Escaping the Rat Race
By Patrick Roberts
Since I live in the city I am assaulted with advertisements from
the radio, TV and static billboards. I have to skip through
commercials before I can watch the DVD I just bought. I almost
throw important mail away in my attempts to sift through
mountains of junk mail. I endure up-selling every time I buy a
cup of coffee or fill up my car with gas. I don't answer my
phone if it's a number I don't recognize because I know it's
going to be a telemarketer. Tonight I tried to watch a
professional basketball game. Every time out, every statistical
report and every inch of the stadium was plastered with ads.
What do pool supplies and casinos have to do with basketball?
Just ask one of the star players, there he is hosting the ad!
Our sales-driven culture is wearying, especially to economically
average people. Sales is not an end in itself, yet many people
in the workforce today must adopt Sales as their daily religion.
Sales can be a good thing, granted. It springs forth from a
potentially healthy, capitalistic model. But the result of our
take-take-take mentality is an ever-increasing class of people
who do nothing but sales. They are called "Salesmen." Average
folks who would love to do something honest for a living are
forced to sell their bosses' products the other masses who buy
the aforementioned products using the revenue they accumulated
from commissions earned from selling their respective bosses'
products, and so on.
This is the destructive futility of doing anything apart from
God. This also hints at the oppressive tendency of any human
system that tries to function apart from God. Godless men are
driven by their insecurities to position themselves above others
as they try to offset their giving with as much taking as
possible.
Work apart from God must be meaningless and therefore also
discouraging. If God is not making our work meaningful, then
what is our meaning? To earn money? Earn money to spend on what?
Feed our families? To what end? So that our families might live?
Live for what?
God is continually offsetting our destructive tendencies with
His grace. There must be a single, great Giver to offset the
fact that men are always taking. Men would tear themselves and
the world apart through their hoarding and clinging if not for
God, who chooses to patiently hold the world together.
Worldly men would think a man crazy for giving and dieing
unconditionally so that others might benefit from his giving and
dieing. God's otherworldly grace inspires such craziness. This
insanity is the only productive way to live. This good kind of
insanity offsets the Godless world's insanity, which is
self-destructive.
God makes it possible for men to die to themselves by making
them spiritually full. To the heaven-bound man, Jesus Christ is
all the nutrition and wealth that he could ever want. Christ is
our eternal Wealth. This Wealth is unfading, impossible to
steal. The spiritual wealth that comes from knowing Jesus Christ
is grounded in God, who is eternally set apart from the world.
Christ makes His followers useful to world by freeing them from
worldly concern. He fills them and strengthens them so they
might give and die unconditionally, to benefit others. It is not
the race that makes a rat race, but the rats in the race that
make it a rat race. God frees us from this rat race by making us
something better than rats.
A career of sales, for example, will drain a person's life. But
a salesman who depends on God will accomplish his work with
unconditional joy. When God frees a man to work with
unconditional dedication and joy, he will do any job well, even
a sales job. This demonstrates the ironic beauty of God's grace.
He injects that which was only dark and detrimental with
life-renewing hope and strength.
There is hope for our capitalistic economy as long as it
contains Godly checks and balances. As long as our money earning
is girded by spiritual wisdom and selfless charity there's a
chance for us to find meaning in our everyday lives.
Patrick is an average Christ-seeker. His goal is to turn people
to Jesus Christ.
Find additional resources at
www.BooksByPatrick.com and www.KoGmedia.com
