Middle-Class in Spirit?
I like driving in the middle lane. In the slow lane you’re just asking for frustration, and in the fast lane you’re just asking for a fine. Of course it’s funny how our driving habits so reflect our personalities. I’m kind of a middle-lane girl, you could say. Law-abiding, cautious, but not about to go any slower than I absolutely have to.
And I, like most of you I’d guess, am a middle-class American. Not too poor, not too rich, just the way I like it. My house is just slightly smaller than the average American size, we have just under the average number of kids (it’d be hard to have 2.6 kids), we make just slightly more than the average single-income. Any way you slice it–we’re the middle of the middle. And I like it, it’s pretty safe here in the middle.
Safe. Safe from what? It’s easy to see the dangers of extreme lower and extreme upper class. The poor have nothing and the rich have too much. But what are the dangers of life in the middle?
Apathy?
In Generous Justice, Tim Keller makes an interesting point about why more people are not actively involved in doing justice in our world. If we know the facts and have the means, why are we not acting?
Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3), meaning that God’s blessing and salvation come to those who “acknowledge spiritual bankruptcy.” When we are poor in spirit we understand that “we are deeply in debt before God and have no ability to even begin to redeem yourself.” But what if we aren’t poor in spirit? We may not be so off as to believe that we have secured our own salvation, but what if we begin to believe, oh so subtly, that God should answer our prayers and bless us because of all the good things we’ve done.
Could there be a dangerous place somewhere in the middle?
Keller says we could be called, “middle-class in spirit.” We believe, perhaps, that God has saved us by grace, but we still are fairly certain that we’re not the worst of the worst. Our need for grace? Mmm… somewhere in the middle. Keller says,
My experience as a pastor has been that those who are middle-class in spirit tend to be indifferent to the poor, but people who come to grasp the gospel of grace and become spiritually poor find their hearts gravitating toward the materially poor. To the degree that the gospel shapes your self-image, you will identify with those in need” (102).
My first response when I read these words is to think, “Ok, then how can I become poor in spirit?” To be materially poor we’d need to give stuff away, so how can we get spiritually poor?
[Smile as it dawns on me.]
We already are.
We don’t need to get rid of anything to become spiritually poor. We already are. All we need to do is see Truth. Embrace Christ. Understand the reality of our spiritual condition and the glorious gospel of grace. What moves us out of apathy?
The gospel.
How do we motivate people to serve the poor? The gospel. How do we compel people toward compassion? The gospel. How do we inspire people to give away their material possessions and store up treasure in heaven? The gospel.
Middle-class spirits are a breeding ground for apathy. For pride. For entitlement. For consumerism. For indulgence. I can keep pulling up these weeds, frustrated and struggling that they keep surfacing yet again, when really I just need new soil.
A spirit that’s poor.
Blessed are the poor in Spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
Friends, we can give away every penny that we have and still not be poor in spirit.
Let’s not settle for the motions when God really wants the motive. A bankrupt heart overflowing in gratitude, overflowing in grace.
The glorious gospel on display: feeding mouths and hearts.