Your “Blessings” Declare a Theology: But is it Christian?

We hear the word all the time in all its various forms. Maybe so often that we hardly notice anymore how inconsistent and vague this theological idea really is. Even for those who use it as a way to proudly but subtly identify as Christians, it’s often used in ways that actually misrepresent scripture.

Blessings are, at their core, a theological declaration of what God wants for us. “Luck” points to nothing; “blessings” point to God’s character. But what most people seem to mean by calling themselves blessed in these social media days is that they’re happy about something. These declarations or well-wishes are centered on our own feelings and are, therefore, more secular than biblical. When we feel privileged, treated, comfortable, secure, or well taken care of, it’s easy to think of ourselves as blessed. God must favor us because we feel good about where we are in life– even if the only standard we’re using to define this success is our worldly culture.

Many live in such a way where their foundational religious motivation seems to simply get themselves into the oncoming traffic of immediate worldly blessings. All of their commitment, obedience and affection for God seems to be motivated by the hope that they would be blessed with some kind of comfortable privilege. Anything they give is actually to see increase in their own wealth. No sooner have they given are they found boldly declaring for a “harvest” of tenfold.

Or maybe their goal is actually not to gain something, but to let go of or be healed from something. Either way, blessing for them is based on a circumstance that centers on their experience.

This secular-theological blending is not new nor is it unique to us in our Western, individualist culture. Blessings are usually defined as whatever is highly valued by society. Whatever people want most is labeled as the blessing that God wants to give to His faithful– whether that’s a Mercedes, a bigger home or business, or simply knowing where the next meal is coming from.

What we declare as blessings are incredibly important statements of theological belief. Blessings reveal the character of the God we believe in, and if we are called to be ambassadors of Christ to a fallen and selfishly-rebellious world, we better make sure we get our blessings straightened out. The weight of this word is heavy enough that we should honestly pause each time before we use it and consider the statement we are about to make about God’s character and universal will for all who believe in Him regardless of where they are.

Cross Cultural Test

I had a private, respectful conversation recently with someone who holds a fairly advanced understanding of prosperity through faith. Thankfully, he was willing to get into a more serious discussion with me as I sought to understand how he had arrived at such a conclusion given the promise of hardship and persecution from Jesus Himself, the subsequent history of the early Church which confirmed this promise, and even the gruesome deaths of Jesus’ closest and “most favored” followers.

The response I received completely baffled me. He said, “I understand what Christians have historically had to endure, but I’m really glad that we are no longer called to.”

He really said that. In a world where Christians are still the most persecuted religious group and thousands are still killed for their faith every year, he was under the impression that we’re supposed to be living our best life. Jesus is the king of the universe, therefore those who follow Him are on the royal inner circle and should see the evidence of such a reality.

My point is this: if the thing or lifestyle you call a blessing is not also found among fellow believers in a country like, say, North Korea, Iran, or Samalia, then you’re not talking about a blessing. What we’re doing by declaring our ability to buy a massive house (and a vacation house), or to worship without fear of being arrested by secret police is that those faithful brothers and sisters of ours in places who experience the opposite reality are not blessed.

If our view of being blessed calls for total and complete safety in our day-to-day lives, we’re unable to reconcile those who are martyred precisely because of their faith, or those who still get sick. We’re putting God in a position where He’s actually a failure more often than He is “successful” because every single one of us is going to reach a point where we will die despite how many prayers for safety we have being offered for us. We’re also calling God a complete failure for anyone who is born with any kind of limitation that makes their life more difficult or painful. Many are Christian and find great comfort in the promise of Christ’s salvation. Are they not blessed?

We worship a God who is universal and exists higher than any single culture, economy, or government on the planet. He is the One True God who has provided the atonement for the sins of the entire world and therefore does not have different categories or levels of blessing for His faithful depending on where they were born. Blessing experienced here must be blessing everywhere else, including throughout the history of the church. And my guess is that we would each struggle deeply with considering ourselves blessed if we were consistently beaten, shipwrecked several times, and publicly stoned (all on ministry-related trips, by the way) before spending years in prison and finally had our head chopped off. That was Paul’s life– the one who wrote the majority of the New Testament that we want to now twist into saying that God wants us to be happy and fulfill our personal dreams.

Blessing or Helpful

My wife and I are AirBnB hosts. How we got started was an interesting situation, actually. We bought this super old house in a developing part of town that had enough room to start a family in. A year after we moved in, we still hadn’t gotten pregnant and were struggling to manage a few home repair loans we had collected. Here we were with two spare bedrooms and a long list of other repairs the house needed.

When we listed our rooms on the AirBnB platform, we were hoping for a few hundred bucks a month. Maybe a few bookings here and there. What happened, though, was “Super Host” status within a month, and an average of four or five unbooked nights every month. It’s quite literally paid our mortgage each month, which has allowed us to make the needed repairs much faster.

Why do I share that with you? I’ve found myself in conversation with people several times, sharing about our AirBnB host experiences, and felt myself about to describe the financial freedom it’s given us as a blessing. Had the word not been a red flag for me, I would’ve said it without even thinking. Thankfully, instead of saying “it’s been a blessing” I’ve trained myself to say “it’s been helpful.” Very similar meanings from my own perspective, but helpful does not denote that God is rewarding us (and thereby refusing His favor on families who can’t fix their home’s foundation like us).

They’re Praying for Us

A friend of mind recalled a mission trip she took to a poor country in Africa. It was an awesome and powerful experience for her and she was so amazed at the level of joy she witnessed that arose from deep and enduring faith despite such high poverty.

We tend to hear this kind of story a lot, don’t we? That alone should tell us that what the American Church considers blessing is extremely suspicious. If we’re constantly surprised when we see people who don’t have nearly the wealth and security we have and are yet more content and more joyful than we are, it’s pretty obvious that we need a new theory about what actually leads to “the good life” we so desperately want.

Anyway, this friend of mind went through her trip and was so sad to reach her final day in-country. She went around to each of the people she had made strong connections with to say goodbye, but there was one encounter she wasn’t prepared for. An older woman gave her a heartfelt greeting and listened to my friend tell her a similar version of what she had told the rest of the villagers. “I’ll be praying for you!” she said.

The woman laughed. “Child, I’ll be praying for you. Where you live, you have so many more distractions than we have here.”

If luxury and comfort most often lead to apathy and self-reliance, why are we so quick to attribute those “gifts” to God? Wouldn’t those gifts more likely be from the one whose goal it is to distract us away from God and the Greatest Commandment?

What’s really interesting to me is that we keep sending out missionaries to the rest of the world who define and measure God’s blessings with an irrelevant scale. It’s as if we really think the rest of the world really needs what we have– even the kind of faith we have– here in the U.S. Whereas if you would simply talk to Christians in other parts of the world, they will tell you that American Christians are far more apathetic and dare-I-say immature than believers in their own churches. So many of us (especially those who can afford a plane ticket to Africa) simply don’t know what it means to rely on the Lord. Not like those we’re going to visit, at least. In some cases, we’ve even come to see reliance upon the Lord as a giant to overcome as if we are God’s anointed, called to topple every threatening circumstance and barrier in the way of our own self-sufficient dreams.

Scriptural Hand Grenades

What we would find if we read the scriptures honestly is a surprising redefinition of what true blessing is. Blessings from the One True God often have very little to do with personal success and comfort. They have a frustrating commitment to the Greatest Commandment, which puts God’s glory above our own desire to control and protect and advance ourselves. They also are in line with the Great Commission, which makes it extremely if not painfully clear that God is concerned first and foremost with His salvation and His character being known to the ends of the earth.

In the parable of the two sons, commonly known as the Prodigal Son, we get a really clear picture of God’s perspective amidst two worldly perspectives. Both sons, if you remember, were focused on the father’s stuff in one way or another. The first was focused on getting his inheritance as soon as possible and even returned to his father after blowing that inheritance with the motivation of having more of his father’s provision. The second son had the guise of loyalty to the father by staying but showed that he was equally concerned with his father’s stuff by getting upset about the huge party that was thrown for this disrespectful brother of his and not for himself. He was likely also concerned that his father’s remaining wealth would be split yet again now that his brother was wearing the family ring again.

But that was so obviously not the father’s focus. In fact, if anyone truly characterized the adjective “prodigal” it was actually the father. He is the one who was the most unreasonably lavish in his spending. The son who received an early inheritance can be expected to spend lavishly. But the father who is willing to grant his son’s request of receiving it in the first place? That’s ridiculous.

The father in the story, who represents God if you aren’t familiar with it, reveals his perspective at the very end when he comes out to the field to shamelessly request his “obedient” son’s presence at the celebration feast of his brother’s return.

“My son,” the father said, “you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” (Luke 15: 31,32)

The first thing that comes out of the father’s mouth in response to his son’s accusation is a correction of what the true blessing is: being with the father. In other words, while we are all so busy stressing about what God is going to give us and when, it seems that God’s concern is about whether we’re in relationship with him or not. If eternity is real and what Jesus accomplished on the cross was a way for us to spend that eternity in perfect unity with God, then whatever experience we encounter in our current state (referred to in Ecclesiastes as a simple vapor or a disappearing mist) is honestly inconsequential.

Don’t even get me started on The Beatitudes in Matthew 5.

The point is that if you read scripture plainly (not from snippets out of a daily single-verse devotional), you will be bombarded with situations that God has given to His faithful that fly in the face of what we consider blessings.

Blessing or Responsibility

Wealth is not in itself a bad thing. You will not catch me calling someone sinful just by looking at their bank account. I may ask some questions after getting a peak at their garage, but even then in a way that’s more curious than condemning.

I do believe, however, the Bible is clear about wealth being treated with caution. Talk to any avid skiers or snow sports enthusiasts and you’ll notice their concern increases as the mountain’s snowfall increases. They know that more snow directly correlates to a higher chance of an avalanche. Similarly, wealth and prosperity can have the same relationship with our tendency for idolatry.

I have come to a point where I will never (God help me) refer to money as a blessing. Simply put: I’ve seen people without a dime to their name have their needs taken care of while watching people who could retire for a thousand lifetimes completely lose their grasp of reality and purpose as if death and an eternal destiny isn’t waiting for them, too. This life isn’t an accumulation game, and neither is heaven a scene where we’re all kicking back on the beach with Mai Thai’s in our hands.

Money and wealth simply cannot be consistently called a blessing when it so often leads to the chilling of our relationship with the Father. A far better and more consistent way to refer to wealth is as a responsibility. Money and wealth, just like anything else, should be used in such a way that is consistent with the Greatest Commandment and the Great Commission, because from God’s perspective, that’s the only eternally significant goal we can have on earth. Money often arrives without reason just as much as it disappears without reason; therefore, our view of it should not be to equate it with God’s love for us but rather a signal that we’re being given a responsibility to be trusted with for a time. And if you’re thinking of the parable of the talents in Matthew 25, you’re on the right track.

So What Are Blessings?

Blessing is having the confidence, no matter where you live, that your eternity isn’t determined by your current feelings.

Blessing is having your dead and helpless spirit breathed to new life.

Blessing is knowing that you’ve been set free from sin and now have the freedom to follow Your Savior.

Blessing is being able to serve as an ambassador of Christ in the way we care for the most vulnerable among us.

Blessing is having a front row seat to witness what God is doing in the lives of the people we care the most about.

Blessing is having the undeserved access to speak and spend time with God.

Blessing is being known by God and being used to fulfill His purpose of amplifying the worship of His great Name.

Anything else compared to all of this is simply too limited, finite, and meaningless to ever call a blessing.

The Takeaway

Do yourself a favor and scrap the casual use of “Blessing” from your vocabulary for a while. Pay attention to when you would naturally want to use the term and ask yourself if what you’re thinking about is actually biblical.