The selfish secret many desire but won’t admit …

Let’s be blunt about human behavior for a moment.

Many of us harbor a secret selfish desire we really want but won’t admit, sometimes even to ourselves.

it’s this: Many (most?) of us don’t really want fairness, we want favor.

Truth be told, we want more than the next guy, better than the next guy.

What we want is favored status with favored circumstances.

“Yes God, please, and thank you.”

I call it a secret but it’s hardly hidden. You see it all over social media every day, especially among those professing Christians constantly posting about “favor.”

Favor, favor, favor!

I’ll say it again – we really want favored status with favored circumstances.

It’s an ancient ugliness of humanity. Even Jesus was confronted with this issue. As we read in the Gospel according to Matthew, we learn that our idea of “favor” isn’t the way the kingdom of God functions:

“For the Kingdom of Heaven is like the landowner who went out early one morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay the normal daily wage and sent them out to work. At nine o’clock in the morning he was passing through the marketplace and saw some people standing around doing nothing. So he hired them, telling them he would pay them whatever was right at the end of the day. So they went to work in the vineyard. At noon and again at three o’clock he did the same thing. At five o’clock that afternoon he was in town again and saw some more people standing around. He asked them, ‘Why haven’t you been working today?’ They replied, ‘Because no one hired us.’ The landowner told them, ‘Then go out and join the others in my vineyard.’ That evening he told the foreman to call the workers in and pay them, beginning with the last workers first. When those hired at five o’clock were paid, each received a full day’s wage. When those hired first came to get their pay, they assumed they would receive more. But they, too, were paid a day’s wage. When they received their pay, they protested to the owner, ‘Those people worked only one hour, and yet you’ve paid them just as much as you paid us who worked all day in the scorching heat.’ He answered one of them, ‘Friend, I haven’t been unfair! Didn’t you agree to work all day for the usual wage? Take your money and go. I wanted to pay this last worker the same as you. Is it against the law for me to do what I want with my money? Should you be jealous because I am kind to others?’ So those who are last now will be first then, and those who are first will be last,” Matthew 20:1-16.

These workers didn’t want fairness, they wanted the favor the last hired received. Like so many of us, it wasn’t an issue of fairness they wanted, it was a desire for favored status with favored circumstances.

Religious people can be some of the worst about this.

In fact, a key reason why the false “prosperity gospel” is so wildly popular is because it teaches people to seek after favor, as if they deserve it.

Kind of like a couple of the disciples behaved in the same chapter of Matthew:

“Then the mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came to Jesus with her sons. She knelt respectfully to ask a favor. ‘What is your request?’ he asked. She replied, ‘In your Kingdom, please let my two sons sit in places of honor next to you, one on your right and the other on your left,” Matthew 20:20-21.

People with this warped desire for favor tend to pass it on to their kids. The mother of James and John knew her boys better than anyone, which means she knew they had certainly done nothing to “earn” or “deserve” the honor of being seated on the right and left of Jesus in His kingdom — but that didn’t stop her from asking for it! She wanted favored status and favored circumstances (or, in this case, favored seating) for her kids.

The kingdom of God doesn’t work that way, as Jesus would explain:

“But Jesus answered by saying to them, ‘You don’t know what you are asking! Are you able to drink from the bitter cup of suffering I am about to drink?’ ‘Oh yes,’ they replied, ‘we are able!’ Jesus told them, ‘You will indeed drink from my bitter cup. But I have no right to say who will sit on my right or my left. My Father has prepared those places for the ones he has chosen.’ When the ten other disciples heard what James and John had asked, they were indignant. But Jesus called them together and said, ‘You know that the rulers in this world lord it over their people, and officials flaunt their authority over those under them. But among you it will be different. Whoever wants to be a leader among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first among you must become your slave. For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve others and to give his life as a ransom for many,” Matthew 20:22-28.

I’ve been working with a person who has served in ministry for many years now. As she is aging, she’s losing her sense of joy, saying she is seeing “windows of opportunities close.” She explained she’s seeing that she’ll never be able to do some things she wanted to do, experience some things she wanted to experience, accomplish some things she wanted to accomplish. And then she said that she simply isn’t “as favored” as others are.

She’s losing her joy because she wants favored status with favored circumstances but instead, God is “favoring” her with an opportunity to be a servant.

If you can’t find joy in that in the kingdom of God, then you won’t find joy, because that is how things operate there.

Scotty