Vow Of Poverty

This morning I worked until noon, before heading off to church for a meeting in preparation for tonight’s Christianity Explored course at our church.

I’m winding down my time at work, I’ve only got a few weeks left. I’ve been training a new person to take over my duties. I’m a little torn about it. On the one hand, not working at PMC will give me time to do the things I really have a passion for: pointing people towards God. But on the other hand, God doesn’t really pay well, so my lifestyle will need to change.

Actually, it’s probably a good thing God doesn’t pay well, because if He did, I’d be more excited about the “work” than “His work.” I’d lose focus on what’s really important.

In the evening I helped teach at my church. One of the topics we discussed was Mark 8. In it, Jesus tells us to “deny ourselves”, and “take up our cross.” We asked ourselves in our context, what does it mean to deny ourselves and take up our cross? One of the participants said: “I think there’s nothing wrong with being rich. God wants us to be happy.”

On a superficial level, perhaps she’s right. God wants us to be happy. And God wants to bless us (financial blessing may be one of the many ways he chooses to bless us).

But, the more I read Scripture, the more I become convinced that a “vow of poverty” is a part of being a Christian. At least in our context: the wealthy western hemisphere. God does not require us to be poor, but our society of wealth and prosperity has so affected our lives and our lifestyles, that I really believe we’ve lost the meaning of it all. We’ve lost our focus. We’ve lost what it means to be Christian. Perhaps in order to be a Christian here in the West, we ought to subscribe to making due with less.

Because as it is, Christians are like everyone else. There’s nothing that sets us apart from others. We don’t look different, we don’t act different, and many of us don’t even live differently. But hey, we’ve got “Jesus in our heart”, and I guess that makes everything ok.

I think we’ve got it wrong. Way wrong. The gospel is radically different. The early church knew this, and lived by it. The reason monasteries sprang up everywhere around Europe during the Roman Empire was because Christians were becoming rich, and began being associated with the “high and mighty.” People who couldn’t go along with this ended up going to monasteries and building “alternative communities.” At least then the unbelieving world could see that there was a difference.

Perhaps if we started to voluntarily choose the way of poverty, unbelievers would realize that Christians really are different. The problem is, I’m so consumed with myself, I’m so selfish, and I’m so money-hungry, that I find it hard to share a loaf of bread with my neighbour, nevermind adhering to a life of poverty.