TEDDY TUG-O-WAR: THE SECRET SAUCE OF SHARING

By Dan Carpenter on 1/30/12

When I was a kid (and then later as an older adult looking kid), sharing was beyond me. I was that kid. I. Just. Couldn’t. Share.

Perhaps it was because my dad was always sniping at my diner (nothing one would want to eat was ever safe… and yet there was always far too much of the meatloaf. Sigh. What can one do?), perhaps it was simple insecurity. Point was, I couldn’t do it. That led to some challenges. Don’t like to share? Kinda makes it hard to give others credit. To enjoying seeing others find victory. To see anything other than you, yourself, getting what you want. Achieving your goal. It even makes it hard to just ‘be’ - or at least, it can. Any time we start to invest too much energy into thoughts of ownership… it goes downhill fast. Just take a gander at all the related sins - envy, greed, lust, craving, jealousy. It’s a potent thing.

Sharing, it turns out, really is rather important.

Sunday hammered that home. Brandon asked a big question - are you sharing your most treasured possession, your salvation? And in doing so, he asked another, smaller, question - are you a sharing kind of person? And that’s what I want to focus on. Am I a sharing kind of person? Are you?

It’s a vital question. It reminds me, obviously, of childhood ‘learning’ moments - and how adults would take on that voice of minor annoyance, a certain condescension, and say, “you need to share.” And that said, job done, they would wander off to deal with the kid who was always banging his head on the wall, or perhaps to address a gum/hair crisis.

I’d like to go back and infuse my six year old 1st grade self with the whim to stand up and say, “Hey! Get back here and explain why sharing is so darned important! Because I don’t even like this kid and this is MY TOY! So why should I?!” I want to do that both because it would have really creeped Ms. Ashcroft out (no fond memories there), and because I’d like to see if she could answer the question without playing to my selfishness. I hope so, for her own sake, but who knows?

Because the reality is, sharing is pretty much EVERYTHING when it comes to a Christian life and guess what folks? It’s pretty much NOT a part of our culture. They are at odds, yet again. In our faith we’re called to share love, to share trust, to share compassion, to share empathy and of course - to share our wealth. Whatever that wealth might be.

Our faith calls us to accept a fundamental truth about sharing that lays at the heart of our faith: nothing is ours.

Not. One. Thing.

It’s all God’s.

Psalm 24:11 says it clear as day - “The earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it. The world and all its people belong to him.”

This is our not so secret sauce. A not so secret sauce that is still sometimes not yet clear enough, in my opinion largely because of this culture of ‘the self’ that we all live within here in luxury land (aka the north western hemisphere). It also explains why thoughts of ‘ownership’ almost always lead to negative repercussions or sin - because it’s a lie. We dont ‘own’ anything. We receive, as blessing, and that’s it.

This principle of sharing, of giving, of relinquishing ‘ownership of’ is the central tenant that allows us to give up the self directed life. A decision that starts us down the road to becoming Christ’s in heart. This is where it all starts for us… as going about it any other way is missing so (too) much.

In Acts 20:35 we’re told that Christ said, “‘It is more blessed to give than to receive,’” while in 2 Corinthians 9:7 tells us, “God loves a cheerful giver.”  and 1 Timothy 6:18 says, “...be generous and willing to share.” And on, and on, and on. It’s 100% clear. It’s there, open and ready to be known.

Me? I’ve learned these things the hard way. I wouldn’t advise it. These are lessons of principle that needn’t be lived through to realize. And it all comes back to that moment when we, as children (or as adults, as necessary), are instructed in sharing. In realizing that our common answer to the child (or adult) who asks, “Why should I share?” is part of the problem.  That to cite, “You can’t expect others to share with you if you don’t share with them,” might be true in practice but is so flawed in this application. Because its principle is a selfish one. It’s a twisting of the golden rule to ignore empathy and compassion for others and just look to our own respective consequence or reward. Learning to share from a desire for selfish means just isn’t going to get it done, not really. It’s ethical duct tape, and cheap tape at that.

No. There’s only one correct answer here - that nothing belongs to us in the first place, that everything, as in ‘everything,’ is God’s. And that the reason to share, to give up what we might ‘have,’ is to be a gift to others.

To be just a little bit like Christ.

To give, not so we may gain, but so that others may have.

It’s our opportunity to be a little bit less like the beasts and a bit more like God - to go one bit further in walking after those perfect footsteps.

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