Our culture tells us that stuff will make us happy, winning the lottery will make our lives care-free, and climbing to the top of the corporate ladder will give us a better view of life. The problem is that when we feed our spirit with material delicacies it gags, when we win the lottery we get paranoid trying to protect it, and when we reach the pinnacle of worldly success our fall becomes even more perilous.

We need to remember that when we present the Gospel we are presenting a salvation spreadsheet to the world that is unlike anything they were taught in Economics 101.  They scratch their heads as they run the numbers because they find they just don’t culturally add up. They look at Jesus’ followers and want what they have but can’t understand why they can’t just buy it. Constantly grasping for the gold ring they are unable to open their hand long enough to receive His Gift. Obsessed with conducting their own transactions they are blind to the Broken Broker who has already purchased it on their behalf. While the movers and shakers try to use power to get what they want, Jesus moves and shakes the world by being the victim of it. Sadly, unable to comprehend God’s higher math they shake their fist at Jesus for not trying to Excel.

Jesus told His disciples to count the cost, but it wasn’t a ledger sheet of accomplishments. He made it clear that a silo of stored wheat could end up being their tombstone and if their very life was asked of them they wouldn’t be able to consult their daily planner to check their availability. Just like with the rich young ruler, Jesus told them to drop the calculator and pick up their cross.

Christianity is counter-cultural because it trades in a currency that has no exchange rate with mammon. The world cultivates the root of all evil hoping for a Dollar Tree while Jesus emptied His bank account by hanging on a tree so that He could fill our vaults with heavenly treasure.

In this day and age we clearly cannot disregard money, but we must keep it in perspective. Jesus understood that we must render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, but He intended us to do it as citizens of another Kingdom. We will sell real estate counter-culturally. We will repair cars counter-culturally. We will run governments counter-culturally. The world will scratch its head because it will see us in the world but not of the world and it will take notice because we don’t play by its rules.

This is the power of the Word of God applied to our everyday lives: the ability to look beyond us. We don’t find meaning in our work, we bring meaning to our work when we approach work as something God wants done, regardless of how “mundane” it may seem at the time. (Christian Overman)   httpss://biblicalworldviewmatters.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-ability-to-look-beyond-us.html

If we live as counter-cultural Christians, the world will pay attention. As our friends and neighbors continue to do the math, we need to show them that the numbers will never add up until they incorporate a Jesus Constant into their formula. So when somebody asks you about God’s Higher Math tell them that it isn’t about credits but about debt, not about superiority but service, not about tallying trinkets but about counting the cost.

“But among us you will find uneducated persons, and artisans, and old women, who, if they are unable in words to prove the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their deeds exhibit the benefit arising from their persuasion of its truth: They do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works; when struck they do not strike again: when robbed they do not go to the law; they give to those that ask of them, and love their neighbors as themselves …“Should we, then, unless we believed that a God presides over the human race, thus purge ourselves from evil? Most certainly not. But, because we are persuaded that we shall give an account of everything in the present life to God, who made us and the world, we adopt a temperate and benevolent and generally despised method of life, believing that we shall suffer no such great evil here, even should our lives be taken from us, compared with what we shall there receive for our meek and benevolent and moderate life from the great judge.” (Plea of Athenogoras – a letter written in 176 AD to Marcus Aurelius trying to explain the behavior of Christians.)

Photo by Antoine Dautry on Unsplash