Pondering why must God be first |
Last night we were sitting with some other self-employed folks and the subject of business came up. We were sharing that this month so far has been extremely busy and we’re putting in 12+ hour days. 
I’m loving how busy things are but at the same time am feeling a number of other things are being neglected. We pointed out that when the iron was hot in a sales-oriented business you need to act and then someone said:
“God first, family second, business third.”
Been thinking about the whole God first thing ever since. Why must God be first – for anybody? Is God going to pay your bills so your family can keep the roof over their heads? Does God put food on the table? I suppose if you pray for your garden and believe that God will provide a bigger crop than someone who doesn’t pray, then maybe God could help. I don’t recall some God bank account that we could withdraw funds from to pay for everything.
In the practical, real world sense, forget how religious or not you are, how can any reasonable person truly put God first? The way I see it, unless I’m missing something huge here, putting God first puts nearly everything that follows at risk.
I could see putting your family first, and work second. If you pull together as a family and work together you can take care of the real world bills. Putting work first all the time is not that wise unless you have no family. Some jobs don’t allow you to have much other life. For me the order of life works as follows:
- *Family
- *work
- friends
- other
This month in particular, #2 is #1. At times the first two are interchangeable. Since we are rebooting our business in 2009 and our children are all teenagers we are spending more time working at the moment. Once/if/when we get things stable again financially, we can go back to the preferred order above.
You might note that God isn’t named on my list.
This blog is down in the “other” column, BTW. If a friend or work or family member needs me for something, my blogging duties will have to wait. Where would God fit? The other column.
Don’t get me wrong, in the spiritual sense, I understand completely why God must be first. He could be your guiding force, energy, and provide that needed lift when everything seems to be falling apart. Those who need or desire something or Someone to believe in to live more full lives, hey, God being #1 on that list is logical. But even on my spiritual list, God wouldn’t always be first. He’d be in the top three.
Let’s say you get a call to go write a piece of business tonight that is a one time only deal or you can eat dinner with your family or head to the church to pray, which would you choose? Sorry God, I’m going with #1. Now if one of our kids was having a once in a lifetime event versus a once in a lifetime business deal I’m taking our child’s event every time and hoping that the business deal would understand that I have to put family first in scheduling conflicts like these. I’m not sure I could sleep at night putting business ahead of family every day. Some times in some situations, yes, but every time?
And God? Not even in the top three for me. A friend in need would come first. Just saying that in the real world putting God first doesn’t make sense to me. Does it to you? What am I missing here? I guess maybe if your church is a part of or is your business say as a pastor or preacher, but for those who don’t work in the church?
Cultism is creepy
Religion and cultism are two separate things, but sometimes their paths cross. Like what we’re seeing on the web right now with Steve Jobs medical condition and his job at Apple. Cultism creeps me out.
There are way too many people who have a cult-like following of Steve Jobs. I feel sorry for Mr. Jobs that there is this much cultism surrounding him. Lots of stories about him taking a medical leave of absence from Apple and the price of the stock and people wanting to know a bunch of things about his personal health and life. What Steve Jobs wants to share with us about his health and his personal life is up to him. If he needs to take a medical leave of absence, then people should accept that and move on.
All this weird speculation, conspiracy theories and demands that he tell the world his health for the sake of shareholders is nonsense. I’m an Apple (AAPL) shareholder and I didn’t invest in AAPL because of Steve Jobs. I invested because I liked what the company was doing and saw promise in the future. The stock is down from it’s high of around $200, but hey, I still think there are positive signs for the company and these are hard economic times for many, many companies. I’m not selling my AAPL stock because Steve Jobs isn’t piloting the ship any more for health reasons.
And yet I can’t help wondering if Steve Jobs is putting God first? I know nothing about the man’s spiritual guide but I’m guessing from a real world practical sense, he’s looking at his family and health first, his job second and God is down the line.
It’s not about atheism or being anti-religion
I’d like for the discussion that follows, if any, not descend into a religion vs. anti-religion discussion. I’m not trying to stoke or promote some anti-religion agenda by wondering aloud why God must be first. I respect people’s religious beliefs I’m simply asking about the practical, real world side of life. How can one put God ahead of family, work and friends? I wanted to ask this question last night but this came up as we were leaving and time wasn’t there to get into it plus I didn’t know the people well enough to make the discussion about practicality and not faith. They are two separate things to me, but that’s not the case for everyone.
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The answer you would have gotten:
“Because if you place your faith in God, then he will take care of you.”
In the same way that I cannot understand someone following this path, they cannot fathom a day to day
existence as I might live…without their “faith”.
It’s a sticky road to travel unless both participants in the debate are able not overly personalize the issues.
Ultimately, I feel that what you believe is your own business and no one should ever challenge it for any reason, unless it directly hurts others.
Hiding behind religion as a tool for inflicting harm (mental or physical) is abhorrent and should never be allowed.
Comment by Wayne — January 15, 2009 @ 8:42 am PST
Well stated, Wayne. And to that answer I would have replied: “but my faith in God will not pay my mortgage next month, unfortunately.”
I’d like to see just one person, any person on earth, show me where God stepped up and paid their bills. Maybe God influenced the luck of the draw in the lottery or the slot spin(?) Or maybe God influenced someone to hire you or give you that next great job in life, but if you are already gainfully employed, I don’t think God is going to save one from being fired if they don’t come to work thinking: work first. Then again, I might be wrong.
When it gets into putting my family and friends — who are flesh and blood real before me — versus putting Someone who may or may not be there (depending on one’s individual beliefs) again from a practical standpoint, I don’t see the logic.
Comment by TDavid — January 15, 2009 @ 9:12 am PST
When God isn’t some all powerful being and is the person who created you, gave you life and freewill, it’s a lot easier to put him first. Not to mention, he lovingly took all your wrongdoing and removed it by taking it upon himself. So when it all comes down to the end and your judged for who you were… Jesus bailed you out for each and every wrong and you’re saved. Food, bills, everything else does mean near as much.
That’s why a believer would put God first. Very few do. But that’s why they would put him first. This life is useless in a scheme involving eternity.
Comment by Par — January 15, 2009 @ 11:00 am PST
I try not to expound on faith too often, as I don’t really feel that I’m very qualified to. However, I thought I might give my $0.02 here.
Faith is not a logical thing. This is probably one of the key reasons that you won’t find many of my generation who are technically inclined that are very faithful. For a very long time (all of history), faith has been pushed as a all or nothing sort of thing.
In my opinion, it is both a all or nothing sort of thing and it isn’t. Not logical, I know. Looking specifically at a practical application as you are, I couldn’t help but come to the same conclusions, but I think (as a Christian) that it is faulty logic. And possibly a misinterpretation.
Putting God first doesn’t mean (IMHO) that you have to choose going to church to pray over a business meeting. To me, it means that in everything you do, you attempt to do it in a Christian way. To say it less religiously, in everything you do, you do it in a moral way. I think it was Pascal (yes, that Pascal) who came up with the concept that is now called Pascal’s Gambit( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager ). In it, Pascal hypothesized that it was better to “wager” on the existence of a God because if you did and there isn’t one, you’ll have lived your life in a moral way and have “lost” nothing in the wager, but if you wager against the existence of a God and one does exist, you’ll have “lost” the eternal life promised.
So, to me, putting God first is more about living my life in a Christian way, but it also means that I trust God to help when I need it. No, God isn’t going to send me a check for my mortgage, but I do believe that if I’m in a situation where I’ve been living my life in a Christian way and I find myself needing money for my mortgage, I can trust God to provide me with a way to pay that mortgage. By that, I mean that I trust that God will put me in a situation where I will be able to earn extra money or find a way to raise the money. Can I prove that the money came from God? No. But I will say that through my experience, when I trust God to find a way, it generally happens.
Logically, all of that can be explained away as circumstance and luck. I’m not very good at explaining any of it, but perhaps I should just say that I feel “luckier” when I trust in God to provide as opposed to the times where I didn’t.
In closing, I hope that I haven’t crossed the line into the “Religion vs. Anti-Religion”. My intention wasn’t/isn’t to push my religion on anyone or to chastise anyone for not being religious, but merely to state my point of view on the subject based on my experiences and my faith.
Comment by thatedeguy — January 15, 2009 @ 11:47 am PST
“God first” represents a different way of looking at religion than the way most of us think about it. Not only do they put a priority on doing things God-related, but they think about God first when it comes to any issue — which includes being in a constant state of prayer.
Most of the rest of us think of God as something that’s (maybe) out there, but is rarely if ever concerned with our personal affairs. Thus, “putting God first” makes little sense, because how could he/she/it need anything from us?
I’ve been on moth sides of that coin in my life, and have now settled comfortably into the hypothesis that the whole concept is off base.
Comment by Sterling Camden — January 15, 2009 @ 1:42 pm PST
s/moth/both/
Comment by Sterling Camden — January 15, 2009 @ 1:43 pm PST
Great comment, thatedeguy, you didn’t cross any lines, you made me think
Always a good thing in that regard.
Comment by TDavid — January 15, 2009 @ 8:17 pm PST
Par - I’m confused by this statement: “he lovingly took all your wrongdoing and removed it by taking it upon himself.” — how did He (supposed to be capitalized isn’t He?) lovingly take all my wrongdoing? Is this some sort of biblical reference? Not being critical here, just curious.
Comment by TDavid — January 15, 2009 @ 8:24 pm PST
TDavid, Par is referencing the Crucifixion. According to the Bible, God allowed Jesus to be Crucified for the forgiveness of our sins. The story goes that Jesus accepted the weight of all of our wrongdoing and was crucified to cleanse that wrongdoing.
The short answer would have been, Yes, it is a biblical reference.
Comment by thatedeguy — January 15, 2009 @ 8:33 pm PST
TD, I disagree that “in the spiritual sense…God must be first.”
My life experiences have caused me to believe in a universal God, but I don’t think ‘he’ involves himself personally in our lives– so why should he necessarily have a place in them at all? A lot of nominal Christians, especially biblical fundamentalists, seem unable to conceive of a God that might exist outside the confines of received doctrine.
I’ve met more than a few so-called Christians who consider you an atheist if you don’t believe that Jesus Christ was the one son of God, even if you acknowledge the existence of God, but reserve judgment on the question of Jesus’ divinity.
I grant that a Christian might have reason to expect other Christians to put God first in their lives, but he has no rational basis to impose his beliefs on others, Christian or not.
Ah, but there’s the rub. Religious faith can’t be made rational, no matter how many treatises the doctors of the Church wrote for Catholics, or how many fist-shaking sermons evangelists like Billy Graham deliver to fundamentalists. The great joke is that the members of all the different denominations can’t even agree on doctrine among themselves, and they continue to split into factions over trivial differences.
Almost daily I observe coincidences, or synchronicity, in mundane happenings that incline a natural skeptic like me to believe that all things in the universe are somehow interconnected. That’s where I see an intelligence that I arbitrarily call ‘God’.
Yet I think a rational person has to concede that other people might not experience reality the way he does, and that it’s a violation of their personal autonomy to try to impose his own point of view on them.
It should be self-evident that no entity or institution has the right to tell you or me what place ‘God’, however you define that, should have in our lives in a free country.
First, last, or none– it’s no one else’s business– and that is why it’s out of line to say “God first” in a social setting.
Comment by Vince Williams — January 16, 2009 @ 1:51 pm PST
Vince - not mentioned above, but this is supposedly a Mary Kay philosophy according to the woman. I don’t know for a fact if Mary Kay salespeople are told “God first” but that was certainly the impression I was given. I don’t see how or why any company — that wasn’t a church to begin with — would be preaching that philosophy? Then again I don’t buy cosmetics and maybe my wife would feel differently. I would probably have a problem with selling products/services for a company that were telling me “God first” — simply because I don’t see the practical application of this philosophy.
Comment by TDavid — January 16, 2009 @ 7:50 pm PST
TD, agreed.
Comment by Vince Williams — January 16, 2009 @ 8:44 pm PST
I guess you’re right with your opinion. God can’t be the number 1 in a humans live, because if you set God on the 1st place, it won’t be good for business or family. And I really believe that your job is much more important than God, because 1st God won’t to your work, and 2nd if you go to church instead of an important business meeting, you won’t be a good businessman, and you will still get in danger to lose your job.
Your boss would accept it if you don’t have time, because your children has an important event, but he/she won’t accept if you go to church.
God may be important, but he wouldn’t be the number 1 on a list. There are facts you will really need God as a strong will or something, but always believe that your life is much more important than God.
Everybody should know what comes first on their own list, but this is a really good article for everybody to think about if good should be really the number one on a list.
Thanks for this great post
Janet
Comment by Janet Halsketten — January 19, 2009 @ 1:02 am PST
Aww, God will never be the number one on a list. I can’t believe that there are people who set god on the first place. OK, I would understand it, if they work in a church, but if not why they would ever need god as the first one? Don’t they have a family or work? So I would never agree with somebody who tells me, that god should be my number one.
I’m sure our religion plays a big role in our live, because that’s something that makes you stronger if your life is pretty worse, but you can’t even then put God as the number one thing. God won’t help you to get out of this mess. God won’t pay you money, or take care of your children, or whatever.
By the way I’m not very religious, and that’s because of that God hasn’t ever helped me when I had big problems in my own life.
Comment by Donna Registrierkasse — January 20, 2009 @ 12:39 am PST
A very good saying about God here as I like it very much to comment upon. So we need to believe in God in our life as he is the first preference in our life. I agreed.
Comment by Rachelloury — January 20, 2009 @ 4:25 am PST
This is my problem with secular religion…passing judgment.
Christians proselytize and Jews don’t. Cross the line on either side and you are an outcast. I am married to an ex Jehovah’s Witness. I had to constantly hear stories about bunch of perverted old men passing judgment on the rest of the kingdom hall. Wow….I feel better now.
Great post…got me stirred up a bit
I’ll be back
Comment by Grog — January 20, 2009 @ 1:07 pm PST
GOD, Is and always be # 1 in my life. I adore him and honor him and devote my life to doing GODS work. We are here for him and the second is love for my worldly family. IN GOD WE TRUST. I trust him and GODS will be done everyday of my life. GOD bless all of you who do not put GOD first.
Comment by Mary/Sissy — January 20, 2009 @ 6:05 pm PST
I guess, do we have to put god on a childish list? People should prefer which is their real number one by themself. Nobody could ever tell me who should be my number one. I believe it depents on a situation, but there can’t be a life if you set god always on the 1st place. I can’t understand them sometimes… It’s really to weird for me.
Comment by Schmuck Anhaenger — January 21, 2009 @ 4:56 am PST
I believe god can be the number one on a list. This is something which depends on how strong your belief is. There are many people who don’t believe in god that much, but God will always be there for you, and he will help you. No he doesn’t do your work or gives you money, but he’ll give you strength to get on with your life.
Comment by Helen Funkscanner — January 22, 2009 @ 1:33 am PST
If God should be number one on a list, i don’t know. I believe everybody should decide on their own if God is the number one or not. Nobody can tell you it has to be, because there are no reasons which tell you that it is a must. It depends always on your belief and your personality. Sure sometimes I put God on the first place, but there are enough moments I don’t. So everybody has the right to decide if God is number one.
Comment by Deborah Schmuck — January 26, 2009 @ 1:56 am PST
When one puts God first, one follows what the Bible says, and only what the Bible says, and the most important commandment in the Bible is to love one another.
The Bible says to love everyone, be they children, businessmen, rapists, or serial killers. It says “Judge not and you shall not be judged.” When you put God first, you do not judge others at all. That is God’s job. Our job is to love other people. That is why it is written, “It is better to give than to receive.”
It also says “thou shalt not kill”, and God says, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay.” This commandment about killing others applies also to elected officials, police, and military soldiers, because they are humans too.
The Bible says not to pray in public. It says in Matthew 6:6 “But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”
The Bible says in Genesis that God blessed the seventh day of the week, and made it holy. The seventh day of the week, according to the calendar, is Saturday. The Sabbath is Saturday. Just because the Catholic church says that the Sabbath is now Sunday does not make it so. Only the Bible is truth. Jesus said that it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. Jesus did his work, his work of loving and healing and teaching on the Sabbath, and his disciples also plucked ears of corn on the Sabbath day, which counts as work. If one is doing one’s work as if he was doing it for God, and not for man, as the Bible says, then one is doing good, and glorifying God.
The Bible says not to forsake fellowship with other believers, but it does not say one has to go to church, and listen to whatever a man on a podium says is the truth. I feel that it is far easier to read the Bible for oneself. One learns more about righteous living that way.
The church is not a building. The church is a conglomerate of people who are not divided by petty mistranslations of the Word of God, but they follow God’s Word and they love Him with all their heart, mind, soul, and strength. They are not judgmental, nor condescending, nor self-righteous, nor do they look forward to the day of the Lord, “for the day of the Lord is darkness, and not light.” The time of God’s judgment will be the time when Christ’s love will be needed most, through physically helping others, for “faith without works is dead.”
The Bible says not to present one’s alms (can also be translated as giving to the poor) before men, to be seen of them. It should be done “in secret, and the Lord who seeth in secret shall reward you openly.” One should give to the poor without seeking any acknowledgment or praise from others, and they should not do it in front of people to be seen of them.
There you go. I have told you what it means to put God first, and putting God first and following His commandments results in the betterment of that live around you. Jesus, God’s Son, helped many people, and He told them the way into heaven, and he died for them. That was what He was about. That is what His followers are called to do. To “be faithful unto death, and I shall give thee a crown of life.” “He that endureth unto the end, the same shall be saved.”
The word “rapture” is not in the Bible at all. It says in Revelation 18:23, “And in her was found the blood of prophets, and of saints, and of all that were slain upon the earth.” Do not think for one moment that Christians will be spared of the first death, the death of the body. It says in Revelation 2:11, “He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches; He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second death.”
The second death is the death of the soul, to be cast into the lake of fire, or to enter into God’s kingdom because His name was written in the Book of Life.
Thank you for your patience in reading what I had to say. You will find that a great majority of churches in this world do not teach what the Jesus really says to do, and this is unfortunate. The Bible is much more simple than some make it out to be. This is the Holy Word of God that I have referred you to, not the words of any sinful man, like me. My word is nothing. My opinion is trivial. God’s Word is paramount.
Comment by Greg Stumpff — February 26, 2009 @ 9:03 am PST
Lol,”what the Jesus really says.” Whoops. Sorry. I posted twice on accident. I guess now it is three times. Sorry again. LOL.
Comment by Greg Stumpff — February 26, 2009 @ 9:13 am PST
Thanks for the lengthy comment, Greg. I’m going to have to digest those words and think about them. For some reason your comment was posted twice, so I removed the dupe.
Comment by TDavid — February 26, 2009 @ 9:14 am PST