[Image: Flags, 2006, JA Van Devender]
1 Samuel 2:7 (NKJV)
7 The Lord makes poor and makes rich; He brings low and lifts up.
I suppose the question raised by the title would be: "How can there be any 'cons' to prosperity?" I mean prosperity is a good thing, right? Some one once said: "I have been poor and I have been rich. Rich is better" - and there is a certain truth to that.
But what if "prosperity" is inherently deadly as well as beneficial? As an illustration, consider arsenic. As a compound it has been used as medicine for centuries, but it is also a deadly poison. It's deadliness and its beneficial characteristics are inherent in the metal itself. You can't have one without the other being present in some degree. The venom of a serpent is also that from which the antidote is derived. Worldly prosperity is somewhat like these things. It's beneficial aspects are highly prized and rightly so, but there is always a danger present.
Rightly understood, worldly prosperity (or the witholding of it) is one more tool which God uses to advance history according to His plans. He makes some rich and denies it to others. He sets seasons of prosperity and follows it with seasons of absolute deprivation, all to the end of putting individuals and nations where He wants them and bringing about His good ends through them.
I think, far too often, we consider prosperity or its opposite in almost strictly judicial terms. We think of it as reward or punishment. In doing so we assign a moral significance to it as vindication or repudiation of ourselves. If we are "good" we deserve to be prosperous. If we are "prosperous" then we must have been "good" (and of course oppositely with poverty). And though there are some correlations in Scripture to God's blessing of His people when they are obedient to His Word yet we have to remember that such blessings are always measured in relative not absolute terms. In God's economy "the poor are always with us." As the entire society prospered as a whole, yet the farmer blessed with an abundant harvest was commanded to leave gleanings for the poor. Prosperity as an overall assessment is not now nor ever has been, an equality of measure within it. In times of overall prosperity there is a call for obedience in that. In times of overall destitution the call for obedince is no less critical.
This country has been prosperous for so long that we generally consider it an American right of existence. The basis for that assumed "right" has changed significantly. We once prided ourselves on our industrious nature and grit because the "moral" vindication of those qualities was that they yielded prosperity for individuals and the social order as a whole. Now, as has recently been reported, that moral assessment has shifted signficantly and "prosperity" is often viewed as that which is to be provided to us by right of birth.
The fundamental problem is that assigning a "moral" vindication to prosperity is problematic at best and absolutely sinful at worst. No man is "owed" prosperity. It is not a natural "right." To understand that it is morally right and imperative for human beings to be honest, industrious and employed is absolutely correct... but to assign a "cause and effect" relation to these moral attributes and a resultant "prosperity" is to forget that there is no "natural law" that so relates those things. We are to be honest, industrious and emplyed whether prosperity comes or not. We are to be about our Father's business and in that orientation there is an implicit submission required. If God brings prosperity then drink your wine with gladness and remember those less fortunate. If God does not bring prosperity then rejoice in what He does provide and remember those even less fortunate than you and guard against jealousy toward those who have abundance.
The lesson of Job has to be learned over and over again. Our worldly impoverishment is sometimes the result of God's chastening hand directed in such a way as to bring us repentance, at other times it is not directed toward that end at all but toward some other end. Similarly, God may indeed bless our labors with an abundance of worldly goods and He may do so in order to vindicate some righteous decision we have made... or He might have something entirely different in mind. We must be very careful about assigning an absolute moral meaning to prosperity or its opposite.
But what we can say is this - whether rich or poor - we are still blessed in our Covenant relation to our Covenant-Keeping God. We have what we need to be content with whatever we have and also to discover how, in our blessing, we can be obedient to God and to the command to help others.
If God is indeed bringing on a time of financial insecurity and perhaps difficulty on our nation... there is a reason for Him to do so. It is the end toward which that instrument is being used that should occupy our attention for it is there that we will find the roadmap for our obedience.
Whether rich or poor ... that's God's decision. How we respond? Well, that is a matter of our obedience.
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