Are You Blessed or Cursed? Marginal Suffering.

What is the opposite of black?
What is the opposite of lost?
What is the opposite of hero?
What is the opposite of blessed?

If you are like most people, you answered "white", "found", "coward", and "cursed".
But what if something is neither black nor white? Can something be found if it was never lost? Just because you are not a hero, does that mean you are a coward? If you are not blessed, does that mean you are cursed?

From a Christian standpoint, if we have a saving relationship with Christ, then we cannot think of ourselves as anything else but blessed with regards to the ultimate blessing. We will get to spend eternity in Heaven. For others, only the opposite is true. There is no second, third, or fourth place; if you don't go to heaven you don't have other options for eternity in Detroit or Philadelphia. If you are not eternally blessed, you are eternally cursed, to spend that eternity in hell.

Earthly, temporal blessings, however, do come in different degrees. Some people are blessed a lot, and others not so much. And there can be blessings of different degrees in different aspects of our lives-- you can be beautiful and poor and healthy and smart all at the same time.

The problem arises when people raise the suffering flag just because they feel they aren't blessed as much as someone else. This is envy. And we have seen a lot of that lately.

The Westminster Shorter Catechism was written in the 1640's as a way to teach common people theological truths. It does this with a list of questions and answers. Question 80 asks "What is the Tenth Commandment?" And the answer is, "The tenth commandment is, 'You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.'"

Question 81 asks, "What is required in the tenth commandment?" And the answer is, "The tenth commandment requires full contentment with our own condition, with a right and charitable frame of spirit toward our neighbor, and all that is his."

Question 81 asks, "What is forbidden in the tenth commandment?" And the answer is, "The tenth commandment forbids all discontentment with our own estate, envying, or grieving at the good of our neighbor, and all inordinate motions and affections to anything that is his."

Right now in this country, there are a lot of people who think that they are suffering because they do not have as much as someone else. Many people running for political office are promising to fix their problem by taking from one person and giving it to another. But are you poorer because someone else is wealthier? Are you poor because Donald Trump is rich? Are your finances weak because Oprah's are strong?

I am particularly fascinated by the Occupy Wall Street Crowd and their Occupy movements in cities across the land. Although they may have a legitimate grievance about government bailouts of the financial industry, they are not protesting the government who took the money from some and gave it to others, they are protesting the people who received the money and then turning around and demanding that the same be done for them. They are looking at the wealthy and "grieving at the good of our neighbor", and having "all inordinate motions and affections to anything that is his."

Just because you are not blessed does not mean you are cursed. A lack of blessings is not suffering. The things that I envy are the qualities of Christ where others seem to have been more blessed-- the qualities of people who are kinder, more caring, and more full of mercy for others than me.