When you only want the gifts
I was craving for his gifts but not God himself nor his presence.
Faith is an important part of Christianity. But what is faith? According to the Cambridge Dictionary, faith means a high degree of trust or confidence in something or someone.[1] Just following this basic definition, having “faith in God” is to fully confide in God and accepting what our Father has in store for us.
Unfortunately, reflections of ourselves often show that the concept of “faith” we have towards God is misleading. Our level of trust in God is determined by positive life outcomes and the gifts he offers to us. If you want to build a true relationship with God and establish “real” faith, we should learn to love God as who he is instead of loving what he has to provide for us. Relationship with God, after all, is not so different from any other relationship we maintain in this world.
Think about the relationship with your parents. Why do you love your parents? On a basic level, they gave birth to you, provided nourishment, shelter and clothes for us to grow up as adults. They respected and loved as who we are. But these are peripheral reasons. We love them because they are our “father and mother”. Some people pretend to love their parents in anticipation of the wealth they might inherit from them. Do we call such behavior genuine filial piety? Is that true love for your parents?
Tim Keller, a theologian and Christian apologist, makes a similar point in his book named “The Prodigal God”. He explains that it is not just the second son who is lost in the Prodigal Son parable but the first son who is also lost. In fact, the elderly son is lost even more. He refuses his father’s plea to join the feast to celebrate his younger brother being found again. When we dig into this story further, we realize that the fundamental reason why the elderly son is lost is because of his longing for the father’s wealth but not the father himself. The elderly son was obedient and morally observant to have “control” over his father.[2] His obedience wasn’t from the bottom of his heart. It was based on his calculations and impure intent.
Personally, I was walking the same path as the elderly brother did during the early parts of my military service in South Korea. Throughout the 21 months of service, I witness rampant abuse and oppression that inherently exist in armies. My confidence and self-esteem dropped as I was scolded and rebuked even for the most trivial duties. I grew weaker every day due to the authoritarian atmosphere that stemmed from hierarchy and ranks. As I endured these difficult times, I could feel my Christian faith was crumbling as well. I asked, “God, why are you giving me a hard time like this?” I chose to sleep in on Sunday mornings instead of going to Church every Sunday. I was exactly like the elderly son, turning against God because he wasn’t giving me a good life I wanted. I was craving for his gifts but not God himself nor his presence.
One day, a senior sergeant I respected approached me. He tried to persuade me to go to Church but I was adamant. He said, “Hey Josh, think about this. Jesus Christ sacrificed himself to atone for our sins. What more do you need?”
This Gospel which I knew in head struck me hard at that moment. It took a while for me recover from my slump of faith but things started to change little by little ever since that interaction with the senior sergeant.
At first I reluctantly joined the military Church’s praise team, but it ended up bringing so much grace to my life. I was physically more exhausted than ever since I had to give up my Saturdays to practice but my time in fellowship with the other praise team members enriched my spiritual life. I discovered the pure joy of being able to use my musical abilities for others and God. I started to partake in volunteer activities in local kindergartens and community centers. I was not doing all these things out of fear of penalization or in expectation of gifts from God. The primary motivation for these activities was pure joy and happiness that I was doing something meaningful for the communities and societies that God has created.
Has the status of your relationship with God switched from being passionate to lukewarm, or perhaps non-existent? Maybe it is a good time to think about whether you are, deep inside your heart, becoming more like the Pharisees who seemed to be leading the lives of moral conformists but, in fact, possessed barren hearts that were void of pure love for God and were only filled with desires for God’s gifts.
References
[1] Cambridge Dictionary Definition for “Faith” https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/faith
[2] The Prodigal God (by Tim Keller) — Chapter 3, p45
About the Author
Seungjun (Josh) Kim is rising senior at Vassar College majoring in Math and minoring in Computer Science and Chinese. He is an aspiring data scientist who is interning at Spotify as a data science intern over the summer. He is also a aspiring musician hoping to release his first album on Spotify before he reaches the age of 30. You can check out his musical activities in the following platforms:
🙏 Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDBi2xuCCF4qNWCWfyIBUlQ
🙏 SoundCloud
https://soundcloud.com/seungjun-juny-kim/
