Last time, we left off with a question: if reasoning out the cause of suffering and injustice isn’t our business, what is our business? Here’s part of the answer, and a story about a young man named Boyd. (Link to Part One: Mind Your Own Business, Part 1: When God Won’t Say Why.)
Once upon a time, a son was born to very wealthy parents. Let’s call him Boyd.
His parents were already middle-aged when he arrived, and he was their only child – spoiled from the start, and by ten years old he had a fully developed sense of entitlement to match. By fifteen, he had his whole career mapped out: Coast through about ten years of college. Take a class here and there when he felt like it. Spend most of his time checking out “chicks” (his word, not mine.) Once his parents died and left him their fortune, he’d become an international playboy. He could hardly wait!
On Boyd’s twenty-fifth birthday, his parents were killed in a highway pileup. They’d mailed him a birthday check for $25,000 before the accident, the last money he would ever receive from them. They had willed their entire fortune to their favorite charities. Boyd had spent a decade planning his life around an inheritance that was never actually his to plan around.
That’s the whole story. I’m telling it because it makes a point sharper than I could make directly: a lot of us Christians live like Boyd. We show up at church on Christmas and Easter, dust off our Bibles during spring cleaning, and quietly assume our full inheritance is in the bag, regardless of what we do with the years in between. But is it?
Back to the Question
Last time, we left off with the men who brought Jesus their outrage over Pilate’s cruelty, and with Job demanding an explanation for his suffering. And God giving neither of them the, “Why?” they were looking for. Instead, both Job and Jesus’ followers were pointed somewhere else entirely, away from God’s business and toward something that was actually theirs to attend to. We ended with the obvious question: What, exactly, is my business?
Scripture doesn’t leave that question floating forever. Jesus put it plainly: Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy… but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven (Matthew 6:19-21). Paul described believers as builders, laying materials on a foundation that will be tested by fire. Some of what we build will last, some won’t (1 Corinthians 3:11-15). The writer of Hebrews describes the great cloud of witnesses as people who lived like foreigners on Earth, openly admitting they were looking for a better country, a heavenly one, and God was not ashamed to be called their God (Hebrews 11:13-16).
None of that hands you a job description. It doesn’t tell you specifically what your business is – that’s something you can only learn inside an actual relationship with God and His Word. But these Scriptures do tell you this: At least part of our business, while we’re living in our earthly bodies, is laying up an inheritance in the heavenly economy.
I Wonder…
Everything in this “I-Wonder” section is speculation. I have no real biblical indication for any of it. But I carry a deep, abiding sense that God isn’t merely just; He’s also fair. And that conviction leaves me wondering about a few things for which I don’t have chapter and verse.
Consider two situations: 1) soldiers who die in a war to protect their homeland or someone else’s homeland, and 2) martyrs who are murdered for spreading the Gospel in a country hostile to Christianity. Is it possible that these soldiers and martyrs might receive an instant fortune in their heavenly account? Not because they died, but because of the sacrificial nature of their death?
What about Christians who spend entire lifetimes coping with serious defects (mental, physical, emotional) and praise God anyway, in the midst of their ordeal? What if every word of praise offered from inside that kind of suffering makes a deposit into their account? And because they have more obstacles to overcome in order to serve God, might they be adding more credits to their heavenly account than strong, healthy people doing the same job?
What about children – the ones who die as babies or at a young age? I don’t have a mechanism in mind for how they’re compensated. But I remember someone very precious to me losing a baby to miscarriage before the baby ever took a breath. I found comfort in imagining that child’s grandparents in Heaven, scooping the little one up and taking joyful responsibility for his or her care. So I wonder: What if there’s an advantage to arriving in Heaven early? These youngsters would spend their growing-up years in a perfect, loving environment, learning the ways of Heaven’s activities and vocations, without the distractions and deceptions the rest of us have to deal with growing up on Earth. Mightn’t that be a compensation?
I hold none of this as doctrine. But it comforts me to imagine a God who isn’t just measuring. He’s measuring fairly, accounting for what each person actually had to overcome to offer Him what they offered.
For the rest of us – the ones who don’t die a martyr’s death, who don’t carry extraordinary suffering, who get the ordinary length of years – the treasure question comes back to something plainer: following wherever God leads, whether that’s ministry or missions or medicine or education or politics or construction or parenting or entrepreneurship or athletics or entertainment or janitorial work or farming or landscaping or any of the hundred other things He might call a person to. But wherever God leads us, always giving our best because we’re working for Him and always serving Him with a heart of thanksgiving and praise. (BTW, I believe the flow of thanksgiving and praise from our heart and lips to our God is a HUGE part of this equation.)
Back to Boyd
Boyd’s mistake wasn’t that he assumed he had an inheritance coming. He had every reason to expect one. His mistake was living as though the relationship it was tied to didn’t require anything of him. No engagement, no effort, no real investment in the people who were going to impact his future. He coasted on a connection he never actually built.
I’m not suggesting in this blog that a Christian Boyd’s “ticket” to Heaven might be revoked. NOT AT ALL. What I’m talking about is what happens after we get there. We seem to assume that we will all have identical housing and identical “bank accounts.” If that’s the case, what was Jesus talking about when He said we should lay up treasures in Heaven?
If there’s a general lack of understanding about the existence of our heavenly inheritances, I believe there’s a good reason. All the Boyds among us don’t know there’s such a thing as heavenly treasure because they never open their Bibles. And the people who are laying up vast celestial storehouses of wealth (think of Mother Teresa and Billy Graham) don’t care about treasure. They’re serving and praising God because they love Him. They haven’t told us about the riches they’re creating in Heaven because such things are totally irrelevant to them. We tend not to talk about things we never think about!
Okay, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I’ve misinterpreted Scripture. And my “I Wonder” thoughts may all be fantasies. But if you get to Heaven and find yourself living in a shack while your maid is enjoying her mansion, don’t say you were never told!
Just sayin’… Maybe it’s time for us to throw all our time, energy, and love into minding our own business.
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