Reminders abound not to store up treasures on earth
In November 2016, the day after that month’s disastrous election, I was riding in the car with my dad on the Eisenhower Expressway. Just ahead of us, the lofty skyline of downtown Chicago, including the tower that had been the world’s tallest for nearly 25 years, stood as majestic as ever: A testament to humanity’s defiance against its own limitations. A symbol of a nation’s dominance in world history.
And yet…
“It all looks to me like artifacts from a once-great empire now in precipitous decline,” I remarked ruefully, still despairing from the implications of what this country had done to itself the night before.
Sadly, not much has changed about my sentiment in the year since. Despite the slightest flicker of unexpected good news out of Alabama this past week (it should be a given that a known child molester loses his Senate race, but it’s not), it still feels like the darkness is just setting in—and there’s going to be a long winter ahead of us.
In commiserating with people who are similarly alarmed by the immoral and ignoble direction this country has taken, I’ve heard on more than one occasion the observation that “America’s best days are behind us.”
My response to that is a bit more equivocal: Maybe so. Or maybe not.
It could very well be that the United States will continue its nihilistic descent toward oligarchy, kleptocracy, and toxic tribalism, until we have indeed become a fallen, failed empire that is little more than a footnote in world affairs where we once would have been the undisputed leader.
Or, perhaps the utter rottenness of our current government and its cancerous representatives and ideological bent will be what finally births a long overdue progressive awakening after a grim period in our history.
I don’t know. I could easily see it go either way. If I’m confident of anything, it’s this: Things will get worse before they get better. Unfortunately, history teaches us that when a civilization chooses the path we’ve chosen, that’s usually what happens.
How much worse? Your guess is as good as mine.
In any case, all of this points to one overarching but easily overlooked conclusion: It’s unwise to put too much hope or faith into anything worldly or manmade, including your own nation — the place you were born and raised, the place that comprises so much of your very identity as a person.
Relationships blossom, stagnate, and then fail. Hugely profitable endeavors go bankrupt or are rendered obsolete. People in positions of once-vast authority are reduced to caricature or contempt. Ideologies once thought infallible become as contaminated and corrupt as the schools of thought they once opposed. Symbolic monuments and structures stand tall and then exist as heaps of rubble. Prosperous economies collapse.
Powers and principalities come and go. Empires rise and fall. Institutions dominate and then decline, until they cease to exist.
If you know me at all, you know that I have an ambivalent relationship with the Bible — or at least the way it’s used by people. But I won’t ever deny its value as a tool of prophecy:
…People are like the grass.
Their beauty fades as quickly
as the flowers in a field.
The grass withers and the flowers fade
beneath the breath of the Lord.
And so it is with people.
The grass withers and the flowers fade,
but the word of our God stands forever.
Some things are eternal, yet so much of what we stake our hopes and dreams on is anything but.
An election. The passage or failure of a piece of legislation. A savings account or retirement portfolio. A career. A reputation. A political party. A nation.
It all lends credence to an admonition from the New Testament, which is as relevant today as it was when the words were spoken by Christ and put into writing:
Don’t store up treasures here on earth, where moths eat them and rust destroys them, and where thieves break in and steal. Store your treasures in heaven, where moths and rust cannot destroy, and thieves do not break in and steal. Wherever your treasure is, there the desires of your heart will also be.
Don’t store up treasures on earth. Indeed.
Look, I have no regrets about wanting my country to do well. There’s nothing wrong with that. I want the poor to be treated with as much dignity as human beings as the wealthiest among us. I want our future to be decided by everyday people, not massive, profit-driven corporations and oligarchs. I want justice to win and evil to lose.
Those are noble wishes—but again, they’re bigger than any human or earthly construction, including a world superpower. If I want those things to happen solely because I want my country to prosper, or because I want to feel like my side is winning, then I’m doing it wrong.
We have to pin our hopes, dreams, and faith on the things that we know to be eternal, not the things that we know will rise and fall like the seasons themselves, even if we don’t want to admit it.
In its history, the United States of America has risen to an unprecedented level of global supremacy. Many speculate that we are now witnessing its decline.
Maybe we are, or maybe we’re not…yet. Either way, it will happen eventually, just like all things that have ever represented worldly power.
This might sound like a pessimistic outlook. I actually find it quite liberating. It’s a reminder to me that there are things that matter more than whatever ephemeral concerns I face — like who will win next year’s midterm elections.
If there’s a silver lining to the tough times we’re going through, it’s the spiritual reminder not to store up treasures where they don’t belong, easy though it may be to do exactly that.
