Reality Check

Living large has suddenly become too expensive for Mr. and Mrs. Average American.

Do you remember Stanley Johnson? He’s the guy in a 2004 TV commercial who shows off his great family, beautiful four-bedroom home and new car. “How do I do it?” he asks. “I’m in debt up to my eyeballs!” Then he adds, “I can barely pay my finance charges.”

After the bank’s pitch to take out a home equity loan or refinance one’s mortgage, Stanley pleads, “Somebody help me!” –all the while smiling and putting on a brave face.

It’s one of my favorite commercials. (You can still see it on YouTube.com)

Now with some of the nations’ biggest banks going broke, it’s no longer funny. Pundits and Editorials are all telling us, “We got in way over our heads.” It’s time to “pay the piper.”

Well hold on just a minute! What will become of the “American Dream”?

Some say the answer is to face the truth. A “Reality Check.” --But what is the “Truth”?

Is it just that we need to tighten our belts, buckle down, put our nose to the grindstone and “git ‘er done”? To just apply some good old American grit and ingenuity?

Maybe. But what if the problem, or the “reality,” goes much deeper than that?

The heart of the issue is really the issue of our hearts. People the world over try to fill the emptiness inside with the false security of possessions. And we believe “more is better.”

Like Madonna’s 1984 hit song, “Material Girl,” we’re all material girls and guys at heart. Materialism is the true religion of capitalist western civilizations.

The dictionary defines materialism as “devotion to material wealth and possessions at the expense of spiritual and intellectual values.” So materialism is the disease. Envy and greed are the symptoms. And the end result is an economy in crisis.

We have sold our souls to get more stuff. And now we have the devil to pay. So with Stanley Johnson we hang our heads and plead, “Somebody help me!”

Will an eleventh hour government bailout solve the real problem? Not hardly.

Oh, it may alleviate a financial crisis for a while, but it doesn’t solve the issue of the heart. What do we do about the selfish possessive greed that got us into this mess?

Only God can diagnose and fix what’s wrong with the human heart.

Jesus once told a story about a rich man who accumulated vast wealth and possessions. But then he died and left it all behind. Jesus said, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

The solution, Jesus said, was to be “rich toward God.” To “store up…treasures in heaven.”

How do we do that? By focusing our lives on things that have eternal value.

The Bible says the first step is to care for your own soul. How? By putting your trust in Jesus Christ to save you and forgive your sin. The next step is to obey and follow Jesus with your life.

As you follow Christ, you learn that God is the source of our money and possessions. We only get to use them for a little while. And God’s purpose is for us to use them to serve others and point them toward a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

Through the Biblical prophet, Isaiah, God calls to us today: “Come…you who have no money. Why spend money on what…does not satisfy? …Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live.”

God is the ultimate reality check. The question is, “Will we pay attention to what he says?”

Listen to the Bible; it’s great for your soul!