (Matthew 23, 24).

People will fight like cornered lions to save the influence and leverage they have earned, inherited, or had conferred upon them. The intensity of their desperation is a measure of how important to their own self-worth their now-jeopardized position is. If and when there is little of real value left after such a position is gone, desperation and fear ensue.

We can see this in the life of Judas Iscariot, one of Jesus' disciples. Judas misreads the intention of Jesus' mission and therefore his own position in a new order. He interprets the revolutionary role of his leader as the overthrow of the Roman oppressors and the reestablishment of a Jewish state. This view of Jesus' role places priority on who holds the power and grants privileges. I recently saw Judas's extreme disappointment over the failure of his high hopes portrayed in the famous Oberammergau Passion Play by Weisand and Daisenbergh. In one scene Judas confronts Jesus with Jesus' failure to set up a political kingdom:

"Why should I still follow you?" he says. "Your great deeds offered hope that you would restore the realm of Israel. But it has turned to nothing. You are not grasping the opportunities that offer themselves to you.... I want to share your reign. But it fails to materialize." (2010, 27–28)

In truth, the kingdom of heaven is materializing before Judas's eyes. He doesn't see it because he has given in to the lure of an expanding kingdom built on power and promising him a place of recognition and prominence. Being robbed of this possibility makes him susceptible to fear and desperation. He turns Jesus over to the authorities, either to force Jesus' hand to lead a political revolution or to protect himself in the aftermath of its failure.

Had Jesus led a revolution of the kind Judas wanted and had it succeeded, it would have had a limited shelf life. The shelf life of the existing order was protected for the time being, but it, too, would last only four more decades. The powerful Roman Empire that destroyed it also had a limited shelf life. Weakened from within by the complacency and arrogance of its own success, it would eventually crumble under the duress of new invasions. And so it has gone throughout the course of human history. No power-based empire lasts. The search for bigger and better leads to a dead end where the search can go no further and life is no more.

Despising Small Things

The world Jesus invites us to enter is the world of small things. He describes lilies as more gloriously adorned than the robe of King Solomon (Luke 12:27). He speaks of the importance of a housewife finding a small, lost coin and holding a house party to celebrate (Luke 15:8-9). He says any shepherd worth his salt will not only leave his flock of ninety-nine sheep to find one lonely stray but will also throw a party to celebrate the rescue (Luke 15:4-6). Jesus honors and celebrates the little things.

Our current society honors and celebrates the big things. In retail, sales need to be bigger. In manufacturing, profit margins and output need to be bigger. If you're on the company board, stock returns need to be bigger. If you lead a church, attendance and membership need to be bigger. If you're a parent, your child's achievements need to be bigger. Our world honors and celebrates these accomplishments in a myriad of ways, reinforcing the priority to be big.

Protests can be mounted against an addiction to more and bigger, and rightly so. Fortunately, there are exceptions to living a life chained to the addiction to bigger, there are people who are not dazzzled and enthralled by bigger or more. They have a refreshing simplicity, a deeper relationship with fewer things and a real intimacy with people. They celebrate their connection with life, not their greater accomplishments. In this sense they are aligned with a down-to-earth Jesus.

Most of us acknowledge it is emotionally healthy to invest ourselves in the simple things in life. We also know it is morally right to have concern for marginalized people. It is further true that our drive toward power and prominence can threaten these values and push them down further on the scale of priorities.

I do not write this because I question the motives or values of people who are successful merchants, business people, CEOs, church leaders, or the parents of high-achieving children. I write it to draw attention to an ethos that permeates our culture. I have deep respect for highly successful people, many of whom possess a profound humility, whose personal integrity and concern for others are important keys to achieving their success—individuals who are more concerned with how their success can benefit the lives of other people, especially those who are disadvantaged, than they are with indulging a lust for personal prominence. They are distinguished by their departure from the operative norm.

What is it that saves some from the arrogance of bigness and the despising of "small" people and "lesser" things? This is actually a question for all of us, because any of us can be seduced by the pursuit of bigness. If we haven't yet achieved bigness, we can pursue it through our dreams. We can long for the day when our ship will come in. Or, we can be wedded to the belief that hard work will eventually make us rise to a level of recognized success because, as one founding father of our country said, "God always helps those who help themselves." Any of us can be lured into the lie that success is salvation and more is better. This book invites you to see in a different way.

Means Becoming Ends

An important step toward this freedom is to understand how the drive to the top has necessitated a value system and success measurements that major in lesser matters. In our day I think we largely measure success by elevating secondary matters to greater prominence and treating more substantive matters as incidental. Or, naively, perhaps cynically, we are claiming substantial outcomes result when we succeed in the lesser matters. We convert means into ends, intermediate goals to final goals. We assign more value to accomplishments easily measured than to substantive, life-changing outcomes that don't fit easily into standardized measurements.

I can easily illustrate this with the community most associated with my own vocation: the church. It makes sense for a congregation to measure such things as attendance, membership, and budget. These are one dimension of assessment. But they do not finally tell us if that particular congregation is living the life and accomplishing the mission to which its founder, Jesus, calls all his disciples. More people in attendance may mean little more than the success of attractive programs and the high entertainment value of services. Membership increases may mean little more than the successful recruitment to a religious club of like-minded people at, possibly, the exclusion of other people who, because they are different, make the club members uneasy. Expanded budgets may mean little more than good fundraising techniques and expanded membership of people with financial resources. None of these alone proves that the congregation is discovering and modeling the life and mission of radical compassion, inclusive outreach, and spiritual depth to which the church of Jesus is called. In fact, as we all know, a congregation deemed successful by the standards of attendance, membership, and budget has sometimes proved to be self-centered, self-serving, and self-promoting—a congregation compulsively driven in their pursuit of more and bigger.