Matthew 6:24 – “No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.”
This passage in Matthew comes from Jesus’ Sermon On the Mount. The context, as you can see at the end, is talking about money. Jesus talks about not storing up treasure on earth because it’s temporary and will all go away. Instead, he talks about storing up in Heaven, which is eternal.
Among Christians, this is a pretty easy concept to grasp. Most would say:
“Don’t love money more than God? Got it, we’re good to go”
But what if we applied the concept outside of money and into the areas of our life that we would rather be kept untouched? What about the sports that we really like to play, what about the projects we really love working on? Perhaps one for even the most devout, what about our relationships with our family, friends, or significant other?
All of a sudden, the areas we thought were untouchable are under attack. At first you may say, “of course I don’t love these things more than God. I love them because I love God so much”
When I was younger, I had a crush on a girl and I started to put a lot of stock into this girl. My every mood was determined by the whims of this girl. It’s easy for me to see now that I was “serving” a different Master rather than God. I was serving a person rather than the One who created me.
I am what you might call a “serial people pleaser.” I must be liked in every context everywhere I go. I hate when people don’t like me and I will usually do anything I can to make sure that all the people like me. Even if it’s to my own detriment, I want people to like me. Because of this, I easily carry this into the relationships around me. It’s easy for me to bounce between groups because I constantly go around trying to get the approval of all around me.
If my post yesterday wasn’t context enough for how narcissistic we are, then this seals the deal. Not everyone is as focused on what others think of them (which again ties back less to what they think of you and more how it makes you feel that others feel a certain way about you…but that’s a rabbit hole addressed in yesterday’s post.) But those of us who are so focused on what others think can fall into some really dangerous pitfalls.
As a Christian especially, it’s a dangerous trait to desire to be liked by everyone. To be a “serial people pleaser”. Our commission, in many ways, basically forces us to be unliked by some. If there are some that hated Christ, there will be some that hate us if we do what He desires.
I come back again and again to the simple truth. The only way to escape this never-ending tunnel of thinking of oneself and people-pleasing others to feel good about yourself, is to think and look to God alone. As soon as we start looking at other pieces of the puzzle, we only make it more difficult to see that we’re still in the bubble of self-focus.
The only way of escape from the bubble is to look to the one thing outside the bubble: God!
We can serve masters inside this earth he has created. We can focus in on them, become great at serving those things, but at the end of the day, what will matter is none of those things, but instead, the time focused on serving the thing outside the bubble.
I have so much work to do, and thankfully God is patient. I am working to push the things calling from this world aside to hear better the desires of my King. Because only then will I be able to help others and be the version of myself that is not self-focused, thus being self-destructive.