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Is Jesus Really My Homeboy?

Gotta Have It

Materialism is a rather thorny subject to discuss, and for several reasons. Chief among them (for me, anyway) is that I have yet to achieve victory over it in my own life. Far too often, I look for my identity in what I have. My possessions, along with those things I really want to buy, have the audacity to tell me who I am. And I have the indiscretion to listen. Truly, this "gotta have it" attitude can run my life. So, contrary to my inner desire for social self-preservation, I'd like to address this mindset of materialism — how it pervades our society, and how God used recent events to make me glaringly aware of the stranglehold it has claimed on me.

The New Equation: Bling = God's Will

Materialism is the lens through which many of us in American culture view our existence — including many Bible-believing, Jesus-Is-My-Homeboy-T-shirt-wearing Christian young people. And really, it's no wonder, when we spend more time catching the latest episode of "The Real World" or perusing a friend's Facebook photo album of his summer trip to Mexico than we do reading our Bible or praying. (Would somebody help me get this giant plank out of my eye?) All the ads we see, all the shows we watch, and all the websites we browse lead us to believe that any existential funk or social dysphoria we experience can be greatly abated by acquiring something new.

We're bound to get wrapped up in these messages, both the blatant and the subliminal, if we imbibe them long enough. This is something we must be aware of, because, as Jesus said in His famous Sermon on the Mount, "No one can serve two masters. 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 both God and Money" (Matthew 6:24, NIV). And I think it's not a stretch to assume that this reference to "Money" extends to all the things our money can buy.

We have to be even more careful when these messages we're hearing encourage us to believe that we deserve to have whatever we want. Take, for instance, a recent quote from hip-hop icon Mary J. Blige: "My God is a God who wants me to have things. He wants me to bling. He wants me to be the hottest thing on the block…"¹ I don't mean to call Ms. Blige a wolf, but her message is most definitely shrouded in sheep's clothing. Well, chinchilla fur, probably, because it's much more bling-y.

PowerBaby and Marshall

Now here's the part where I really start stepping on my own little piggies. Like I said earlier, I suffer from my own case of stuffitis. When I'm not keeping my materialistic impulses in check by praying and journaling and daily meditating on God's Word, I begin to entertain the notion that maybe that new something-or-other really will afford me that sense of identity I can find only through my relationship with the Savior. I begin to believe that my significance comes not from being a child of God, but the owner of cool things. I was made glaringly aware of this recently through some especially trying circumstances.

First, it was my computer — my beloved Apple PowerBook. My "PowerBaby," as I like to call it. It's a piece of machinery I'm pretty proud of. … And it crashed back at the end of June. And by "crashed," I mean the hard drive refused to spin. I lost everything — my budget, my digital photos from my summer in Alaska, and all my projects from my entire senior year of college. Completely gone. Forever. The new hard drive and its installation set me back 180 bones.

And that was only the beginning…

Next, it was my car, Marshall. Now, Marshall is my car. I don't have to share him with anyone else — not my little sister, not my parents, not anybody. And he's all paid up. Well, one day, I decided he needed a tune up, so I took him into the shop. After reading a pleasant article in National Geographic about the secrets of centenarians, I found out the verdict: Marshall needed two new tires, his alignment realigned, and a new wheel bearing. With my systolic and diastolic measurements spiking (while trying to act like I totally knew what the mechanic was talking about), I asked for the total estimate. The whole job was going to cost far more than I wanted to pay.

I went to another shop the next day for a second opinion. There, the mechanic recommended to me — on top of everything else — a new alternator, brake pads and a serpentine belt. Not wanting to be stranded somewhere on I-70 on my way to a family reunion that weekend, I took the plunge and paid a whopping $820 to cure all of Marshall's infirmities. As I wrote the check, my heart sank, to somewhere near my spleen.

Divine Discipline

I tell you these two stories not to make you feel sorry for me or to give you reason to believe I'm a freak who anthropomorphizes everything he owns (OK, so that's true), but to illustrate a work that God was doing in my heart. My computer was my expression to the world of my creativity and my total awareness of what's hip. My car represented my independence, both geographical and financial. In essence, they helped me define who I am.

A short while back, on my evening commute, I felt the Holy Spirit telling me something. He basically said, "No matter how creative you may (or may not) be, and no matter how independent you think you are, everything you have comes from Me. If I were to take your computer and your car from you permanently, what then? Would you find your identity in Me, or would you whore yourself out to some new object — some other idol — from which you could try to derive your significance?"

Ouch.

I realized then that I was not living in the truth of Psalm 24:1a, which says, "The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it." My anxiety at the thought of losing everything on my computer — and possibly my computer itself — and shelling out all that cash to fix my car exposed my heart. I was putting my security in these objects, rather than in the grace that Jesus showed me by dying for my sins on the cross. At that moment, I acknowledged that my computer and my car are no more than tools that allow me to do His work.

Identity Check

The lesson I learned from this process is one that God will probably have to teach me a million times over. But abandoning my possessions to God, especially those that I take pride in, has helped me understand, if only to a minute extent, what it means to be "content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want" (Philippians 4:12).

C O F F E E  S H O P

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How can we balance owning things we like and not becoming beholden to them?

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As Christ works in our hearts, we can become liberated from the need to acquire things. We become increasingly aware of the lie that our culture tells us — that a new pair of shoes, some sweet camping gear or an expansive DVD collection will satiate the "God-shaped hole" inside of us. When we let go, we begin to grasp that our worth and identity don't come from what we own or the wealth we can amass, but from the truth that we are cherished by God Himself.