Do you remember the show, The Music Man? It’s about this man, Harold Hill, who travels from town to town in the early 1900’s convincing the townspeople that they need a local band. So he sells them musical instruments and uniforms. And he teaches them what he calls the “Think System.” You don’t need to bother with learning to read music, he tells them. You just think. Think!
He has the people convinced that if they think it hard enough they will somehow acquire the skills of playing music. It didn’t work very well, though. Only their mothers and fathers could love hearing them play. And maybe that was enough.
This show was written during the 1950’s, but it harkens back to a time in America when things like the think system were hugely popular. It went by a variety of names – mind-cure, positive thinking, self-help, and others. All of this based on the idea that we can, by our minds and our words, harness the power of God to get what we need or want.
There were a lot of faith healers around then, using these ideas of mind over matter, and they developed it into a theology that claimed perfect health was available to all of us, through faith. That it is actually our right to enjoy perfect health. God promised it. God is ready and willing to give it, so we just have to ask for it.
In fact, they said that if you don’t ask, it won’t be given. But when you do ask, God has to give it to you. They would never be caught saying in their prayers words like, “if it be your will,” because to them it was a given that God wanted to and would heal them, if they asked.
So the ask was really more of a command than a request.
And it is not surprising that pretty soon this theology of health led to a theology of wealth. Because if God can be counted on to bless us with the riches of health whenever we ask for it, why not material riches too?
It just goes back to the power of the mind to make it happen. To think it into being – to use the power of positive thinking to bring you everything you should have in life. The good life.
This is the history of something that is often called the Prosperity Gospel. Popular among televangelists, who sit on their TV couches and tell us to call the 1-800-number on the screen and make a donation to their ministry; that if you make that donation then God will bless you, too, with health and wealth and all that you need. You, too, can have the good life.
And some of them have a lot in common with Harold Hill, I am afraid. Con artists.
They prey on our insecurities and our desperate hopes for something better. They want to convince us that we need not submit ourselves to the will of God and the timing of God. But that, instead, we should submit ourselves and our resources to the supposed powers of these evangelists to utilize God’s will.
Harold Hill in preacher’s clothes.
We may laugh about it and roll our eyes. But it is a risk that any of us might fall for because we want the good life, too. And we might have trouble staying clear in our own minds about just what makes life good.
We seek perfection. Perfect health, perfect homes, perfect families. We have notions about what this perfection looks like – we see it on TV and movies, magazines and advertisements. Social media is the worst, because there we see the curated images people put out there which make us think these folks have it all together. And then we wonder why we can’t seem to get it all together too.
They have the good life. I can see it in their instagram pictures. Why can’t I seem to have that good life as well?
The problem is that we get confused about what it is that makes a life good.
When Jesus went into the wilderness, for some reason the devil thought he knew what Jesus would be looking for. The devil thought that he could con Jesus into making a deal with him. Take the bread – after all, he was starving. Take the power and glory – after all, he was nothing, merely a carpenter’s son in a backwoods town. Somehow, the devil thought that Jesus wanted the same things the devil wanted.
But he was wrong on every count. Jesus had a different sense of what made a life good. and these were the things he lived and taught to his followers, too.
Most of all, this good life involves seeing the gifts that God is offering you in the time and place where you are right now. See the blessings God is offering here and now.
I know not every situation feels particularly blessed. Not every time and place looks very “gifty.” Lots of times we feel stuck in something that somehow happened to us, and we think, “I just need to get out of this, through this, done with this.”
I have done that more times than I care to say. In circumstances where I am feeling too much anxiety or too much sadness, I just want out.
I have found myself wishing my days away – wishing my life away – because I just want out of the discomfort of the current situation.
But what if glimmers of the good life are present, right beneath the surface, in every second of our trials and tribulations, our daily grind and worst nightmares?
Isn’t that the essence of the gospel of Jesus Christ?
Through Christ we see the way God broke into the world using very ordinary people and things. Sure, Jesus was a backwoods hick, a nobody from no place. That was the point. Yes, he lived a common life and gathered around him a motley crew of common, unimpressive people. That was intentional. He taught deep and precious and powerful truths based on the most ordinary things and people and rituals of daily life.
And God continues to use the ordinary stuff of life to show us what is good and true and holy. Water. bread. wine.
Whenever you eat this bread, remember me. Whenever you drink this cup, remember me.
God will take us, hold us, feed us, and use us. Just as we are.
We actually do not need to make ourselves perfect, good enough for God, because God will use us just as we are.
There is a saying, “Bloom where you are planted.” This is a valuable thing for us to bear in mind, because too much of our time is spent worrying about getting somewhere else. Getting to the next level, making certain improvements, and getting things just right. Whatever that is. But if we consider that perhaps God has placed us here for a reason, that there is something here for us to see, and some response for us to make, then there are riches to be found. You might be surprised. God specializes in surprise.
Whatever rung of the ladder you find yourself on, this is where you are. Look around at the place God has planted you. See what God is offering you right there.
Holy, ordinary lives.
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Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels
