Entitlement and the Impossible (American) Dream

    A few weeks ago, USA Today printed an article about the impossibility of reaching the American dream.  According to the article, to achieve the “American Dream” you would need to earn in excess of $130,000 per year. Since my family has been happily living the American dream for several generations (and none of us have earned anywhere near that much) I wondered just how the author chose to define the American Dream.  As I read, I realized two things, 1) the author’s definition was wildly different than my own and 2) it is clear that many Americans have fallen into a (very unbiblical) trap of entitlement.

    The first item on the list projects the median mortgage cost of a new home (Price: $275,000).  While this might seem reasonable in some parts of the country, it reveals two assumptions.  First, in order to achieve the American dream we have to be better than average, and second any home we buy has to be new. 

Both assumptions are false. 

    Historically, the American dream was simply “an opportunity for Americans to achieve prosperity through hard work. According to The Dream, this includes the opportunity for one's children to grow up and receive a good education and career without artificial barriers.”  (Wikipedia) In modern times, politicians have implied that the dream included home ownership, but for most people, the American dream is still about freedom of opportunity more than anything else.

    But the American dream has nothing to do with the expectation that I should be better than average or that the only acceptable home is a new one.  Where I live, homes in a decent blue collar neighborhood can be had for $50,000 and if you are handy, a fixer-upper can be considerably cheaper.  Homes in suburban neighborhoods and in more affluent school districts obviously cost more, but who says that hard-working, blue collar, city dwellers can’t live the American dream?

    With the exception of utilities, I take exception to nearly every item on the author’s list.  I understand that it much harder to make a life where the cost of living is high, but we need to remind ourselves that living the American dream has never been, and should never be, about the accumulation of “stuff.”  Too many of us believe that the American dream means we should have more possessions than our parents rather than the freedom to do what we want to do.

    It is said that blacksmiths and cleaning ladies worked extra jobs so that their children could go to college and become engineers and accountants, so that their children could become poets and artists.  That mirrors the history of our family.  Our grandparents got off the boat with little more than a suitcase.  And while none of us has ever been wealthy, because we live in a nation with extraordinary freedoms, we have had the ability to be and to do whatever we chose, within the limits of our God-given abilities.

    To claim that it is impossible to achieve the American dream unless you own a new, 3000 square-foot home, with all new furniture, two new cars and a lot of other “stuff” is an insult to everything our parents and grandparents sacrificed for.  They worked their fannies off so that we would have freedom and opportunity, not sports cars, Gucci handbags and iPhones. 

As followers of Jesus Christ, there is a far more significant problem.

When we fill our lives with the desire for material possessions, rather than things like integrity, justice, and the things of God, we open ourselves to all sorts of evil.  The Apostle Paul warned his young protégé Timothy saying…

⁷ For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. ⁸ But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. ⁹ Those who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. (1 Timothy 6:7-9)

    Paul wasn’t saying that it was bad to have wealth.  Paul was born to a family with wealth and influence.  What Paul is saying is that we cross a line when we desire money and material possessions too much.

I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. (Philippians 4:10-12)

    We don’t need new cars and new houses to be content, and we certainly shouldn’t feel like we are entitled to have more than our parents had.  Ten years ago we sold our house and I walked away from a satisfying career in engineering.  Today, I make almost $100,000 per year less than USA Today thinks I need. 

Regardless, I am happy, I am content, and…

…I am living the American Dream.

Keep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, because God has said, “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:4-6)

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Art and the Church

This has nothing to do with my good college friend, Art Munson. Instead I was reading a blog by Blaine Hogan about how we should allow our artists to be pastors and inspire others with the mystery contained in scripture. His ideas gave me something to think about as I travel to a new church, but as I read his article my mind made more connections than he had written. Perhaps the connection was implied, but as I read Hogan’s thoughts about artists and the church of the 21st century, all I could think about was Europe and the 17th century. Okay, not just the 17th century but a whole chunk of history when there was only one church and much of life revolved around the church. I remembered my art classes (those few I was required to take), the architecture of the great cathedrals that I have seen and I remembered discussing these magnificent buildings in seminary.

For centuries, artists were a part of the church community. With the rigidity of their ritual, I doubt that artists were involved in worship as they sometimes are today, but just look at where they were involved. In the cathedrals that our forbearers left behind, there are demonstrations of the skills and talents of magnificent artists of all kinds, people skilled with glass, with stone, sculpture, architecture, sound, and light. Many of the great composers of these centuries created music for the church or wrote for the glory of God. As I read Hogan’s blog I wondered, ‘Why don’t we see artists in our churches like this today?” Surely there are still people of great skill and talent in our communities. Surely God is still in the business of dispensing this skill and talent to his people, the people who are likely attending church somewhere. So why is art so inconspicuous in the church?

I admit that there are places like Willow Creek and Saddleback that have fabulous bands and multimedia presentations and who invite dancers and other artists to bring God praise. What comes to mind are all the churches that exist only in the practical. They look plain on the outside and on the inside they look like they were decorated by me (that’s not a good thing). I spent a career in engineering and my first instinct is toward the practical, functional and the useful. Terms like colorful and inspiring do not roll off of my tongue easily. But if God is still inspiring artists among God’s people as he surely did three centuries ago, what must they be thinking? If even I think that the inside of our churches look kind of colorless and plain, we must be causing great pain and sorrow in the hearts of our artists.

Either that, or we’re chasing them away.

God has given artists an ability to communicate his love to the world through human passion and emotion instead of only logic and reason. Could it be that the artists in our community feel unwelcome before they even step through the door of our church? God has seen fit to give me some facility with the spoken and written word, but while music speaks to my heart, I have only a limited ability to use it. Don’t even ask me to create or even understand the visual arts. We live in a multimedia culture and the hearts of humanity must be reached through the languages of art and inspiration but somewhere, in the last century or two, the church forgot something. Somehow, too many of us thought that the age of reason meant that words alone could convince the world of our sincerity and communicate God’s message but doing so forgets about communicating the wonder and the mystery of God. Doing so neglects the heart and the passion that speaks to the souls of humanity.

If we want to tell the world about God’s love for them, we need our artists back.

We need to reach beyond the functional, beyond the logical and touch the hearts of people in ways that reason and practicality cannot. Our churches need to welcome our artists home again. We must make our church a place where artists are free to use their gifts to communicate God’s love to the world. As a pastor, I must do what I can to make artists welcome in my church because our artists can reach the hearts of people in ways that my words never will.