BLOG BY DAVE SEIVRIGHT, August 6. 2016
This week I posted the above photo (taken in the early 90’s) of the staff of “Executive Ministries” of which I was a part for several years. Our mission still is to primarily evangelize and disciple executives and professionals. Yet someone commented on social media that the name “Executive Ministries” is an oxymoron. Here was my reply, with minor edits:
“Executives and professionals are an unreached “people group”. Most Christians prefer to support missions to the poor in Haiti or to those in the Amazon jungle. I was a successful lawyer in Jamaica and few people, including Christians, gave a rip about me or people like me! Why? They do not understand that money or career success does not give happiness. This lack of caring is often because they are essentially materialistic or envious. Yet, many wealthy and successful people have found that success leaves them “empty” emotionally and spiritually. I had a loving family, a wonderful marriage, precious children, and material success, yet I was “empty”. Something was missing. Other successful people in their careers often have huge personal problems with their marriages and their children; and people seldom love them for themselves but for what they can get from them. Wealthy or succesful people are often the most lonely people in the world. Many even commit suicide!
“Fortunately God does not only love the poor! All lives matter to Him. Jesus reached Matthew a rich corrupt tax collector; and several other disciples were small business owners in the fishing business. So was Lydia a seller of expensive clothes! Barnabas was well off. Several disciples had servants, including some of the Roman Military Officers who were converted. In the Old Testament most of the patriarchs were very wealthy people. Solomon, who God chose to build His temple was the wealthiest man in the world.
“In church History both Martin Luther and John Calvin were lawyers! The Clapham Sect, the group to which Wilberforce belonged, were wealthy bankers and they changed the world by abolishing the slave trade and slavery long before these were abolished in the USA. They also used their influence to change child labor laws, establish the RSPCA to prevent cruelty to animals, have missions to prostitutes in London against human trafficking, set up Bible Societies, started the Sunday School Movement, and sent thousands of missionaries worldwide to help the poor, set up hospitals and schools, etc., as well as to preach the Gospel, which is the source of all genuine love and compassion for others.
“My granddaughter recently graduated from Harvard, which like most Ivy League Universities and several great hospitals in the USA, were also founded by wealthy Christians. Many of our Founding Fathers were also wealthy men who founded this country based on the Christian teaching that all men are CREATED equal by God. From this we have got our principles of human rights and human equality, including the Civil Rights movement and the equality of women. The idea that all wealthy people are evil has been a lie popularized by Karl Marx, and has shaped our left wing politics ever since. Studies show that socialist government welfare in the USA have left the poor worse off than ever since the Great Depression; and studies also show that evangelical Christians give more to the poor than any other group.
“Even if all wealthy people were evil that would mean that they need God at least as much as everyone else, perhaps more so!”
I am happy to let you know that now that I have a loving personal relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ, that the “emptiness” has gone! Many years ago, a wise person observed: “There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every person, and it can never be filled by any created thing. It can only be filled by God, made known through Jesus Christ.” – Blaise Pascal, 17th-century French philosopher and mathematician, in the Pensées.
Good WORD!!
Jesus according to the Gospels clearly had a special ministry to “tax collectors and sinners.” The former were very wealthy “accountants” understandably despised by the Jews for collecting taxes as private entrepreneurs on behalf of the Romans. He regarded them as among “the poor” and the left out with whom he scandalously dined to the horror of the self-righteous. All that matters for Jesus is that we end up identifying ourselves as among the poor to whom he has come in his grace and mercy.