My wife on the other hand has no such compunctions. She
was raised in a family where everyone agrees on a dollar (pound) limit o what
they will spend and then ruthlessly stick to it. She is a marvel of efficiency
when gift shopping, it's either in budget or it’s not in the cart meanwhile I
literally writhe with discomfort at the thought of giving such a 'cheap' gift
to someone I care about.
This makes no sense to Jo. After all, she reminds me,
would I feel the least but slighted or offended if the roles were reversed and
I was receiving rather than giving the gift? Of course not, my parents raised
me better than that. So why then am I so averse to sticking within a reasonable
budget when I'm shopping for others?
If I'm brutally honest (and hey, why stop now?), I think
it has to do with a deep sense of insecurity. Not that I’ll ever admit it (so if you tell anyone I said this I’ll deny
it) but I think I try to justify people's affections by doing right by them
with the right gift. I subconsciously try to buy people's love by overspending
at Christmas time and putting myself and my family in a bad place financially.
And it’s not just at Christmastime. Joanna jokes that
when we were dating she thought she was marrying money. I would take her out
for dinner regularly, spend money to woo her like it was going out of style and
generally never let her pay for anything. When we got married though what she
discovered was that all she really married into was stupid. And she now had my
credit card statements to prove it.
In the book of Galatians, The Apostle Paul is writing to
a group of people who were completely unworthy of inclusion in God’s redemptive
plan. They were sinners, outsiders and idolatrors. They were worshippers of
pagan Gods and idols who had been grafted into the family of God by grace. But
as they are coming to this deep understanding of who they are in Christ, as they
are coming to realise the implications of their adoption there are voices from
the outside who start to whisper in their ears that they are not good enough. A
group of ‘Judaizers’ try to convince them that they need to do more, that they
need to work harder, that they need to jump through more hoops in order to
truly be loved by God – and they start to believe the voices. So Paul writes
this letter to correct that insecurity and tell them the truth about who they
are.
He tells them that they are heirs with Christ, children
according to the promise given to Abraham and that they have been fully adopted
into the family of God. They are loved by virtue of what God has done, not by
virtue of what they do. So in chapter 4 Paul lays bare the futility of their
insecurities:
Formerly, when you
did not know God, you were slaves to those who by nature are not gods. But now
that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning
back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all
over again? You are observing special days and months and seasons and years! I
fear for you, that somehow I have wasted my efforts on you.
Galatians 4:8-11 (TNIV)
Not many of us in the church are turning back to Pagan
worship these days. Not many of us are committing apostasy and turning to other
religions because we don’t think we can cut it as Christians, but MANY of us
are turning back to ‘weak and miserable
forces’ of things that are ‘by nature
not gods.’ We search for significance in status, we search for importance
in wealth, we search for fulfilment in the accumulation of goods and we
search for approval through giving the best gifts at Christmastime. I
know that I’m not alone in this struggle a quick Google search reveals pages
and pages of articles about people dealing with overwhelming stress in the search
for the perfect gift. Why? Because we equate the gifts we give with our value
in the eyes of the person we’re shopping for; we really, deep down, want to
earn – or at least justify the love that they have for us and we do that
through the consumer activity of Christmas.
The reality though is that what your mother taught you
when you were a kid, is still the rule of the day: It’s the thought that
counts. If the person you shop for would, love/appreciate/value you any less if
you got them a ‘cheaper’ gift, then perhaps they’re not worthy of your time in
the first place. And more importantly – as Christians we know that our true
value is not found in the eyes of other person, but through the way we are seen
by Christ. We are told by the Christmas story that the God of the universe gave
us the gift of his only begotten Son – a gift of immeasurable value – so that
we could be adopted as his children and brought into the family.
Another of my Advent resolutions for this year is to give
gifts with a stress free attitude. Not because I don’t care about the people I’m
shopping for – I care a lot – but because I know that I am secure in Christ and
that nothing I buy, and no amount of money that I spend can change that one
bit.
In Christ,
Chris
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