As long as I can remember, the message of the American dream has pervaded our society. "Be all that you can be" is ingrained in us. We've been told that there is nothing we can't accomplish if we apply enough skill and effort (often with the help of some ingenuity and imagination). And certainly the United States provides ample opportunities to pursue our dreams. We are not locked in to a particular trade or profession as are those in many other parts of the world.
As followers of Christ, is there anything wrong with this picture?
David Platt writes: "Certainly hard work and high aspirations are not bad, and the freedom to pursue our goals is something we should celebrate. Scripture explicitly commends all these things. But underlying this American dream are a dangerous assumption that, if we are not cautious, we will unknowingly accept and a deadly goal that, if we are not careful we will ultimately achieve. The dangerous assumption we unknowingly accept in the American dream is that our greatest asset is our own ability. The American dream prizes what people can accomplish when they believe and trust in themselves, and we are drawn toward such thinking. But the gospel has different priorities. The gospel beckons us to die to ourselves and to believe in God and to trust in his power. In the gospel, God confronts us with our utter inability to accomplish anything of value apart from him."
The fatal goal of the American dream, of which Platt writes, is that if we believe we achieved our goals and desires in our power, we will take the glory for ourselves, as well as be recognized by others for what we have accomplished. We will tend to make much of us rather than make much of God. The Lord is jealous for his own glory; it is uppermost in his own affections, and he will not share it with another. He delights in working through his people, oftentimes through difficult or seemingly impossible circumstances, for his own glory.
The American dream mentality is also evident in how we do church. The contemporary thinking is that the church must adopt the business model to draw the crowds: entertainment-driven worship, a top-notch facility, programs for the whole family.
Platt continue: "We Christians are living out the American dream in the context of our communities of faith. We have convinced ourselves that if we can position our resources and organize our strategies, then in church as in every other sphere of life, we can accomplish anything we set our minds to. But what is strangely lacking in the picture of performances, personalities, programs, and professionals is desperation for the power of God. God's power is at best an add-on to our strategies,. I am frightened by the reality that the church I lead can carry on most of our activities smoothly, efficiently, even successfully, never realizing that the Holy Spirit of God is virtually absent from the picture. We can so easily deceive ourselves, mistaking the presence of physical bodies in a crowd for the existence of spiritual life in a community."
I can't help but wonder how different the church in America would be if we truly relied on the power of the Holy Spirit in our personal lives as well as in the church community, if we were in desperate need for the Lord to show himself mighty and glorious through us. Let us not overlook the ministry of the Holy Spirit as our Comforter, Counselor, Helper, Wisdom. . .the very presence of God living in the redeemed. He delights in giving us himself!
"Our great need is to fall before an almighty Father day and night and to plead for him to show his radical power in and through us, enabling us to accomplish for his glory what we could never imagine in our own strength. And when we do this, we will discover that we were created for a purpose much greater than ourselves, the kind of purpose that can only be accomplished in the power of his Spirit."
~quotations from David Platt's book, Radical, chapter 3
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