Class, According to God’s Kingdom
But he answered one of [the workers], ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
“What do you do?”
At a party, at a bar, at a church, at a blind date, this is the first question most people ask. Even though it’s an exaggeration, I feel like I always hear:
“I’m a designer, I’m an engineer, I’m an influencer, I’m a (some sort of successful) creative, I’m the CEO of Tik-Tok.”
My response?
“I’m a paraeducator. I fly around in a helicopter over Portland and when they run out of educators, I parachute in.”
That used to be the joke I told people anyway. And even when I describe what I actually do, a sort of glorified and fancy educational assistant for particular kids with particular paperwork, I only recently stopped feeling shame that what I do wasn’t “cool” enough.
For millennials, what you do is the biggest indicator for a lot of who you are to your peers. More than personality, more than temperament, more than character, people base their assumption, impression, and assessment of you based on what you do for your 9 to 5 (which is rarely 9 to 5).
There’s a lot of issues with this. Some problems are obvious, some are more subtle. For people who love and follow Christ, the biggest issue here is that we are being taught by the world implicitly and explicitly that our worth, dignity, even lovability, is based on what we do as opposed to who we are. Blinded by the enemy’s malevolent intent to have us chase for an ideal, sexy, and status enhancing job, we either attain it and become anxious to keep it, or we don’t have it and become depressed by our lack of it. Either way, these patterns of anxiety or depression compartmentalize us and separate us from the messages of love Christ taught us to receive from our Father in Heaven.
Simply put, we either believe, literally and figuratively, that the first shall be last and the last first, or we don’t, and so hinder our ability to advance God’s kingdom. Class, according to God’s kingdom, is about making the least of these the greatest, about raising up the marginalized and oppressed, and to do all the work of your hands to reveal the glory of God and His kingdom.
Asher had to move to a different grade entirely. Because while in the first grade he tore up his entire classroom, thrashing supplies all over the place, he threw multiple chairs (nearly breaking a window), and he spat at this guy in the face.
Yet Asher was smart. Really smart. He also had a sweet side that came out ever so rarely. I kinda saw him as an endearing yet snarky Dennis the menace. Ours was a tumultuous but ultimately loving dynamic.
But I didn’t see it for what it was then. I was distracted by how untraveled and unlife experienced I was.
Dating apps are the Devil. I wrote about how social media is the Devil, but I think the swiping apps are right behind social. They feed into the myth of your essence being mostly composed of what you do, where you’ve been, and/or the amazing things you’ve been a part of. There’s no litmus test for character or quality on even the most legitimate, non hookup apps.
I was caught, however, hook, line, and sinker, into the myth of being only lovable by what I had done. Sure, I did work with kids, which even on the hardest days is a satisfactory vocation, but I was scraping by. No passport stamps. No thousand followers. No real dating prospects on the horizon.
The glorious redemption at hand of Asher once nearly being sent to a behavior room for a string of violent referrals to suddenly becoming a star student in a class a grade above his age went blank on my radar. I didn’t even hear any “spiritual” beeps. I just kept persisting in a prison of thinking I was unimportant because I couldn’t tangibly show people who I was by what I did.
I saw the kingdom of God unfolding before me but the kingdom of Hell stole my gaze and assaulted my heart.
Millennials average $33,000 in student debt. The average millennial salary is $35,000 (if my math checks out, that’s only $2,000 for avocado toast if we tried to wipe our student debt in a year. And didn’t have to pay rent, or utilities, or insurance, or a car, or a bike, or a credit card, or going to the doctor, etc. etc). More millennials are in poverty than any previous generation. We account for more renters than any other previous generation.
We might be entitled, but we also are poor. Literally, figuratively, and metaphorically, we are at a greater economic disadvantage than the previous two generations (the greatest generation dealt with the Great Depression which is no joke).
Let’s add some variables. Let’s say you are black or Latino. “The most recent wealth data from 2016 indicates that the median net wealth of White households was $171,000, compared with $20,700 for Latinx households and $17,600 for Black households.” Ouch. That’s quite the disparity.
But wait, unemployment is on the decline. And median incomes overall are greater than years earlier. What gives? The income increase is indicative of the quantity of jobs received and not of the quality of earning. Many people have side hustles. Yet, one in five women and one in six men, millennial aged, are in poverty.
I could list stat after stat after stat, but that’s not normally my style. I just want to point out that the rise in millennial anxiety and depression has some financial backing behind it.
When our high school classmates are crushing it and we are lagging, when people younger than you make twice your salary, when STEM equates to a healthy mortgage while helping professions lead to desperate gofundme pages, we start to realize that comparison really is the thief of joy.
Further, if people like you for what you do, what happens if you don’t like what you do? What about all the people “crushing” it now who cry on their way home from work everyday? What about the Anthony Bourdains, the Robin Williams’s, the Jarrid Wilson’s, the Amy Winehouses? What was so missing in their seemingly full lives that caused them to end it all? What sort of kingdom were they serving that taxed and burdened and depressed them so?
Jesus said the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. Many of us know the implications but few of us choose to live in the reality. We expect epic moments constantly, strive for achievement after already great achievement, desire perpetual “atta boys” or “go get it girl” after any duration of hard work, and never pause to reflect whether any of these chases are worth chasing.
The Wisdom teacher of Ecclesiastes, more neglected of an advisor than the teacher of Proverbs or the artists of the Psalms, tells us all about this. Pleasure, wisdom, folly, toil… anything, attained for its own accord and removed from the accord of God, is pointless. Being a CFO of a rising Silicon Valley startup means nothing in the expanse of eternity. A tyrant might wreak destruction over his country for decades, but after he has passed, he returns to the dust. The greatest poet in the world is no poet at all if he or she does not reflect on that which God made evident from the beginning.
The teacher’s conclusion after twelve chapters of profound insight and aimless confusion, often coinciding in the same thought, is to say this:
“Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind.
For God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil.”
What matters most at the end of your days is the account you give to the author of Day. We add nothing to this world, and we take nothing from it either. What status you attain in life vanishes the moment you pass away.
But the love you gave God and gave others? This is to fear God and to follow His commandments well. This is an eternal endeavor. This is a seed worth planting. This is bigger than a viral video, an infamous tweet, an Oscar winning movie.
This is about contributing to the greatest story ever told in the specific way God has commanded you to do for His kingdom. His class system is upside down. The way we see others should be too.