By: Rev. David Wilson Rogers
Consider a small thought experiment. Wherever you are right now, take a few moments—say 20 seconds or so—and look around where you are. While you are looking, take notice of everything in sight that is blue. Go ahead, try it now and return to this article after you are done. Now, name everything you saw that was red, green, or yellow.
This simple thought experiment has great implications for religious Christian faith and its connection with the believer’s relationship with God. One’s focus absolutely determines how the world is seen, experienced, and remembered.
In his beautiful devotional writing continued in the pages of Christian Scripture, the apostle Paul eloquently writes, “I have learned to be content with whatever I have.” That contentment is very important considering that Paul wrote those inspirational words while sitting in prison. Reaching out from an unjust and unwarranted incarceration, Paul seeks to encourage and bless the church at Philippi by writing to his beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, “I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.”
Part of that secret is found in the thought experiment. In all likelihood, you may have remembered a few red, green, or yellow items, but since your focus was on the blue, it is likely that you automatically overlooked everything else. One’s focus determines the way we see and interpret the world around us.
This is so vitally important in the unrelentingly negative, hateful, and bitter society in which we live. We are taught at a very early age to live in an attitude of scarcity, inadequacy, and inferiority. Marketing and advertising tells us that we cannot be fulfilled until we own the product being advertised, have the body shown on TV, or achieve the acclaim celebrated in populist media.
Research has demonstrated that this effect is greatly increased through the ubiquitous power and influence of social media. It is a vicious cycle of falsification, fabrication, and fictitious posting all intended to put one’s best self forward—a carefully crafted on-line image that is as just as fake as a Hollywood backlot movie set. The problem is, for many, the fabricated social media image becomes an unrelenting perception of an unachievable reality. Yet, since it cannot be achieved, people are overcome with feelings of inadequacy and inferiority because they know their real lives do not measure up to the posted reality of their peers. Thus begins a negative spiral that is rooted in the focus on one’s flaws, what others have, and how we simply do not measure up.
This secret was not new with Paul. Its origins lie in Creation. In Genesis, the tempter deceived Adam and Eve on the premise that they were inadequate and needed to eat in order to fulfill that which they were convinced they lacked and subsequently desired. Later in the history of the Sacred Story, God emphasized the secret in the 10 Commandments by listing the importance of not coveting anything that is not ours.
For Paul, the secret was also rooted in his stalwart faith in Jesus Christ. He had his “thorn in the flesh” and understood all too well where he fell short. Yet, rather than dwelling on his mistakes, failures, missteps, inadequacies, and insufficiencies, Paul focused on Christ and the knowledge that he was fully able to accomplish all things through Christ. This is at the heart of Paul’s prophetic message to the church today in the book of Philippians.
