Respect Money Power Mod
Anita Damelio
I will promise you that if you put in the time to gain the respect of influential people in your life, obtain the power to lend them a helping hand and impact their lives when they really need it, you will come across the opportunities to make as much money as your heart desires. Everyone at some point in his or her life is given a break. How you obtain that break and how you use it, and what you make of it is solely up to the individual.
Personally, I would want to have money. With money you can buy whatever you want to make you happy, you can help people in need and donate and that will help you gain respect. If you have enough money you can usually buy your way into power. I think money would get me all three of these things.
We all need to be challenged about the way that we think of these pillars in our lives. We need to develop a healthy relationship with money and consumption, we need the hunger to build political power that means something. We need to challenge the notions of what deserves our respect.
Day 1 is the voice of the historic Protestant denominations. Through sermons, blogs, and video & audio resources, Day 1 proclaims God's hope for a hurting and divided world. Formerly "The Protestant Hour."
I vividly recall a song from my early 20s, before Christ, entitled "Money, Power, Respect."[1] In it the rappers contend that these ideological constructs indeed collectively represent the key to life, which is to say, if you possess them (money, power, and respect) you have made it. You are self-sufficient, the master of your own universe. You can pass go and collect $200. You have achieved material success. Classic suburban representations of this, the quintessential American Dream, might be illustrated by the picture perfect spouse, booming career, robust retirement portfolio, 2.5 kids, loving dog (Lassie comes to mind), and a charming residential oasis whose garage is filled to the brim with "needless" stuff.
Senior Pastor and author, John Ortberg rightly weighs in: "For the stuff in our lives is only temporary. The day is coming when all our 401(k)s and our bank statements will be irrelevant. The titles on our resumes will no longer impress anyone. GPAs and SAT scores and college acceptances will be long-forgotten. No one will know what clothes hung in our closets or what cars sat in our garages. All that will be left is love. That which was done out of love for God will last. Every human being you see is a cleverly disguised receptacle of eternity. You can take the love with you. The object of life is to be rich toward God."[2]
Unfortunately, many Christians have adopted a spiritualized narcissism wrapped in Christian veneer, which has allowed the prosperity gospel to flourish. This doctrine's basic premise is that God desires his children to be financially prosperous, that he sacrificed his son Jesus so that Christians could live quasi-spiritually and materially abundant lives.[3] It is what noted Princeton philosopher Cornel West described as "Constantinian Christianity."[4] One becomes addicted to the idea of entitlement. If one spiritually and materially pulls themselves up by their bootstraps, then they indeed must be a genuine servant of God in whom he is well pleased, or so goes the thinking. A growing, attractive heresy, the prosperity gospel is sweeping through American Christianity. Building upon the Protestant work ethic, it easily turns opportunist, overzealous ministers into pimps, and obedient parishioners into prostitutes. Far too often this sickness is glorified by Christian leaders. Take, for example, the following disturbing remarks of Atlanta pastor Eddie Long from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
We're not just a church, we're an international corporation. We're not just a bumbling bunch of preachers who can't talk and all we're doing is baptizing babies. I deal with the White House. I deal with Tony Blair. I deal with the presidents around this world. I pastor a multimillion-dollar congregation. You got to put me on a different scale than the little black preacher sitting over there that's supposed to be just getting by because the people are suffering.[5]
Another example might be, preacher and pastor, C.L. Franklin, who also was the father of the "Queen of Soul," Aretha Franklin. What many people don't know, however, is that he was famous himself long before Aretha became a household fixture in the R&B musical genre. C.L. was a "successful" pastor with a booming megachurch before megachurches were commonplace. He amassed wealth and notoriety not only as one of the best and brightest preachers the African American tradition, but also as a pioneer in the recording and selling of his sermons as records or LPs. Additionally, his worship services were broadcasted on the radio, and he routinely toured with prominent gospel groups around the nation as part singer, part evangelist. An opportunist for sure, it is, arguably, an understatement to depict him as a pastoral renaissance man. Conservative estimates suggest that upwards of 10,000 people attended his funeral.[6]
The not so endearing part (and less widely known) of the story, however, is that while in having built a large, influential church, and gained national recognition for his preaching ability, C.L. Franklin failed miserably as a husband and father, as a servant-leader in that respect. He was unfaithful to his first wife on numerous occasions, and while he provided an excess of coveted material trinkets for himself and his children (e.g., fur coats, private school education, expensive automobiles), his consistent physical and spiritual absence from them didn't occur without harmful consequences. Seemingly, he was unable or unwilling to admit how his poor, sharecropping upbringing, compounded by other experiences, established and fed a sinful craving for women, fame, and fortune. Denise Levertov's poem "Adam's Complaint" describes this human flaw well:
Surely money in itself is neither good nor bad. It is merely a resource, like anything else, that God entrusts to us, and expects us to manage responsibly, which for believers inherently means doing so according to biblical, countercultural values. It is the love of money that is evil.[8] Sharing one of his grandmother's favorite mantras, Cornel West said, "Peacocks only strut because they can't fly."[9]
[3] For a debate about where Jesus was rich or not see John Blake, "Was Jesus Rich?", Atlanta Journal-Constitution (October 22, 2006). See also Stephanie Y. Mitchem, Name It and Claim It?: Prosperity Preaching in the Black Church (Cleveland, OH: Pilgrim, 2007).
If I asked you what where three things you'll want in life what would they be? Well if you ask me most people have said respect money and love. Do they wish for the same as you do? Everybody wants people to look up to them, they want to feel that confidence. The feeling of respect coming towards you from others is one of the greatest feelings that a human can feel. Money, who doesn't want it money is like power it provides us to get what we want and need. Money is survival in this world. Love that amazing feeling everyone wants to experience in life with a special someone. We all want to have that someone that shows love towards them that will alway put a smile on your face no matter the situation. That one person we can be ourselves around with. I have experienced in life that we will never have have all 3 wishes with us through life. It will either be respect money or love. Which one do you have?
I don't have a lot of money but I've got love more than I can accommodate, and it makes me feel good. I've met a lot of people who have lots of money but still they are unhappy and searching for something that they do not know. Maybe they're looking for love and acceptance--these two cannot be bought anywhere. But it's always better to have both. We cannot deny the act that money can indeed solve a lot of problems.
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