Friday
Friday
True and False Ambitions
But seek first his [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
Matthew 6:33
Jesus now contrasts what pagans seek and what Christians should seek first. What we seek is what we set before us as the supreme good to which we devote our lives. It is our preoccupation, our ambition. Jesus reduces the options to only two. Pagans are obsessed with their own material well-being (food, drink, and clothing), whereas Christians should be preoccupied above all with the reign and the righteousness of God and with their spread throughout the world.
Jesus begins with the negative. Three times he repeats his prohibition not to worry about material things. He is forbidding neither thought nor forethought, but rather anxious thought. For anxiety is incompatible with Christian faith. If God already takes care of our life and body, can we not trust him to take care of our food and clothing? Again, if God feeds the birds and clothes the lilies, can we not trust him to feed and clothe us?
At the same time, we must not misunderstand Jesus’s teaching. Firstly, trusting God does not exempt us from working to earn our own living. The birds teach us this lesson. For how does God feed the birds? The answer is that he doesn’t! Jesus was a keen observer of nature. He knew perfectly well that birds feed themselves. It is only indirectly that God feeds them by providing the wherewithal with which they feed themselves. Secondly, trusting God does not exempt us from calamity. True, not a single sparrow falls to the ground without our Father’s permission. But sparrows do fall and get killed. So do human beings. So do airplanes.
Instead of being preoccupied with material things, the followers of Jesus are to seek first God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness. To seek God’s kingdom is to proclaim Christ as King, so that people will submit to his rule. To seek God’s righteousness is to remember that God loves righteousness and hates evil, so that, even outside the circle of the kingdom, justice is more pleasing to God than injustice, freedom than oppression, and peace than violence and war. In this double ambition our evangelistic and social responsibilities are combined, and the glory of God becomes our supreme concern.
For further reading: Matthew 6:25–34