Finding Contentment In The Twenty First Century

Our modern lives are often defined by existential crisis. In times past, people knew who they were and what they could do. They were limited by class, race, religion, clan, geography, knowledge, opportunity, technology, obligations, marriage, children, and many other factors. Today, we're increasingly "liberated" to define ourselves and our lives. We're told we can accomplish anything we put our minds to and become anything we want to become. This great liberation is accelerating. The transgender movement is the latest manifestation of humanity's rebellion against natural limitation.

The problem with liberation, however, is that it creates psychological stress. The ability to become and achieve anything makes us relentlessly question ourselves. Do we really know ourselves? Are we living truly authentic lives? Are we working hard enough to achieve our potential? Couldn't we be eating healthier? How much free time should we allow ourselves to enjoy? Is our job really the best use of our talents? Shouldn't we be saving more money? Shouldn't we try to maximize our wealth and authority? Is our contentment with a modest net worth really a failure to accumulate as much as we could? Is our contentment with serving the church really a failure to accept the responsibilities of leadership?

Sometimes, our struggles with perfectionism can be redefined as struggles with contentment. How content should we allow ourselves to be? At what point does contentment become sloth? At what point will God hold us accountable for wasting our talents and potential? 

Does the Bible answer these questions? I don't think it can conclusively answer all our concerns, it's a pre-modern document written before our modern liberation, but I do think it can provide guidance. 

MORALITY IS FREEDOM

"Better is a little with righteousness than great revenues with injustice." -Proverbs 16:8
"What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you? You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions." -James 4:1-10

Firstly, contentment should be defined within the limits of morality. Morality is often considered oppressive, but it has a liberating component ("freedom" is relative). In the daunting face of unlimited freedom, morality restricts us and allows us to say to ourselves: "enough." Christians have the freedom to say "no" to immorality. For example, faced with the temptation to have sex with as many girls as possible, based on the demands of pleasure and peer pressure, a young Christian man can simply say "no" to this ambition and content himself with non-participation. Without morality, many people feel they aren't "living it up" or truly experiencing youth without pursuing their lusts. Morality allows for relaxation.

Greed's tyranny pushes many people into an unrestrained pursuit of money. Many people feel that unless they're making money or becoming an entrepreneur, they're not working to become successful, and thus they're not acting responsibly. This is especially true in China, my current home, where the pursuit of money is the only widely acceptable pursuit. To amass money in China is to build up the nation and live out the "Chinese dream." This ambition pushes numerous people into corruption and crime. I've personally witnessed the tragic consequences of this way of thinking. Morality allows Christians to say "no" and limits our ambition. Through morality, desperate anxiety can be respectably suppressed through calm resignation. 

WEALTH

"He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity." -Ecclesiastes 5:10
The pursuit of money is vanity. Money is a tool, and it's useless beyond that function. Money can't return its owner's love.
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God." -Mark 10:25
More than once, the Bible says that wealth hinders a person's relationship with God. Christians shouldn't feel obligated to become wealthy. Early Christians intentionally impoverished themselves upon entering the church by selling everything they had and donating the money to God's kingdom. If God chooses to give us wealth, we should recognize money for what it is, and use it properly for the furtherance of his church. However, the pursuit of wealth is not spiritually healthy.
"Soldiers also asked [John the Baptist], 'And we, what shall we do?' And he said to them, 'Do not extort money from anyone by threats or by false accusation, and be content with your wages.'" -Luke 3:14
"He said to them, 'Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one's life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.'" -Luke 12:15
"Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, 'I will never leave you nor forsake you.'" -Hebrews 13:5
We seem inundated nowadays with self-help messages about maximizing our earning potential. John, however, taught people to be content with their wages. The essence of our lives are not defined by income or possessions, and therefore we have no obligation to money. There are times when making more money becomes necessary to provide for one's obligations, but at that point the question ceases to be one of contentment.
"Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction." -1 Timothy 6:6-9

This is probably the most helpful verse we have in the Bible for discussing contentment. Paul cut to the center theologically and practically. We are mortal beings who take nothing of what we've accumulated with us after death. Death purges away everything meaningless. Christians should be content with food and clothing.

I would like to take this passage literally. I think there's been too much push back against interpreting it literally. I've sat through numerous Bible studies in which various qualifications and exceptions were immediately applied to any literal understanding of being content with food and clothing. If God has given us more, let us use it well, but if he's only given us food and clothing then we should try to find contentment in that. After all, Jesus had "no place to lay his head," and the prophets were often homeless and fleeing for their lives. Why should we feel entitled to better treatment than Jesus and the prophets? 

HEALTH

"The years of our life are seventy, or even by reason of strength eighty;" -Psalm 90:10

Health and longevity were almost never questions of contentment before the arrival of modernity. Only recently has technology advanced to the point where our lives can be artificially extended by decades. Should Christians feel an obligation to extract every last possible minute out of life? Perhaps Psalm 90:10 can offer some guidance about what human life spans should look like. I'm not suggesting we should take this passage as some kind of hard limit, but I think it should at least relieve us from feeling that we've somehow failed if we find ourselves dying before our hundredth birthday. Post-Fall, human life expectancy has hovered around 70 to 80 years, and there's no shame in dying at the appropriate time. 

It should be acknowledged, however, that Jesus and most of his disciples died far short of their seventieth birthday. Do we moderns deserve better? God has asked innumerable of his followers to die at a young age. We shouldn't feel entitled to a long life even if, as various Psalms indicate, we should seek from God a full length of life. 

WORK

"For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong." -2 Corinthians 12:10
"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you." -Matthew 28:19-20
"And to aspire to live quietly, and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your hands, as we instructed you," -1 Thessalonians 4:11

Work is among man's fundamental needs. This is especially clear to those who've found themselves unemployed for any significant amount of time. People who lack work usually flounder and degenerate. They become increasingly neurotic, anxious, unhealthy, annoying, and slothful. Luckily, God provided work for us to do (even if we don't find ourselves traditionally employed or earning money). The internet has opened up opportunities all day every day to spread the gospel and support the truth. This might include something as simple as a Twitter account. However, Paul reminded us in his epistle to the Thessalonians, that Christians aren't obligated to start mass movements or "change the world." It's enough for us to manage our own affairs and strengthen the often small sphere of influence God has given us.

AMBITION

"Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." -Matthew 23:12
"Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves." -Philippians 2:3
"For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions - is not from the Father but is from the world." -1 John 2:16

Numerous conflicts have divided the church as a result of men's destructive ambition for influence and prestige. Some of these men, and women, want to be seen as respectable or innovative leaders. They seek to become authorities and win followings. Their ambition leads them to exalt themselves and contrast themselves with alleged rivals they seek to define themselves against. Fame and authority shouldn't arise in this way. 

I was personally involved in a rising movement that was eventually torn apart by internal power feuds. These destructive conflicts accelerated because gossip and slander are the fastest ways to build fame and followers, but these methods are ultimately destructive to the original cause. These kinds of leaders become parasites.

"And thus I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else's foundation," -Romans 15:20
"The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task." -1 Timothy 3:1

Ambition is not inherently evil, however. Paul wrote that ambition to preach the gospel and serve the church through leadership were examples of positive ambition. 

TECHNOLOGY 

How much technology is too much? The mostly online discussions surrounding accellerationism increasingly concern this question. At what point will humanity nullify its own existence with technology? When does technology cease to be a tool and become a master? Do our ubiquitous levels of smartphone addiction mean that era has already arrived? Will our development of increasingly sophisticated computers and robots lead to the end of work (as Andrew Yang predicts)? Will it birth a hyper efficient artificial intelligence that pushes humanity aside as an outdated relic?

The questions surrounding technology and contentment need considerably more attention than what I'm able to give here, but I might suggest that we've already passed the point at which technology stopped helping us. Fertility rates in Western nations fell below replacement level in the early 1970s. Since that time, our nations have been slowly dying. The population of the United States has only grown in the last decades because tens of millions of immigrants have flooded into the country, and these newcomers have higher birthrates than our native-born population. Church attendance rates have also collapsed since the early 1970s. Although numerous factors might be blamed for these trends, there can be little doubt that advances in birth control and internet pornography are contributing to the literal death of our civilization.

Is humanity even capable of being content with technological progress? Besides the Amish, what society on earth is capable of saying "no" to more technology? To refuse more technological advancement is to refuse power, wealth, and sovereignty; and the refusal of these things means social irrelevance and foreign domination. We no longer have the ability to refuse the internet without rendering ourselves social outcasts and economic exiles. Nations no longer have the ability to refuse more weapons technology without rendering themselves vulnerable to conquest and annihilation. Technology has taken control. Is contentment now possible? 

In an era in which wealth and political power is being increasingly amassed by a few powerful corporations and people, is it even possible for individuals and small businesses to remain content without being buried by greedy ever-expanding corporations? Mammon is never content, and it sleeplessly amasses the ability to destroy those who are. Economically speaking, to be content is to be dying. 

CONTENTMENT VERSUS ANXIETY

"But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. Therefore, do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble." -Matthew 6:33-34
"Therefore, I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat, nor about your body, what you will put on. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? If then you are not able to do as small a thing as that, why are you anxious about the rest? Consider the lilies, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass, which is alive in the field today, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, how much more will he clothe you, O you of little faith! And do not seek what you are to eat and what you are to drink, nor be worried. For all the nations of the world seek after these things, and your Father knows that you need them. Instead, seek his kingdom, and these things will be added to you. Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give to the needy. Provide yourselves with moneybags that do not grow old, with a treasure in the heavens that does not fail, where no thief approaches and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." -Luke 12:22-34
"Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me." -Philippians 4:11-13
Contentment causes anxiety. Discontent often arises from a fear that we're falling behind or not working hard enough to secure a better future. To be content is to give up defensive accumulation. God counters this fear by promising that he'll be with us and provide for us. Ultimately, we have less control over the course of life than we think we do. We might as well be content with our lot.