Affluence or Influence?

I'm a procrastinator. I put off the things I don't want to do. I even put off the things I do want to do. So I end up wasting more time than I've any right to.

The point of my intro? I had let my home disintegrate into a serious post-tornadic state between post-Thanksgiving Christmas shopping, illness, China, Iowa, and New Years. So my last free weekends before starting back at my other job were to be dedicated to serious, diehard cleaning. While it did get 98% done, there were a lot of prolonged breaks between toilet scrubbing and ceiling fan dusting.

Unfortunately, I have the propensity to get sucked into many types of reality shows, even though the people may aggravate me greatly or even disgust me. Common sense would say to change the channel or just turn the TV off entirely, but sometimes I just become so udderly shocked that people could live in such a manner that I just can't turn away. I sometimes excuse it as a lesson in psychology or sociology.

One show in particular disgusted me by the commercials alone. However, as is often the case, it came on after another show I had watched and I got sucked in before I could change the channel.

Perhaps you've heart of the new Lifetime show "Top This Party"? If not, the show follows a few top-notch party planners to the monetarily elite. One segment featured a successful real estate mogul who throws an annual Halloween bash for colleagues and friends. Her lavish California home was decorated with $20,000 worth of decorations. And this before she even found the event planner. I believe she budgeted $100-$150K for the actual event.

Another segment featured a 30 year old woman who had taken nearly a year off from the film company she and her husband own after the birth of their first child. She wanted an outrageous party as a sort of I'm-coming-back-to-the-working-world celebration. Her budget, you might ask? $250,000.

When I was a kid, I remember watching "Lifestyles of the Rich & Famous" with Robin Leach. And I think back then I was fascinated and astounded by the opulent houses and beautiful clothes and things these rich people had. A farm girl from rural Iowa couldn't imagine what it would be like to live like that. How amazing!

A couple decades later, I'm still amazed, yes. But in a more sad and sickened way.

As I watched these people spend a quarter of a million dollars on one night's entertainment, you can imagine where my mind went. How many orphans could that feed? How many surgeries would that fund? The one party alone would cover Hope Healing Home's operational costs for five months.

I do not understand the lifestyle of the rich and famous...or not-so-famous. I don't understand how another woman and her personal assistant spent $500,000 on jewelry when children around the world go to bed hungry. How people are living it up in L.A. or New York or Brentwood, TN while a parent on the other side of the world abandons their baby on the doorstep of an orphanage because they cannot afford to get the medical care needed for their child's heart disease or spina bifida or cleft palate.

Perhaps I'm not much better in my own way. I spent $25-$30 splurging on Starbucks during my December travels. A few more dollars and I could have sponsored a child for a month.

And what about non-profits? Perhaps someday I will see the necessity for it, but I continue to scratch my head as I see the pages of pictures of black-tie affairs listed in the society columns for one charity or another. There's backslapping done for the amount of money raised, but how much money was invested in throwing the event? While you may think it's all donated, I've seen firsthand that it does not all come for free.

And then there is the Church. Do we not in some small way play "Top This Party"? Beautifully engineered buildings and impeccably decorated interiors are designed to draw people in, but what's left to send out? We have our five- or six-figure sound systems, but they will not carry the message to the street, the country, or the world.

Rick Warren in his book The Purpose-Driven Church addresses the "importance" of the highest quality sound system your church can afford and the proper seat types and spacing for the optimum church experience. What about the underground churches in places like China? Is the Word less effective huddled in a neighbor's home or the back of a store cloaked in secrecy? I daresay it's much more effective there. We Americans require too much entertainment and comfort.

We need a black-tie event in order to pull out our checkbooks...where the evening attire costs more than our charitable donation.

We need a Sunday morning multimedia event to keep our attention...one that's scheduled so as not to conflict with the football game or our kids' soccer practice. We require a church that doesn't make us feel guilty for giving more for season tickets to the game than what we put in the offering plate.

Perhaps I sound very harsh to you, but I say nothing I have not first preached to myself.

Once again, I heard numerous times before I went to China and after "Oh, I couldn't do that. That would be too hard." It was. And it is.

Because now more than ever, I look at the "wants" and the frivolities of this country we live in and can not simply view them as "wants" or "needs." I think "how many orphans could that help?"

Does anyone really need a Jaguar or could they settle for a Toyota and help a child with HIV?

Do we need the biggest houses our budgets will allow or can we settle for what meets our needs and help build an orphanage?

Does our place of worship need to qualify for "Better Homes and Sanctuaries" or can we keep it simple, worship God, and give away as much as we can?

I do want some nice things in life. I'd love a nice house I can turn into a comfortable home, a big family, and the means to care for us all. But I also want to leave the world a better place. I want to know I did all I could to help as many children as I could with what I had.

I don't want affluence, I want influence. The influence to change at least one little corner of the world and how it goes near to the least of these.

Which would you choose?