Discerning what is Important for Christians

Discerning what is Important for Christians. 

Whenever the question comes up asking generally what is the most important asset needed to raise a family, the conclusion of most people is enough money to live on.  This includes a home, maybe two cars, a good school for our children, and a bank account that will not run dry.  Of course do not forget about some type of money producing accounts i.e. IRA’s, money markets, CD’s, and optional retirement plans employers provide access to.  It has taken many years and effort to become part of all this, making the above attributes available for the average family.  

The prognosis for everyone is acceptable until we learn that new families have discovered it is better to wait before having children until we accumulate a substantial bank account, a house that we can say is our final mansion, trips that we might not enjoy after the children come, and a promise of being able to allow these children the opportunity to enjoy their extra-curricular activities as they grow up.  Sounds like a pre-written scenario for the modern family, does it not?  However, as we have already seen, apostasy has wiggled its way into the suburban community and the stress of keeping up with the Joneses, an early 50’s comment, attending Church on a Sunday becomes an unnecessary requirement since the work-week takes up too much free time.  And of course, the pre-teens’ sports are only available on Sundays and we cannot allow them an absence from these necessary events.

Money makes many people feel secure until it falls away because of some unsuspecting event like a failure in the stock market as in the 20’s when the banks failed.  The number of suicides by many whose whole lives were held together by money alone is a tragic but realistic scenario that without God in the midst of our lives, this security is meaningless.  When we die with God as our crutch we take with us a grace that money cannot buy.  Even if we die with millions in the bank, we only take with us an empty grave. 

Suddenly, what many of us grew up with during the 1950’s and later has now become a life that was, and our culture has twisted the needs of 2025 to fit a modern society.  In all this article so far, we have not included the need to find God as our deepest adherence for accomplishing our money, future desires, and who without his grace would not have accomplished these goals.

This is where society and the human race must first take account of where we would be had God not been included in our family decisions first.  Perhaps, because when we grew up in the 50’s most people did not have two cars, in fact a lot of people did not have even one.  The social requirements found many families spending some time praying together, attending Church as a family, and sharing the week-ends staying closer than what we now see.  

We always saw the need to ask God for guidance and paid adherence to his presence even if we couldn’t identify it as such.  

The absence of God’s touch in our everyday commitments is not because he doesn’t care for us.  We have deliberately shunned the need for God by our greed for money over grace.   It is that simple and will become a complete loss of divine grace due to our quest for wealth that in the end will mean nothing.

Etymologically, “concupiscence” can refer to any intense form of human desire,  Christian theology has given it a particular meaning:  the movement of the sensitive appetite contrary to the operation of the human reason.  The apostle St. Paul identifies it with the rebellion of the “flesh against the spirit.”  Concupiscence stems from the disobedience of the first sin.  It unsettles man”s moral faculties  and, without being in itself an offense, inclines man to commit sins.  (CCC 2515).  

Perhaps the most crucial teaching we can give to the people in the pews is regarding the using nature and inhuman attributes in place of God, or identifying them as a god like ancient religions did thousands of years ago.  This too is against the Commandment that says, “you shall not have other gods besides me.”  (Ex 20: 3)  

What has occurred with the family discretion of seeking wealth and forgetting God on Sunday, and other periods of time, is producing  idols of Sunday sports for your children and the size of your bank account.  These issues are fine until they push the need for God’s grace away in place of the worship we call idols.  

The word we call discernment is needed by all when our Christian values are attacked by another entity called leisure from a Sunday Church service.  

Ralph B. Hathaway