Just What ARE the True Values?
Are
you being fooled by false values? Are they making a fool of you? They
could be unless you can distinguish between them and God's true values.
How tragic! The prevailing values of our society are the false values of Satan the devil!
Satan,
the "god of this world" (II Cor. 4.4). has deceived most of mankind
into accepting his false standards as the measures by which people
judge themselves. But. despite their outward glimmer and glamour,
Satan's values have no real substance.
Are you, unwittingly, one
of the billions who spend their entire lives connivingly, relentlessly
— even desperately — following afier the fool's gold of the false
values? Don't think you couldn't be! Satan's standards are not easily
or quickly recognizable as false values — even by some brethren in
God's Church.
But by letting those false values rule your life,
you could find yourself as helpless as the inexperienced gold
prospector who dumped his ore on the assayer's scale only to be told:
"This stuff is worthless, mister. It's fool's gold, and the fool is
you."
The fool's gold of false values is worth no more than the
crumbly heap of worthless ore the naive prospector handed the assayer.
Sadly, though, some, even in the Church, have sold all to buy fields
that contain not the treasures of God's Kingdom, but only the glitter
of mines full of fool's gold.
Some of us cannot even recognize
or define what the true values really are! The motto of Ambassador
College is "Recapture True Values." But would you be hard put to
say. in a few
words, what it is we in God's Church are trying to "recapture"?
Satan's false values
Jesus
Christ is the great spiritual Assayer. It is through Him alone, and
through His Word, that we can analyze our values. The Bible is the
testing fire through which we must pass each of our values to determine
whether they are fool's gold or the eternal riches that perish not. And
when we test this world's standards — Satan's false values — we find
that they fail miserably.
One false value for which the world generally lusts is wealth — material possessions. Our society is steeped in materialism.
Of
course, there is nothing wrong with having nice things. God's Church
has always taught that wealth of itself is not wrong, and that we
should buy the best quality goods we can afford. Jesus Christ came that
we "might have life, and . . , have it more abundantly" (John 10:10).
But
when the desire for wealth or material possessions takes the place of
God's true values in our lives — when we set our lusts upon or put our
trust in these things — then these desires become a snare:
"But
they that will be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many
foolish and hurtful lusts, which drown men in destruction and
perdition. For the love of money is the root of all evil, which while
some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced
themselves through with many sorrows" (1 Tim 6:9-10).
In the
end, wealth becomes a great disappointment, for money and material
possessions all perish — you can't take them with you when you die.
None can purchase for you any part in God's Kingdom. That's why Christ
tells us in Luke 12:15, "Take heed, and beware of covctousness: for a
man's life consistcth not in the abundance of the things which he
possessed."
Christ goes on to describe a man who, after
accumulating great possessions, selfishly decided to keep acquiring and
storing them for himself, as though he could take them past the grave.
God said to the man, "Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required
of thee: then whose shall those things be. which thou hast provided?"
(verse 20).
And Christ said elsewhere: "For what is a man
profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul1 or
what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" (Matt 16:26).
Anyone who makes mammon his ultimate aim will find himself, in the end, with values as worthless as a lump of fool's gold.
Another
false value is fame. Not every person will admit to wishing for fame,
but most carnal human beings do long after one of fame's children —
prestige, popularity, awe in the eyes of others.
Again, fame of
itself is not wrong. Jesus Christ Himself was famous in His own day:
"And Jesus returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee: and there
went out a fame of him through all the region round about" (Luke 4:14).
Similarly, the fame of Solomon spread so much throughout the world that
the Queen of Sheba made a special trip to see him. She wanted to see
whether the reputation he had among the people was rightly deserved (I
Kings 10:1-13). It was.
But when fame becomes an end in itself,
and a person desires notoriety before God's true values and His
Kingdom, then fame becomes a false value and a catalyst of much evil.
Such was the type of evil fame — infamy — that Absalom, David's son,
garnered for himself when he sought to turn the heart of the people
from his father to himself.
Part of Absalom's fame resulted.
apparently, because he flaunted his good looks: "But in all Israel
there was none to be so much praised as Absalom for his beauty: from
the sole of his foot even to the crown of his head there was no blemish
in him" (II Sam. 14 25). So great was Absalom's vanity that he
apparently made a great production of weighing his hair each year and
publicizing the results (verse 26).
But Absalom's vanity and
desire for fame ended in his downfall — his long hair caught in the
branches of a tree and literally hung him from his head, and his foe
killed him (11 Sam. 18:9, 14).
Likewise, the inward, twisted pursuit
of fame engaged in by the people of this world will prove to be a waste
of time and effort. Their balloon will burst in their faces when Christ
asks to see their fruits and they have none to show.
Another
false value those in Satan's society strive after is power The author
of the lust for power is Satan. He was unhappy with the responsibility
God gave him originally, and became envious of God Himself:
"For
thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven. I will exalt
my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the
congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the
heights of the clouds: I will be like the most High" (Isa. 14:13-14).
Those
who fall into the trap of wanting more and more power are merely
mimicking the greatest usurper of power ever the god of this world,
Satan the devil. And the curse that will befall Satan, the father of
power lust, will certainly come upon those who adopt his selfish
attitudes as their own codes for living.
One false value is
often disguised as a true value, and it does indeed have good elements
within it. But nonetheless it must be classed as a false value. It is
knowledge.
Knowledge is good, of course, if it builds upon the
foundation of all truth, the Word of God. But acquiring knowledge as an
end in itself leads to vanity ("Knowledge puffcth up" — I Cor. 8:1).
And knowledge not based on God's Word and God's truth leads away
from eternal life
because its use produces wrong results.
Many
people in this society worship knowledge almost like a god. But a
person is not saved according to how much of this world's education he
has, nor according to the size of his vocabulary, nor according to how
many letters he has after his name. In fact, many people have devoted
their lives to becoming educated in this world's knowledge, only to
become specialists in the very philosophies of Satan himself, such as
evolution, false psychology and wrong business practices.
Romans
1:28 remarks, "And even as they did not like to retain God in their
knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things
which are not convenient." As Solomon said. "There is a way which
seemeth right unto a man. but the end thereof are the ways of death"
(Prov. 14:12).
Those who
have made man's knowledge — apart from God — a
god in itself have merely learned how to run faster toward
unrighteousness than those who have not yearned so greatly to soak up
Satan's mind and substance.
This is not to say that one cannot
be a Christian and be educated But true education must be in harmony
with and build upon God's laws and truth, rather than be in opposition
to them. And knowledge should never become one's god.
Can't follow both
The false values examined above are each damaging in their own ways. But they do have certain things in common.
First,
none of them has any lasting value. They are temporary. They will burn
up or disappear when Christ renews the world and replaces this system
with His own (Heb. 1:11. II Pet 3:10).
A second
thing they have in common is that, to us human beings, who view things
superficially at times. they all look like they have great value. They
arc "deceitful" (Matt. 13:22), both to those who have excelled in the
false values and to those who have not but wish they had. However, such
counterfeit values, though perhaps looking good on the surface, have no
more real value than the fool's gold spoken of earlier. God will not
accept them as the basis upon which to transform any human into an
immortal, spirit-composed God Being.
Third, practicing false
values chokes out the true values that God's Word teaches and promotes.
Human beings simply cannot maintain true values and false values at the
same time. Our minds are singular, they seek one set of goals at a
time. We simply cannot serve both God and mammon (Matt. 6:24).
God's true values
What.
then, are the true values? The true values parallel the false values in
the sense that for each false value there is a corresponding true value
with which we should replace it.
The first of these true values
is character. While the people of this world strive and struggle to
have more money or material possessions, true Christians should be
hungering and thirsting for righteousness (Matt. 5:6). Physical
possessions are ephemeral, but character will remain with us forever —
character is a special type of wealth. It is the quality that God's
whole plan was set in motion to produce!
The basic qualities of
character — the fruits of God's Spirit as described in Galatians
5:22-23 — are the true riches: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love,
joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith. Meekness,
temperance: against such there is no law."
Instead of vainly
seeking after the second false value of prestige or fame, the true
Christian seeks to build and preserve proper group relationships. The
false value of fame is based upon vanity and self. But giving oneself
to build a group serves both the individual and the others involved
These group relationships include one's marriage, one's family, God's
Church and one's friends.
Like fame, proper group relationships
are based upon the feelings we have for other people or the feelings
they have for us. But unlike fame, proper group relationships are based
upon helping, encouraging and giving to the others in our group, and
not upon pushing others down so we may exalt ourselves.
Such
relationships are exemplified by the Church, which, far from being a
catapult for the selhsh desires of any particular person, is rather the
epitome of concern for one another: "That there should be no schism in
the body; but that the members should have the same care one for
another. And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it;
or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it" (I Cor.
12:25-26).
Rather than seeking to exalt himself, the person who
embraces this second true value cherishes family and friends and is
training himself to become a Member of the Family of God and the Wife
of Christ at His return.
Instead of seeking the third false
value of power, a Christian should seek service. Even Christ Himself.
who existed before the foundation of the earth and shared great power
with God, so treasured the value of service that He set aside His power
to become a servant.
"Let this mind be in you. which was also in
Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to
be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and look upon him
the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being
found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself (Phil. 2:5-8).
In
Matthew 20:26-27. Christ announced that "whosoever will be great [i.e ,
have great power] among you, let him be your minister; And whosoever
will be chief among you, let him be your servant."
Those who
strive for service — who elevate the goal of serving to one of their
chief values in life — will find themselves in the group of sheep who
gave the hungry meat and the thirsty drink, and who clothed the naked
stranger. They will "inherit the kingdom prepared for [them] from the
foundation of the world" (Matt. 25:34).
And instead of seeking
only for worldly knowledge, a true Christian should seek wisdom. Wisdom
may be defined as the correct use of true knowledge, based on the
foundation of God's Word. A person armed with real wisdom is well
equipped for this world and for the world tomorrow "For wisdom is
better than rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to
be compared to it" (Prov. 8:11)
Build upon a rock
Christ
defined a wise man as one who hears the sayings of God and follows
them: "Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth
them. I will liken him unto a wise man. which built his house upon a
rock" (Matt. 7:24). In this parable. the rains and flood beat upon the
house built on the rock of hearing and doing Christ's sayings, but it
did not fall. And the wise, the ones who hear and do Christ's sayings,
will be the ones who enter God's Kingdom. "Not every one that sailh
unto me. Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he
that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven" (verse 21).
Just as the false values have certain things in common, so also do the true values.
First,
the true values arc far different from the false values because the
true values have lasting rewards: "Lay not up for yourselves treasures
upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break
through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven. where
neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break
through nor steal" (Matt. 6:19-20).
And second, the true values,
to a carnal mind, do not look like they will help a person reach
happiness, but they do. One does not see the "value" in the true values
until he begins to apply the true values in his life. This simple fact
— that one must obey and honor the true values in faith (believing that
they are of benefit) — is the very reason most people never apply them
in the first place. To the carnal mind, they just do not seem correct
(Prov. 14:l2).
God's true values are a golden treasure God hid
in the field of this life. It is for these values that we should "sell
all" spiritually, and then with joy "buy" the truth: "Again, the
kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when
a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all
that he hath, and buyeth that field" (Matt. 13:44).
God's values
are no worthless mine shaft filled with glittery false values. Instead,
they are the substance of our quest for eternal life.
But what
about you? Are you seeking the true riches of the true values0 Or is
the fool's gold of false values making a fool of you?
By Bernie Schnippert Good News May 1981
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