I’ve always been struck by Luke 11:24-26. An evil spirit leaves a person, searches around but can’t find any place to go so it decides to go back to the original person and finds him/her like a ‘house swept clean’- so the spirit grabs its buddies (seven of them) and make the person worse off than before. Not exactly a happy picture- especially if you’re trying to rid yourself of your personal demons.
But if you’re in the business of helping people rid themselves of their demons- what an opportunity! To wit: the $11 Billion Self-Help Industry. (Just think about it- based on the above parable you can help someone oust a demon...and expect your business to increase seven-fold!!)
I mean- it’s the American Way, right? We want to have a better, smarter, slimmer, more beautiful, less stressful, happy-happy-joy-joy life so we identify what’s in our way, name it, formulate an action plan designed to rid ourselves of it, execute our plan- and voila!- seven more demons! (with seven more names, seven more action plans,...)
I don’t think it’s working- and this saying by Jesus alerted me to it. And it got me thinking that maybe the issue isn’t getting rid of sin but something else...
So I like the financial approach that I alluded to in Part I of this little mental exercise. Again, I’ll turn to the example of Warren Buffett, a man who doesn’t like debt per se, but doesn’t focus all his efforts on getting debt out of the way- in fact it appears as one of his last resorts: “So our main capital allocation moves in 1986 were to pay off debt and stockpile funds. Neither is a fate worse than death, but they do not inspire us to do handsprings either. If Charlie [Munger- Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway] and I were to draw blanks for a few years in our capital-allocation endeavors, Berkshire’s rate of growth would slow significantly.” In other words, only when he had no other ideas of what to do with is money to generate wealth did he turn to paying down debt. I’ve heard many financial advisors claim that the fastest way to wealth is to pay down debt. Though they include investing in their wealth building plans their holy grail seems to be the ‘get-rid-of-debt solution.’
The problem is- getting rid of debt doesn’t necessarily get rid of the ‘debt-accumulating’ tendencies that got someone in debt in the first place. Like the poor sap in Jesus’ parable, getting rid of the demon did nothing to prevent its return (in fact in seemed to make the return even more attractive!)
If, in financial terms, the trick is in buying assets rather than eliminating liabilities perhaps the spiritual trick is spending less time ousting demons and more time ‘investing’ in ‘spiritual assets.’ I figure that if I increase spiritual activities that produce positive, spiritual income, my liabilities will eventually erode, or at least have a diminished effect relative to my enlarged 'spiritual capital.'
As a general guide I’ve been taking the Spiritual Disciplines as the assets I’m targeting to acquire. I’ve been most successful with daily time in the Word, and am looking, in particular, to increase my ‘stakes’ in Prayer and Fasting. In effect I want a “Spiritual Statement” to read like so:
Instead of spending my time ousting my demons (or even trying to ‘work harder’ to be more loving, forgiving, self-controlled, etc- the spiritual equivalent to trying to get more income from your job), I’m wanting to focus more of my time on building up spiritual assets that will naturally make me more loving, forgiving, self-controlled, etc. In other words, the Fruits of the Spirit will be exactly that- the fruits/income from my time in the Spirit (via the spiritual assets).
So now I’ve thrown the gauntlet, publicly, to making this activity, which I’ve been kicking around in the back of my head for a couple of years now, a more intentional activity. And though I didn’t originally think of this as a New Year’s resolution- the timing fits. So here’s to your efforts to increase your spiritual investments.
But if you’re in the business of helping people rid themselves of their demons- what an opportunity! To wit: the $11 Billion Self-Help Industry. (Just think about it- based on the above parable you can help someone oust a demon...and expect your business to increase seven-fold!!)
I mean- it’s the American Way, right? We want to have a better, smarter, slimmer, more beautiful, less stressful, happy-happy-joy-joy life so we identify what’s in our way, name it, formulate an action plan designed to rid ourselves of it, execute our plan- and voila!- seven more demons! (with seven more names, seven more action plans,...)
I don’t think it’s working- and this saying by Jesus alerted me to it. And it got me thinking that maybe the issue isn’t getting rid of sin but something else...
So I like the financial approach that I alluded to in Part I of this little mental exercise. Again, I’ll turn to the example of Warren Buffett, a man who doesn’t like debt per se, but doesn’t focus all his efforts on getting debt out of the way- in fact it appears as one of his last resorts: “So our main capital allocation moves in 1986 were to pay off debt and stockpile funds. Neither is a fate worse than death, but they do not inspire us to do handsprings either. If Charlie [Munger- Vice Chairman of Berkshire Hathaway] and I were to draw blanks for a few years in our capital-allocation endeavors, Berkshire’s rate of growth would slow significantly.” In other words, only when he had no other ideas of what to do with is money to generate wealth did he turn to paying down debt. I’ve heard many financial advisors claim that the fastest way to wealth is to pay down debt. Though they include investing in their wealth building plans their holy grail seems to be the ‘get-rid-of-debt solution.’
The problem is- getting rid of debt doesn’t necessarily get rid of the ‘debt-accumulating’ tendencies that got someone in debt in the first place. Like the poor sap in Jesus’ parable, getting rid of the demon did nothing to prevent its return (in fact in seemed to make the return even more attractive!)
If, in financial terms, the trick is in buying assets rather than eliminating liabilities perhaps the spiritual trick is spending less time ousting demons and more time ‘investing’ in ‘spiritual assets.’ I figure that if I increase spiritual activities that produce positive, spiritual income, my liabilities will eventually erode, or at least have a diminished effect relative to my enlarged 'spiritual capital.'
As a general guide I’ve been taking the Spiritual Disciplines as the assets I’m targeting to acquire. I’ve been most successful with daily time in the Word, and am looking, in particular, to increase my ‘stakes’ in Prayer and Fasting. In effect I want a “Spiritual Statement” to read like so:
Instead of spending my time ousting my demons (or even trying to ‘work harder’ to be more loving, forgiving, self-controlled, etc- the spiritual equivalent to trying to get more income from your job), I’m wanting to focus more of my time on building up spiritual assets that will naturally make me more loving, forgiving, self-controlled, etc. In other words, the Fruits of the Spirit will be exactly that- the fruits/income from my time in the Spirit (via the spiritual assets).
So now I’ve thrown the gauntlet, publicly, to making this activity, which I’ve been kicking around in the back of my head for a couple of years now, a more intentional activity. And though I didn’t originally think of this as a New Year’s resolution- the timing fits. So here’s to your efforts to increase your spiritual investments.
1 comment:
that line you have about the paying down debt doesn't get rid of the debt getting tendencies reminded me of the yo yo dieting we americans love so much. No amount of cabbage will change the fact that the problem is a fast food, convenience food, over scheduled life style.
In fact I think that as a whole we try to eliminate the symptoms so that we can forget the problem.
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