THE Bible says that God loved the world so much he gave his son. The Bible also says “Do not love the world…” Is there a problem here? No! My dictionary has nine meanings for the word “world.” The verse in John 3:16 means that God loves the PEOPLE of the world. The teaching in 1 John is for us not to love the THINGS of the world. Long ago I learned that people are to be loved and things are to be used. We dare not reverse them. But we do! We often use people to get what we want, and we love things and work hard to get them.

I preached once in a large church. A lady came up to me afterward and said, “I am afraid of money. I saw what it did to my family, and I am afraid of money!” Nobody ever said that to me before, or since, but I think she was right. Of all the “isms” we face, materialism is the most subtle—and may be the most dangerous. 1 Timothy 6:10 says that the love of money is the root of all evil.

ONCE I went to visit a very exclusive neighborhood—gated and guarded. Normally I would not have been able to get in, but they had a chapel there and outsiders could come in to worship. I parked between a Jaguar and a Rolls Royce. What they called a chapel, we would have called a beautiful sanctuary. The people were well dressed. I thought, “My whole net worth would not be enough to buy a vacant lot in this place.”

THE service began and I turned my thoughts to the spiritual. After two great hymns, they sang a chorus that surprised me. It was quite familiar to me. “Like the woman at the well, I was seeking…For things that cannot satisfy.” I found out they sing it every Sunday. And I thought, “These people have more things than I will ever have. These people have better things that I will ever have. And they know—they know—that things cannot satisfy.” 

I like the motto at Christian City: Loving People, Loving People. That is keeping the main thing the main thing.

Dear Father, may we always keep our priorities in the right order, by loving people and using things. Amen.

– Bob Shannon

Retired Minister and resident of Christian City

ChristianCity.org

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