Being, Doing, Having

 

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!... God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

—2 Corinthians 5:17, 21

Many years ago now, I heard my friend and founder of Celebrate Kids!, Kathy Koch, Ph.D., speak to an audience consisting of the members of a Christian organization. She reminded us that God made us “human beings,” not “human doings.” I like that. So often other people conclude that God will only accept them on the merits of what they do. It’s all too easy for us to slip into that mode of thinking, too.

In the famous Love Chapter of 1 Corinthians 13, the Apostle Paul reminds us that even if we give all we possess to the poor and surrender our bodies to flames, without the love that comes from our being in Christ, what we do is vanity—of no import.

Recently, I read a chapter by Dr. John Claypool in which he expressed the cultural pressure of having that bears on us as Christians. He used the ancient story of Hannah from 1 Samuel 1. Like the culture surrounding her, Hannah felt that, until she could have a child, her life amounted to nothing. She actually made a bargain with God that if He would give her a child (so she could have one) she would give his whole life back to the Lord. God used this means to raise up the great prophet Samuel.

Dr. Claypool writes:

When the God’s gift of “being” is seen as primal and foundational, then creative “doing” and responsible “having” grow naturally from such a base. But when we turn reality upside down and make “doing” or “having” the basis of “being,” we produce anxiety and distortion of the worst kind. Having to produce or else is frightening! ¹

After considering this, it seems to me that we fall into the trap of “having” for our fulfillment, nearly as easily as we do into “doing.” Jesus’ story of the rich young ruler from Matthew 19 expresses this truth. Thinking eternal life had to do with “doing,” the rich young ruler asked Jesus what he needed to do. Jesus told him to sell his possessions and give to the poor. Verse 22 states:

When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.

This man’s “having” and “doing” had gotten in the way of his “being.”

How easily we fall into the same thinking. If I have the right kind of status, or money, or education, or do kind deeds and all the “churchy” things required of someone living a holy life, God and my Christian society will accept me. We want to belong, and our society screams at us that these doings are the way of becoming acceptable.

Instead, God wants all our having and doing to spring from our being in Christ. It may seem like a thin line at times, but taking stock of our thought processes, and reviewing why we act as we do, will help us to live out the real truth of who God has made us to be!

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1 Claypool, John, Glad Reunion. Waco: Word Books, 1985. p. 73.