Upgrade is the mask that covetousness wears. Covet sounds austere. Upgrade sounds exciting. Covet seems stodgy, ominous, and stark. Upgrade is packed with the tingly thrills.
God says, “Do not covet.”
A chorus of louder, less avoidable voices scream “Do not miss this chance to get a life-changing deal!”
The Desire of Nations puts it directly, ‘Do not set your desire on ANYTHING that belongs to your neighbor.’
The cartel of flesh, world, and devil conspire more seductively, “Your neighbor’s life is far better than yours...you NEED her figure, his car, that family, their charm.”
The Savior lays out it straight, “Be on your guard against all kinds of greed.
A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
A sexier voice within says, “He’s not talking to you, he means Donald Trump.”
The Treadmill of Trivial Existence which Awaits
A treadmill of trivial existence awaits the one who listens to all the sales pitches to upgrade, and therefore, ignores the straight talk of the Master. The pitchmen with large budgets and glossy material certainly present thirsty people with satiation proposals, in the form of a new iPhone, a more spacious kitchen, or a more exhilarating Audi.
But with classified access to our fragile insecurities and our hyper-active wanters, hawkers of financial news, home decor and political mixed martial arts, present merely a more acceptable form of pornography. Only, instead of the faux intimacy that pornographic images promise, we are lured instead with intimate but hollow offerings of security, a better place, or a more pristine nation.
Our atmosphere is toxic with covetous discontent and so, frequently are we. And that’s why, whether it is Rush Limbaugh screaming at liberals before us or Rachel Maddow snarkily belittling conservatives on another media outlet, each finds a comfortable audience. They articulate discontent, cultivate it, and help electrify our own.
All around us and from within us there are enticing billboards advertising the next thing we need. One-click away, Ann Taylor awaits to soothe your discomfort. Cabela’s has some new hunting gear to scratch your deepest itch. Amazon can get your desires delivered in an eye-popping 24 hours. Your next soul-massaging job awaits at Monster.com.
The Whispers of Want
Want whisperers abound--those trained to coax and compel the most sensitively calibrated part of us known as our desire. They lead us around by the nose. And frequently, it’s so much fun that we don’t even realize what is happening.
Or worse, the presence of want in our lives, that gaping hole of lack that we feel when we realize that our best friend’s husband is so much more romantic than ours or that our boss’s life is so much more charmed, can lead to a debilitating self-pity.
And there we sit, alone on a couch internally weeping over the desperate deal we have gotten while our sister or friend made out so well, and all the while we are spitting on the 10th commandment. We can be drowning in self-pity and at the same time be engulfed in a sinister, but undetected form of covetousness.
Escaping Eeyore-ish-Gloom
Fortunately though, the Spirit of our Savior sometimes taps us on the shoulder in such times. He permits the covet-detector to beep annoyingly so that instead of letting it lead us to an Eeyore-ish inner-gloom, it can lead us right to Him to forgive us.
For when we are eaten up with wanting what everyone else has, the first remedy is confession. “Here I go again,” we admit, to Him who already knows. And He says, “I like what you’re discovering.” You see, when we turn from trampling the 10th commandment, we have good hope of discovering the joy of keeping the 1st one.
“Satisfy us in the morning with your unfailing love,” entreats a worn-out Moses who has learned where sturdy gladness and reliable joy is to be found.
It is God with whom we have to deal. Rather, it is God with whom we get to deal. And God means our desires to lead us onto the scent of Him.
Please Don’t Kill the Grass
Upgrade theology makes it seem like all the good stuff of life can only come be detouring from the Creator interstate to the creation highway. But upgrade theology never tells us that setting our desires on things we do not yet have, is no highway at all, but a dead end. It’s a notorious, but seldom discovered, false-advertiser which is forever saying, ’The grass is greener on the other side.” It always conceals in microscopic fine print, “That is until you get there and kill the grass.”
Upgrade theology can even smuggle itself into the center of our spiritual lives. It can baptize our discontentment with the slow pace of “action” in our spiritual lives. It can make us a critic of our spiritual community, rather than a pupil in it. It can lead us comfortably and confidently to accuse others of not being earnest enough, spirit-filled enough, committed-enough.
It can make us the articulate spokesperson for all that is wrong in the church, and sure that we alone know the remedy of our spiritual discontentment...it lies, we firmly believe, in the next new book from Zondervan, the next new congregation, the next novel take from the newest famous preacher. Since it’s all God-stuff, it seems right to want more. But often, not always, but often, in the middle of our despising our present state, we’re in the most duped condition of all.
Commended for not giving up, not for getting...
Summoned to walk by faith, not by sight, congratulated for hungering and thirsting for righteousness not for being filled, commended for not giving up, not for getting, folks who find their greatest comfort from belonging in body and soul to their faithful Savior Jesus Christ, will often not have everything they want.
They will, however, be laboring toward contentment with what has been entrusted to them. And whether what has been entrusted to them is ecstatic experiences or a steady, non-dramatic devotion to a God they seldom see, gratitude is the divine order of the day.
The perceptive, knicker-wearing theologian Francis Schaeffer once summed up the prohibition made plain in the 10th commandment like this, ‘We are to love God enough to be content and our neighbor enough not to envy.”
It’s only the heart that is in a bowed posture before Him who is the Giver of all that can offer a bouquet of grateful appreciation even when much seems wrong, because a heart like that trusts God’s constant goodness even when the evidences feel slim. A life running on a heart like that will let every covetous desire for more and every envious mourning in the face of our neighbor’s rejoicing and all rejoicing in the face of our neighbor’s mourning lead to lenten repentance....with the routine but thrilling hope of Easter joy.
No Cotton Candy for Supper!
God doesn’t say, “Don’t covet”, because He hates wanting and those that want it. No, God knows that we’re like hungry children at the State Fair. No good father would send his kids to the cotton candy stand for supper, for a snack sure, but never for the nutritional sustenance. God says, “Don’t covet”, because no one cares more about the safe-keeping and eventual satiation of our desires than He.
And He alone doesn’t make the empty promises of cotton-candy. He aims to re-constitute us so we notice the vivid green He’s injected in the grass always just beneath our feet.
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Eric Youngblood is the Senior Pastor at Rock Creek Fellowship (PCA) on Lookout Mountain. Please feel free to contact him at eric@rockcreekfellowship.org.