Considering the challenges of my life, I'm doing rather well. You don't need to know all the details of the way things stack up against me, and some things may be looking up soon vocationally/financially, but I have overcome some difficult hurdles. I'm not part of the GOBNet, and I don't really have connections, but I'm doing well considering that I tend to stir up trouble and invite resistance. Some things I lack because I'm either unwilling to do what it takes or unwilling to do what people demand. I don't get into bidding wars; if I'm willing to pay the price for something I will. Up on the mountain just before we finished our hike this weekend, we passed a line of ford mustang models. Some of them looked really nice, but that's not how I choose to spend my time and money driving an expensive car up a high mountain to see who I can impress. That's not the reward I seek.
Particularly in Vegas, it constantly strikes me as odd what people seek. Fancy titles, fancy cars, and large bank accounts seem all more interesting to people than venerable careers, moral families, and peace of mind. One coworker told me proudly of how her son's internship in San Francisco transformed into a $250,000/year job with Google. I'm glad that he was able to capitalize on his education. I told her that I could never work for a company that I found morally reprehensible. It's why I turned down an offer to go work for a solar power installation company. I think it's a canard. I also know that solar is capped at 3% whereafter the rebates dry up, and you'll have to pay the whole bill yourself. Far too many people will trade image or wage for their good name. I am not one of them. On the way home from the mountain, I watched a bright yellow ferrari approach from behind at breakneck speed. As the car passed, I glanced over at the driver who happened to be a very attractive woman. As the car pulled away, I caught the personalized plate which tells everyone how she affords the car. STRIPPR Well, that's just not the kind of woman I would be proud to introduce to my parents, and I told my mother so last night.
One of our speakers in church reminded us about something that we all understand but sometimes lose sight while we are in the world but not of it. What is our motivation? What is our end game? Are we working for the transitory rewards of a mortal realm or for the rewards of a greater? I understand why people decide to accept the tempting allure of gold, glamour, girls, glitz, and grunge. What God promises us is difficult to comprehend for our infinitesimal minds. It's not really as simple as "you can have one marshmallow now or two if you can wait five minutes", assuming you're into marshmallows. God promises that if we give up the marshmallow we can have something better. Often He withholds information about what that is, like the NV Governor's Fitness Challenge, and even when we know, it's kind of vague and ethereal. Worse, when we get what the NV Governor gave me, it hardly seems like a reward while others eat, drink, and carouse. Well, they have their reward. God isn't obligated to give them anything, and even if He were, in choosing those mortal distractions, they show what master they truly serve, and it's Dionytic.
Like the next man, I like rewards for what I do. Rewards help you measure accomplishments and give you feedback about your effort. We look forward to graduation to get that diploma to lock in our accomplishments in order to measure ourselves and our efforts. My paternal grandfather held back his own vocational aspirations on a promissory note from a family that not only never delivered but ultimately drove the company to complete financial ruin. Men continually promise things that don't happen while offering different terms to other people. It becomes difficult to trust that God will deliver on His promises. We keep getting the short straw, and so when someone offers us a marshmallow it's tempting to take it however unsatisfying it may be because at least then we got something. The fancy cars, flashy women, flush salaries, lofty titles, and pleasurable company of socialites and elites looms large because we can see it and touch it and experience it. God's promises seem unlikely because most of us have never left earth, and even those who have admit we have no clue what the universe actually holds. It's frustrating because we seem to reap differently from we sow, and others seem to reap what we sow. God promises us "something better" and "soon" but doesn't necessarily mean the same things with those words as we do. I'm not tempted or even competitive to get into stripping to buy a bright yellow ferrari any time soon, but I'm not really after that. I have to ask myself what I'm really hoping to achieve in life.
A story illustrates why people find it difficult to trust God and His promises. A man asks God how long a million years is to Him, and God replies that it's a minute. The man asks God how much a million dollars is to Him, and God replies that it's a penny. The man asks God, "May I have a penny?" To which God replies "In a minute". For this reason I believe we have so many examples of deliverance and miracles in the Bible to remind us that God will lead us out of Egypt, water us, feed us, and lead us to a land of promise. I know that He did that for me four years ago, so I know He can do it again when He feels it's the right thing to do. I am eager, as you might be, to have the blessings in this life and enjoy things I know and understand, things that other people have and enjoy and probably don't appreciate, rather than waiting for a putative and undefined reward at some undetermined future point. However, it's important to keep in mind that many of those things we can see are only rewards to certain people in certain places at certain times. God offers us something of a more lasting nature.
Every semester I teach nursing chemistry, I end up warning the students against doing the job for the pay. Although I've never been a nurse, I know it's handsomely compensated because they ask you to do things other people won't do. You will have to wipe up people when they defecate, bind up bedsores, come in contact with tuberculosis, cut through LOTS of fatty tissue, and deal with people who are perpetually in a bad mood because they are in pain, even when many of them caused the circumstances they now bewail! You don't join the military, the FBI, an ER staff, or any of these handsomely compensated career fields for the pay. They are paid well because they know it breaks people down. How long can you actually be a stripper? How long will you be able to last? How long will you live? How will it affect the quality of your life? Would you really be proud to tell your parents or your Father God that you spent your life doing it? You were paid well, and you have your reward.
Jesus taught us that we can tell our true motives by the identity of our treasures. He also warned those of us who really care about the world to show it by living lives that accumulate treasures in heaven rather than those on earth where moth and rust corrupt and where thieves break through and steal. The great paradox of temporal success is that the more you have the more you are obligated to pay to furnish protection for the rest from other people. My car, my decor, and my house are not really appealing because nobody wants to drive a 20 year old Saturn, sit on heirloom furniture, own old books they will never read, or collect what I collect. Nothing I own is terribly liquid, which protects me from losing it. Like you, I like to be paid what I feel I'm worth, particularly when I have coworkers who do less and earn more because they are blood relatives or boot-licking toadies of the upper muckety-mucks. However, none of that really tends to make them happy or elevate them to the kind of life I seek. I'm not a party goer, a fan of the beach, interested in fancy or classic car collecting, or in the kind of lifestyle concomitant with the kind of opulence seen in the lives of those who luxuriate through licentious lifestyles. I'm not interested in that life; I'm not interested in those rewards. Those people aren't happy, and the saddest part is that may be all they get.
Honestly, my life and needs are very small and simple, and that pleases me. When I pray, mostly I discuss opportunities for intimacy with a specific someone as my wife, because I have everything else I really need and want. When I ask for more money or opportunities to earn it, it's really about having it now to save for a rainy day. I'm really not interested in hobnobbing with elites or with the kind of ilk that normally coalesce around strippers and the like, so I don't need the trappings or the money. I'm not interested in keeping up with the Joneses, let alone getting ahead of them. My needs are small, I buy them all at the five and dime.
Whatsoever rewards to which we attain in this life we will receive. That's the law of the harvest. In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, we see that the rich man, who was rewarded disproportionate to his virtues, finds himself wishing for what Lazarus has in the end while Lazarus, who was denied those opportunities finds himself in a place of rest and peace. You can buy companionship but you can't buy good company. You can buy plastic surgery or quality food, but you can't buy health. You can't buy friends. You can't buy virtue. You can only buy the authors of history to paint you in a different light to counter the slander that later arises. Eventually the truth leaks out. Eventually you tend to look like you deserve. Look at Charlie Sheen and unfortunately Bill Cosby. They are reaping what they sowed I believe, and they have their reward. Now comes the day of reckoning when the bill comes due. Many of these people have their rewards and will not get anything better. They might not even get another marshmallow. Everything comes with a cost, and so as I continue to pay the price I look forward to a worthy reward on a distant verdant shore.
Update 9:46PM Paradoxically enough, I just read this same topic in an October 2000 address from Neal Maxwell that says what I said much better. I still remember the sound of his voice, and I miss his sermons and wisdom.
Update 26 Aug 13:32PM Yesterday, I was headhunted to go work in the QA lab of a medical marijuana facility. I've turned it down, despite the exceptionally lucrative pay rate, for many reasons. It's not somewhere I'd be proud to work or like to tell anyone I work because it will attract people into my life that are not the kind of people with whom I prefer to surround myself. It would be a job, just for the money, but most of the people there are true believers in marijuana as medicine despite recent evidence to the contrary. It would also require me to take a job repugnant to my morality and to the sentiments described in this post. It would have doubled my salary. I don't dance. I will keep taking the Kobiashi Maru and trying to save the ship because, even if it can't actually be done, it's the only solution worth pursuing.
Update 26 Aug 13:32PM Yesterday, I was headhunted to go work in the QA lab of a medical marijuana facility. I've turned it down, despite the exceptionally lucrative pay rate, for many reasons. It's not somewhere I'd be proud to work or like to tell anyone I work because it will attract people into my life that are not the kind of people with whom I prefer to surround myself. It would be a job, just for the money, but most of the people there are true believers in marijuana as medicine despite recent evidence to the contrary. It would also require me to take a job repugnant to my morality and to the sentiments described in this post. It would have doubled my salary. I don't dance. I will keep taking the Kobiashi Maru and trying to save the ship because, even if it can't actually be done, it's the only solution worth pursuing.
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