When my wife and I bought our minivan about 6 years ago, I discovered that with just the touch of a button, the rear passenger doors would come sliding open. Early on, I loved walking up to the van, hitting the button, and watching the doors slide open so the kids could jump in. Such luxury!
Fast forward to this week, and our family is cruising around town in a brand-new, 2017 minivan. It’s not our van, but we are driving a rental while our van is in the shop. This van’s doors also open with just the touch of a button, but the newer model has seat warmers, a backup camera, and now the van itself starts with just the touch of a button. Suddenly our old van doesn’t seem so impressive. Soon I was wondering how much the payment on a vehicle like this would be.
Our passage for study last Sunday night included 1 Timothy 6:6-8, “But godliness with contentment is a great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these” (HCSB). As we talked about these verses, I was struck by how much we focus on the what instead of the why when it comes to material goods.
If we only focus on the what, like the new car, we will be prone to assess people based on the material goods they own. We will find the person who has a newer car than ours, and we will wonder why they don’t love Jesus like we do. After all, they are not suffering for Jesus like we are in our late model vehicles. Clearly they have succumbed to the love of worldly things. However, we will rarely turn this assessment on its head and think about those who have older cars than ours. There has to be some limit to this kind of analysis, some year at which all cars become spiritually neutral. And that limit, as it turns out, is probably about the year our car was made.
So to answer the what question rightly, should we buy a new car, we can’t just ask what, but we must also ask why. Why are we buying the car? If our family had gone out immediately and bought a new van, we would have done so because we were discontent with what we had. It was not that our van stopped working or became insufficient for our needs, but we would have made the purchase because we were lacking in godly contentment. Upon seeing what we didn’t have, we would have grown discontent with what we did have. And so the what, the buying of the car, would have been a sin because of the why, discontentment. This is not to say that the act of purchasing a new car is sinful. After all, our van will not work forever. The day will come when we will move on from it and purchase another vehicle. The problem with the what would have been found in the why.
But I think there is one more confusion that might plague us when making these kinds of decisions. We might now think that it is always the why that matters and not the what, as though it doesn’t really matter what we do, only why we do it. But we must be reminded that it is not really the what or the why that inherently matters. What matters is obedience to God. What matters is what God has said. And sometimes God’s Word addresses the what, and sometimes it addresses the why. If you get drunk, you have sinned (Ephesians 5:19). There is no reason you can come up with to make the act anything but sinful. You are not getting drunk to better minister to drunks. You are breaking God’s command.
But when it comes to purchasing a new car, taking a better paying job, or many other decisions that we must make from time to time, God has not given us commands concerning the what in many of these instances. So we must ask if God has addressed the why. Why are we buying the car? Why are we taking the job? Often we think that the Bible does not address so many of the questions that we might ask, like what job to take. But this is because we are looking only for commands related to the what of our lives, not the why.
I see this clearly demonstrated in our kids. Sometimes they get the what right while missing horribly on the why. Pouting and muttering while they clean their rooms might check the what box, clean your room, but it misses the why by a mile, obey your parents as you would the Lord and honor your father and mother (Ephesians 6:1-2). So even in cleaning their rooms, they might sin in how they do it. And on the other hand, sometimes they think they can negate the what because of their creative whys. I know you told me not to do this, but let me explain.…
As children of our heavenly Father, we are also called to obedience, both in what He has called us to do, and how He has called us to do it. So as we consider all the decisions that we have to make, let us consider first what God has said, both in what we do and in why we do it. Let us remember that both the what and the why matter, but they matter because God has spoken.
A Family of Faith 