Young people are raging in the streets.
They see inequality all around them, and they have been told for years that if they work hard, study hard, that they can be just are rich and well-off as the guys next to them. If they follow a certain formula, then they can be as rich and well-connected as Elon Musk or Kanye West.
They see the growing inequities (from their point of view), they see the lost opportunities, and they feel cheated.
You know what? They have a point.
Telling young people that the way to freedom, fortune, and financial success is through their own hard work has left out one of the most important, if not the most important element:
GOD'S FAVOR. GOD'S AMAZING GRACE!
Kanye West may not know it (yet), and Elon Musk may not care. Mark Zuckerberg may not even believe in God for all I know, and for the time being he certainly does not believe in Grace and Truth personified, named Jesus Christ ...
But they all received God's favor in some fashion, and allowed His favor to flow in their lives. Does this sound unreasonable? Does this sound un-Biblical? Consider what Jesus said on the Sermon on the Mount:
"That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust." (Matthew 5:45)
Consider even what the Preacher shared:
"I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." (Ecclesiastes 9:11)
Good things happen to people who are in the right place at the right time. That's also very much based on and depends on God's favor. Wealthy people, accomplished actors, successful businessmen all took advantage of a situation--right place, right time--to get where they are. It was not their skills, their smarts, but God's goodness.
We need God, we need the grace of God to be successful. It's not luck, chance, or fortune, but many of the world's wealthiest people took advantage of the grace of God by allowing His supernatural power to flow in their lives. They were not trying to be obedience to laws, since for everyone person who is under law, that person ends up under the curse (Galatians 3:10)
God's favor is freely falling on the whole world. His sun-shining Love and His free-falling grace is coming upon the whole world.
Yet the corporate, academic, man-centered, bureaucratic world has taught people that they need to follow rules, fit in, do what they are told in order to succeed.
No!
So many young people have been told that there is one key track for success in life, and that track goes right through college. I went to college, and I even went through a graduate training program to get a teaching credential. Yet the work, the career, the calling that I have been following has nothing to do with my credential or my majors in college.
Today, there are millions of young people who have graduated, who have lots of debt, who were told that they can study just about any subject and they would be on a fast-track to a good-paying job. They were also told that by fighting for a good career, and trying to start a good family, that they would have everything the defines success.
Yet we do not find good success in the world or through our man-centered, self-centered self-efforts. Just read the first nine chapters of Ecclesiastes, and listen to the moanings and wailings of a man who had literally everything, and found it to be nothing but vanity.
What does give us good success?
"The blessing of the LORD makes one rich, And He adds no sorrow with it." (Proverbs 10:22)
and
"This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success." (Joshua 1:8)
and of course:
"Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." (3 John 2)
God is interested above all in our soul prosperity, for without the prosperity within, there is no value in any prosperity without:
"For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Mark 8:36)
God wants us to prosper, but we have to allow Him to prosper us on the inside.
And that happens when we walk in the truth:
"3For I rejoiced greatly, when the brethren came and testified of the truth that is in thee, even as thou walkest in the truth. 4I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth." (3 John 3-4)
How do we walk in the truth? We believe the Gospel of Grace (Galatians 1:6), that we believe that we have been justified from all things that we cannot be justified by through the law of Moses (Acts 13:38-39)
So, yes, indeed, young people are understandably angry, in that they have been taught that relying fully, solely, exceptionally on their efforts will all but ensure them the success that they were promised in this life.
But that success can only come by faith in Christ. There is no other way. There is no relying exclusively on one's own smarts, one's own habits. It takes the proper connection of time and chance, or happenings that happen, as the original Hebrew bears out in the book of Ecclesiastes.
Young people should not start blaming "the rich" for their problems, simply because they think that "the rich" had all the breaks while they are going broke. In fact, if more people were wiling to walk with some degree of wisdom, they would have fewer problems at the outset. God's wisdom is free, and freely available to entreat:
"But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy." (James 3:17)
God does not shame anyone for asking for His wisdom, either:
"If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him." (James 1:5)
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