Subvert Success

I’m really liking this by Trevin Wax:

• We subvert the Caesar of Success whenever we, as a community of faith, reject the idea that bigger is necessarily better.
• We subvert Success when we go from riches to rags on behalf of the world’s poor rather than finding our hope in moving from rags to riches…
• We subvert Success when our churches partner with one another, not as competitors, but as co-workers in the kingdom…
• We subvert Success as businesspeople when we are willing to downsize, to take pay cuts to spend more time with family, to refuse a promotion that will sacrifice church and family ties.
• We subvert Success by praying for our competitors’ success, by thanking God for the success achieved by others, just as the early church prayed for the governing authorities who were persecuting them.

I think these very ideas of subversion are the key behind finding an alternative dream that we can have in this world. I think “doing theology” (even in the particular fashion that I’ve become accustomed to, through the history) is imperative for the Church. As I read tonight about some of the early Church fathers, theology equipped the Church how to think about the issues facing them. We desperately need that in our churches. We increasingly look like the world in our reasons and motivations.