Materialism: Grave of the Craving

According to the Scriptures, it is people who go astray in their hearts and do not know God's ways that follow this well-worn path.

BETHPAGE, TN (Pursuing the Summit) - Let an economic downturn hit the US, and listen for the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Rebellious and refusing to be ashamed, we turn our hearts from the inherent lesson, and set our faces instead toward a Tower of Babel of accumulated things, experiences, services, and with it, more economic slavery for ourselves and those upon whose backs it is built.

According to the Scriptures, it is people who go astray in their hearts and do not know God's ways that follow this well-worn path. The Israelites did it, and missed the Promised Land completely.

Slaves to brutal Egyptian taskmasters, the Lord heard the cries of His beloved people and sent a deliverer to rescue them. They left Egypt with its spoils of gold and silver, but barely out of sight of their slavery, they began to complain, revealing a more insidious bondage. On the surface, the complaints seem legitimate. One can hardly live without food and water, and God answered their accusations of neglect by providing water from a rock and daily manna from the sky.

Not a word of thanksgiving is recorded; instead the complaints seem to multiply. God had sent them "angels' food," but they "yielded to intense craving," a polite way of communicating their lust for the variety and plenty they had enjoyed while slaves in Egypt. "'Who will give us meat to eat?' they said. 'Think of the fish we used to eat free in Egypt, the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic! But now we are withering away; there is nothing wherever we look except this manna!'" The tone is one of contempt, as the Israelites regarded the daily, miraculous manna as monotonous and drying them up inside.

The people used every discomfort as an excuse to find fault with and accuse their leadership of deprivation and neglect, and in each instance God regarded the murmuring of the people and their offenses to be against Himself, personally, and His own leadership and provision for them. St. Jerome kindly explains the complaining by way of the fatigue of the journey, but the Lord patiently offers them a lesson by granting their desire:

"...since you have wept in Yahweh's [God's] hearing, saying: Who will give us meat to eat? How happy we were in Egypt! Very well, Yahweh will give you meat to eat. You will eat it not for one day, or two, or five, or ten or twenty, but for a whole month, until it comes out of your nostrils and sickens you, since you have rejected Yahweh who is among you..." (Num. 11).

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Psalm 78 offers a chilling interpretation our spiritual ancestors' experience, relating that they sinned against God by testing Him in their hearts and asking for the "food of their fancy." He gave them what they desired and did not deprive them of what they craved, but while the quail was in their mouths, it was judgment that they swallowed.

It was not the fact that they hungered and thirsted that insulted God so profoundly, just as it is not our own legitimate desires or needs that qualify as sin. We lie to ourselves when we indulge the belief that it was better for us when we were more prosperous, that we will die of lack in this economic desert.

Completely oblivious to the real poverty in huge portions of the earth, and complaining constantly of lack of spice, we are the fool whose house is too small to hold his constant accumulation of stuff, stuff that requires a bigger house when the old is just fine (Luke 12:13-21); stuff that suffocates us, and those around us, to death in debt and cares. We blame our church leaders or God for lack of freshness, spice, and meat in our spiritual diets.

As leaders, either in our churches or families, we capitulate to the pressure to produce freshness, spice, and meat to complaining adults, tossing out sweets that do not nourish, rather than resting in God's provision and timing for ourselves and those we lead. In these times of economic downturn, emotional pressure mounts to collect "things" in an attempt to anesthetize ourselves from the reality of our spiritual condition, dependence, and we can hardly cease from bottom-feeding for something else to assuage the anxiety.

The Father knows what we need, and has graciously provided it (Matt. 6:32). It is we who reject his provision in favor of immediate, but temporary, satiation. We limit God, we do not wait on His counsel, we demand what we crave in the desert, refusing to wait on Him without accusing Him of lack of care (Ps. 106). We must take great care to discipline ourselves against such error in times of perceived deprivation, for God will give us our request, as He gave the Israelites theirs, but as it runs out our noses we are quickly disgusted by what previously delighted us: the new car smell gives way to the burden of payments in the face of a devastating job loss.

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As we persist in rejecting God's provision for us, either in the timing or the substance, do we suspect judgment: leanness of soul, days consumed in futility, years in fear (Ps. 106:13-15; 78:33), and finally, the forfeit of the freedom we were on our way to meet (Ps. 95)? I think not. I think, instead, our corpses fall as blindly as the Israelites' into "graves of the craving" (Num. 11:35), and we never see the Promised Land.

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Sonja Corbitt is a Catholic Scripture teacher, study author and speaker. Visit her at www.pursuingthesummit.com and www.pursuingthesummit.blogspot.com

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