CLAIM:
I want to focus on my career and achieve financial stability. I don’t need to rush getting married or having kids.
REBUTTAL:
It is good to have priorities. It is better to have properly calibrated priorities. Calibrating priorities can be challenging and deceptive. It comes down to the “how” and “why” the priorities are set.
Priorities and Circumstances
Priorities, by their nature, compete against other priorities. It may be a high priority to always answer the phone when your mother calls, but if you are fighting a fire, answering your mother’s call will have to wait. In other words, priorities should accurately reflect the most pressing and urgent needs of the moment. A change in circumstances can quickly change the priorities.
The claimant has a desire for a career, financial stability, marriage, and children, presumably in that order. Based on current circumstances, the claimant believes he has sufficient time to get married and have children, so he chooses to prioritize developing a career that will help him achieve financial security.
What if the circumstances change? What if the “perfect mate” is found, but that person does not want to wait for a mature career and financial stability? What if that “perfect mate” has other interested suitors? What if the career choice turns out to be a dead end because of changing technology or a declining value in the job market? These circumstances can change the priorities.
Priorities and Opinions
Priorities are strongly influenced by opinion. People who love camping make it a high priority to take the time and have the equipment to fulfill this passion. People who dislike camping won’t even consider it an option, let alone a priority.
Priorities reflect opinion. Sometimes our opinions are skewed, giving us a false sense of reality. Making a career choice is a great example. I have an affinity for professional football, but I lack the aptitude for it. I have an affinity for beautiful piano music, but I lack the aptitude to play it. Sometimes, our affinity for something can blind us to our limited capabilities. We chart courses in life, establishing priorities and investing money into ventures that we deeply love (affinity), but for which we have little skill (aptitude).
That is how opinion can affect prioritization, sometimes distorting the results.
Priorities and our Worldview
When people talk about finding their “dream job,” it often involves a set of strong convictions about something, combined with aptitude. Over time, we develop a worldview where we choose a career path and set goals for ourselves as we pursue something we enjoy and are also skilled at doing. Soon, we will make strategic choices to implement our plans for pursuing this venture.
What we have done is establish a worldview of how we want things to be and have convinced ourselves that with our abilities and drive, we can achieve those things. Our worldview is shaped, refined, and focused over time, and we prioritize our lives around it.
What Makes for “Good” Priorities?”
Typically, we understand good priorities are those that help us achieve our plans. Even if we don’t share your priorities (camping again comes to mind), you would have good priorities if they help you achieve a camping goal.
This is where worldview comes into sharper focus. Often, we find ourselves establishing priorities that don’t always or consistently align. For example, it is challenging to embrace camping if you want to raise dairy or beef cattle, as this requires little to no time off for camping.
All priorities require having the “bigger picture” in focus. First, priorities need to be ethical. Seeking to double trafficking in illegal drugs may be something you like and are good at, but it is unethical based on a higher standard. Your worldview, when properly calibrated, demands ethical consideration of your priorities. It requires a clear focus on what life is all about. It demands thoughtful introspection. It demands that you know why you are here in the first place. Understanding your reason for existing provides the foundation for your worldview, which then informs your priorities, to make them genuinely “good” priorities.
Informed Priorities
The question that lingers is “Why?” Why settle into a career first? Why is it such a high priority to achieve financial security? The answer helps you understand what makes for good priorities.
Achievement in this world takes time. The discussion of priorities also suggests that it takes planning. Is that, however, what this is all about? What if God were only to grant you 35 years of life? I am guessing that focusing on a career and financial stability would not be your top priorities.
The “bigger picture” is the one that remains constant regardless of economic fluctuations, health, and circumstances. While everything in this world is oriented toward living in this world, God provides a different perspective with an eternal context.
Two primary God-centric constants are mission and existence. Our mission, despite the numerous opportunities offered by the world, is firmly established in Scripture. God describes us this way,
“…everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.” (Isaiah 43:7)
That theme is repeated many times in both the Old and New Testaments. In the Old Testament, we are instructed,
Declare his glory among the nations, his marvelous deeds among all peoples. (Psalm 96:3)
In the New Testament, Jesus said:
In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. (Matthew 5:16)
And the Apostle Paul made it clear that it involves everything that we are doing:
So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. (1 Corinthians 10:31)
The focal point of our lives is to glorify God. We do so when picking a career, accumulating wealth, finding a spouse, and having children. While the world lures us to think it is all about us, Scripture tells us that it is all about God. That is our mission: to glorify God.
Now comes the existence part of the equation. Everything we do in the world has an endpoint. The Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes provides an especially sobering evaluation of life:
For a person may labor with wisdom, knowledge and skill, and then they must leave all they own to another who has not toiled for it. This too is meaningless and a great misfortune. (Ecclesiastes 2:21)
Jesus emphasized this when he commented about the things we accumulate in this life:
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.” (Matthew 6:19)
What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? (Matthew 16:26)
Christians, however, need not despair. When Lazarus, a dear friend of Jesus, died, Jesus acknowledged both death and eternity:
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die. (John 11:25)
That is why when Jesus warned us not to store up worldly possessions, he went on to say:
But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. (Matthew 6:20)
Pursuing a career and finding financial stability are familiar reasons for postponing marriage. The correctness of the priorities rests not so much in good planning but in how well calibrated the heart is in doing all things to the glory of God. For one person, distracted by the world and hooked on a career and financial stability as a form of security, it is a wrong decision. For another person, who sees a career and economic stability as instruments to glorify God and responsibly care for a family, the decision could be a correct one.
The caution is to realize how easily we can get distracted by the world’s offerings. Seeking a career and worldly prosperity may bring some temporal satisfaction. Still, it may also pull us further away from glorifying God and onto a course of concerns for material things that do not last.
Gratitude as a Point of Reference
I am talking about starting from a different point of reference. To be worldly-minded means to set worldly goals and to find the most effective and efficient means to accomplish those goals. It involves planning and prioritization to achieve the goals.
As God’s children, our point of reference is not seeking to obtain something, but cherishing what we have in God through Christ. Our core value is gratitude for being rescued from sin and saved by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ (Isaiah 53:4-6; 2 Corinthians 5:21). That does not mean we become irresponsible. We are called upon to be responsible stewards of resources (Proverbs 21:5; 1 Corinthians 4:2). Our point of reference, however, is different because our endpoint has changed.
Gratitude is a lifestyle of revelation in which what we say, do, and think reflects a new attitude of our hearts that others can observe. Gratitude for what God has done for us in Christ shows itself as follows:
- Praise (Psalm 9:1; Isaiah 12:4; Acts 2:46-47)
- Happy obedience (John 14:23-24; Romans 6:1-2)
- Selflessness (Matthew 23:11-12; 1 Corinthians 10:24; Philippians 2:3-4)
- Trust (Proverbs 3:5-6; Jeremiah 17:7-8; Philippians 4:6-7)
- Courage (Deuteronomy 31:6; 1 Chronicles 28:20; 1 Corinthians 16:13)
There are more attributes that we could add to this list. Still, upon examining the Bible passages, it is clear that as God’s children, we approach issues like career and starting a family from a different perspective than those who live for the world.
Latitude in Freedom
Recall that earlier, I gave you an example where prioritizing career, financial stability, marriage, and children can be right or wrong. I emphasized our motivation for the rightness or wrongness of our priorities. One more thing needs to be said:
There is a freedom we have in how we do things. Consider how the Apostle Paul put it:
You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love. (Galatians 5:13)
Paul is not inviting us to use freedom recklessly. He clearly states we are not to use it to “indulge the flesh.” In other words, we are not to use our freedom to do things contrary to God’s wishes. Instead, with our selfless focus, we have the latitude to express it in various ways.
Two rightly motivated Christians can approach the same thing in different ways. One Christian may prioritize career and financial security before committing to marriage. That does not necessarily mean the Christian does not trust God, but rather that they are choosing to be a responsible steward of resources in their approach to marriage and family.
Another Christian may view such stewardship as a team effort with their spouse and therefore prioritize marriage, family, career, and financial security in that order. Because both are committed to glorifying God in all things, neither is wrong in their approach. We do not even have to understand their logic in the approach they use. That is the generosity of latitude God has given us in using Christian freedom.
That being said, Christians will find great value in their planning to lean on fellow Christians as a check and balance on their motivation and thinking (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10; Proverbs 15:22; Proverbs 27:17; 1 Thessalonians 5:11).
Someone once said,
Things which matter most must never be at the mercy of things which matter least.
Proper priorities are rooted in hearts tethered by gratitude in their knowledge of God’s love. When gratitude shines, the priorities become clearer.
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