The loss of our jobs opens our eyes again to the fact that God is that something, that someone better. Or at least we have the chance to believe that’s true, or refuse to believe that’s true and become bitter. If our default is to see God’s role as merely to give us something better than we have lost, then we have miss the point of God! Here’s the test. What if, in losing our jobs, God has pushed us back onto relying on him more? What if, instead of getting what we think we want we have our wants exposed and changed?

Something Better?
I was lamenting on the phone with a friend yesterday about the loss of both of our jobs this year.
The frustration was real, especially for him as he’s subsequently missed out on a couple of roles that would have suited him well. And here we are coming up to Christmas and he still has no job after four or five months. I’ve got a lot more social capital than he, so things seem to be slotting together well for me. Not so for him
So we chatted for a while, processing the last few months. And we kinda made this comment as we chatted, talking through the pressure and uncertainty that losing your job puts you through.
“Well if God has taken that away then he has something better for us, that’s what we have to believe.”
And on the surface, or for an instant, we affirmed that for each other. But then something kicked in – for both of us. And I like to think it was the gospel that kicked in! For we realised, pretty much at the same time as we said it, that that is not strictly true. Or at least it may not be strictly true.
The truth could be far more complex than that. Both of us liked our jobs and believed we were good at them, and they satisfied a certain number of criteria in our lives. But that does not mean that God has some better job for us in the future than those jobs were for us in the past. It doesn’t mean that’s there a more rewarding role with more financial and experiential rewards than what we just left behind.
That simply isn’t the case. It could be that for both of us we’ve peaked – at least in terms of work. I hope not, but it could be. Those roles could be the best ones we have ever had and will ever have going forward. That’s just the case. To say that God has something better for us – workwise at least – is not something we can say with any deep assertion.
And that’s why our conversation then took a different turn. A different, deeper and richer turn. I said to my friend in response to our initial assertion:
“Actually that’s not quite right. What we need to take from this is this: not that God HAS something better for us, but that God IS that something better.”
And as I said it, I think we both got it. I think we kinda knew it, but hadn’t articulated it.
You see, that’s the central point of what it means to be a Christian. And that’s the central point of the Christmas season. Not that God gives us stuff. Not that God gives us the job we want. Not that God gives us a better job than the one we had before. But that God gives us God! God is the something better. And if we just allow him to show us that, even in the tough times, it will make all of the difference.
Let’s define it even more sharply. God is not something better, he is SOMEONE better. God doesn’t desire to simply give us created stuff, he desires to share himself – the Creator – with us.
Perhaps the loss of our jobs is an opportunity for God to show us that he is that something better that we are craving. And to lose sight of that in a time such as this is to lose a great opportunity to grow into what God wants us to be. In fact the loss of anything is such an opportunity, hard though that may be to hear.
And that’s a whole different ball game. I came away from our conversation in a better frame of mind. Our chat steered us away from the roles we had lost, and the imagined roles we wish we could have, or possibly might have if everything lands perfectly,.
The conversation was steered onto what it might be that God is doing in our lives as we go through this season, ahd how he is showing us, in what seems a painful way, how he himself is the better thing that we seek.
Our Idolatrous Hearts
And here’s the guts of that: God is shaping and refining us away from a constant, almost magnetic, pull towards the good gifts that he gives us and towards the constant, majestic pull of God towards himself. For anything less will ultimately end up as idolatry.
That’s the heart of idolatry after all, as Romans 1 tells us – craving and worshipping the things that the Giver gives us rather than the Giver himself.
The loss of our jobs opens our eyes again to the fact that God is that something, that someone better. Or at least we have the chance to believe that’s true, or refuse to believe that’s true and become bitter. If our default is to see God’s role as merely to give us something better than we have lost, then we have miss the point of God!
Here’s the test. What if, in losing our jobs, God has pushed us back onto relying on him more? What if, instead of getting what we think we want we have our wants exposed and changed? What if, instead of the temptation to seek our identity in a work role, God removes that from us in order to deepen our identity in him? Is God allowed to do that?
And what if this situation opened our eyes to the fact that we may have been cruising a little bit, relying on the things of this age – good and proper though they are – and not leaning more steadfastly on him? Is God allowed to do that?
What if, ironically, our ministry roles were taken away from us to ensure that we found our worth in the God we declare, not the job that declares his worth?
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One of the banes of liberalism in our time is the unwillingness to criticize bad ideas honestly for fear of being misconstrued as a bigot; the assumption of the lowest possible motive when assessing these criticisms is the other. Together, they constitute a strait jacket—they make progress impossible.

A review of Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America by John McWhorter. Portfolio, 224 pages. (October, 2021)
If you had told someone a decade ago—after the election of the first black president, and in anticipation of the first black female vice president—that race relations in the United States would devolve into hysteria and incivility, it might have seemed like the counter-historical fantasy of a satirical novelist, in clear violation of the arc of history that, Martin Luther King assured us, “bends toward justice.” Today’s anti-racist activists, in that sense, are not progressives (although they claim to be). They are anachronists who fail to faithfully acknowledge and inhabit the spirit of their time.
In his new book, Woke Racism: How a New Religion Has Betrayed Black America, John McWhorter demonstrates that there is far more Martin Luther than Martin Luther King in today’s anti-racist movement. McWhorter, a linguist and a professor at Columbia University, is a critic of luminous intelligence, and his book’s apparently oxymoronic title plays on Robin DiAngelo’s (equally oxymoronic) Nice Racism: How Progressive White People Perpetuate Racial Harm. DiAngelo’s dubious contention is that white progressives are often more injurious to the cause of racial equity than skinheads or bedsheet bigots, because their racist transgressions are the result of well-meaning ignorance. McWhorter asks the corollary: can even those supposedly enlightened and self-appointed champions of anti-racism (whom he calls “the Elect”) think and act in ways that harm black America?
McWhorter identifies three waves of anti-racist activism in the United States, the first of which was the fight against slavery and legalized segregation. The second was the struggle against racist attitudes, which sought to instill the idea that racial prejudice was a moral defect. The current strain of anti-racist activism constitutes a “third wave,” and like any movement in an advanced stage, it is characteristically decadent. The Elect’s ideology, like so much contemporary social justice, is a grotesque contest of elite moral exhibitionism, inordinately preoccupied with policing speech and regulating behavior. It is fundamentally performative and, above all, pretentious, in both the etymological sense of the word (to pretend) and in its common usage (attempting to impress).
This approach to battling racism tends to appeal to well-educated white people afflicted by a guilty conscience. The only remedy for them—the load-bearing pillar of white America’s new moral responsibility—is a declaration of one’s own “privilege.” This, McWhorter assures us, is not progress or even compassion, it is a form of self-help. “The issue,” he writes, “is not whether I or anyone else thinks white privilege is real, but what we consider the proper response to it.” [Italics in original.] Privilege is indeed real, and making oneself aware of it is morally important, but when employed as a cudgel, it becomes a monstrous prop.
Encouraging black people to see themselves as perpetual victims, while assigning to white people the task of becoming enlightened enough to recognize their own inherent and irredeemable racism creates a culture of soft-bigotry, furnished by polite lies and low expectations. “White people calling themselves our saviors,” McWhorter writes, “make black people look like the dumbest, weakest, most self-indulgent human beings in the history of our species, and teach black people to revel in that status and cherish it as making us special.”
This endless condescension is writ large in DiAngelo’s work, and we can see it in the training seminars now required by many companies, in which things like “logic” and “punctuality” are ascribed to “Whiteness.” Do the people running these seminars really believe that black people can’t be rational and on time? Do they think that science and math are things that only white kids are good at? And, McWhorter asks, if black students perform poorly on standardized tests, is it fair to assume that the test is racist, and should therefore be discontinued, as the Elect now propose? Would it not be better to ensure that those students have access to resources and tutoring? Far from helping anyone, these distortions of essence and aptitude actually hurt the advancement of what is now commonly referred to as “racial equity.”
The goal of third wave anti-racism is ostensibly concerned with “dismantling” racist “structures,” but it is actually an attempt to narrow the discourse and limit the range of honest thought in pursuit of a phony consensus. This is achieved through a ruthless evangelism, which McWhorter manages to condense as follows:
Battling power relations and their discriminatory effects must be the central focus of all human endeavor, be it intellectual, moral, civic, or artistic. Those who resist this focus, or even evidence insufficient adherence to it, must be sharply condemned, deprived of influence, and ostracized.
For support, McWhorter offers a spate of scandals and PR nightmares that would signal, to an alien observer, a kind of collective insanity or Salem-esque panic. One of the salient and most stupefying examples is the case of Alison Roman, a (now-former) food critic at the New York Times. Roman ran into trouble when she criticized two of her contemporaries—model and food writer Chrissy Teigen, and life coach Marie Kondo—for their hypocritical commercialism. Despite coming from different ethnic backgrounds and cultural milieux (Teigen is half-white and half-Thai and was born in America; Kondo was born and raised in Japan), both are assimilable as “people of color” according to the progressive Weltanschauung, so Roman’s criticism placed her under suspicion. What reason could a white New York Times journalist have for criticizing two non-white celebrities, other than sublimated bigotry?
A few days later, singer Lana Del Rey responded to criticisms of her music’s use of sexual themes by pointing out that plenty of other artists, including Nicki Minaj and Beyoncé, also sing about sex. Del Rey was immediately attacked by social media mobs, who denounced her in an endorphin-rush of self-righteousness. These two cases make the Elect’s devotion to rooting out racial bias seem like a protean neurosis, which sees racism even when it isn’t there.
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If we think we deserve God’s blessings, we will be disappointed when He does not provide them, thereby causing us to question His sovereignty and goodness.  However, when we realize that we sin incessantly and immediately deserve God’s eternal condemnation, we will understand that every breath is an undeserved gift of God.  

Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.
-Matthew 6:31-33, ESV
In Christian circles, we often talk extensively about trials and how to walk through them by faith.  This is the right emphasis, as our lives are filled with various trials.  There are numerous books, seminars, and other media to prepare people for suffering in various ways and teach them how to endure any number of trials.  But that emphasis can come at the expense of adequately preparing us for blessings.  At first we may think such preparation would be unnecessary.  After all, who really needs to know how to prepare for good times?  But blessings bring temptations that trials do not, so we are wise to prepare for them just as we prepare for trials.  In good times, we are tempted to rely on ourselves and neglect God (Proverbs 30:8-9), give into thinking that we deserve these blessings and therefore receive them without thankfulness (1 Corinthians 4:7), and let our guard down and thus leave ourselves susceptible to temptation to sin (2 Samuel 11).  I talk more about that last one my leadership paper when describing how successful people are more prone to compromise ethically in good times than hard times.  That alone should be enough to cause us to approach good times with caution.  Indeed blessings are often a test just like trials—and I would venture to say that more people fail tests of blessing than trials (Matthew 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25).  When facing times of blessing, I want to focus on two opposite but serious temptations we face: claiming for ourselves what God has not given us and stiff-arming them out of fear of disappointment.
Don’t “Name it and Claim it”
On the one hand, it is tempting to think we deserve blessings from God, claiming any pleasant promise in Scripture for ourselves.  We read these passages and assume that God is promising to provide us with wealth, family, health, and a myriad of other blessings just because a verse refers to them.  In reality, many of these verses are not specific promises to everyone.  In some cases, they are not promises at all but general principles.  This is true of most of Proverbs and many blessings in the psalms.  Here are a few examples:
“He is like a tree planted by streams of water that yields its fruit in its season, and its leaf does not wither. In all that he does, he prospers”
-Psalm 1:3, ESV
“Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart”
-Psalm 37:4, ESV
“For the simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them; but whoever listens to me [wisdom] will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster.”
-Proverbs 1:32-33, ESV
“Long life is in her [wisdom’s] right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor.  Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace. She is a tree of life to those who lay hold of her; those who hold her fast are called blessed.”
-Proverbs 3:16-18, ESV
Other examples include Psalm 91:10 and Proverbs 12:21. All of these link righteousness and wisdom with blessings like wealth and long life, but we can all think of numerous examples where upright people suffer from poverty, disease, and early death.  These verses are general statements and thus are not promises for every person.  Additionally, there are promises that are for specific people, even if their subject is not immediately evident.  For example, Hillsong’s “You Said” includes a line about asking God to give us the nations, but that is from Psalm 2:8, which is a promise to Jesus not us.  Therefore, we cannot claim that promise since we are not Jesus.  God is not some cosmic vending machine where we insert our coins of faith or good works and thus compel Him to bless us.  This means that we must not view God’s blessings as somehow owed to us.  If we think we deserve God’s blessings, we will be disappointed when He does not provide them, thereby causing us to question His sovereignty and goodness.  However, when we realize that we sin incessantly and immediately deserve God’s eternal condemnation, we will understand that every breath is an undeserved gift of God.  Then, when God takes away blessings or withholds them from us, we will not question Him but say with Job: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD” (Job 1:21).
While we often avoid the temptation to openly claim God’s blessings as if we deserve them, the greater temptation lies in secret.  When we lack a certain blessing or when that blessing seems imminent, we can be given to fantasizing about that blessing.  In that sense, we are mentally claiming that blessing for ourselves and therefore displaying a lack of contentment with our current situation.  It is certainly true that God can give us earnest desires for these blessings.  It is also true that some level of imagination is often required in the godly process of discernment.  But if we allow those desires to take center stage and fail to rein in our imaginations, we can easily cross into the sin of covetousness.  Years ago when a friend was struggling with such thoughts about whether to pursue a romantic relationship, he came to a realization through study of Scripture that there are only two biblical was to think of women in the church: wife or sister.  There is no third category of “future wife”. She was not his wife, so the only biblical way he could view her was as his sister in Christ.  Later, he met and eventually married a different woman.  Looking back now, he can be thankful that God withheld the blessing of the relationship in that moment and helped him be content in his situation until God eventually did give him that blessing.
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