In the trenches of day-to-day life it’s impossible to keep focussed on the right things - Andy Moore

As we lurch from “Mini Budgets” to Autumn Statements in a cost-of-living crisis, many in our society are making financial decisions which would be more appropriate in a Charles Dickens novel. Should we heat the house or give the kids a meal?

Sad dichotomies like this are an indictment of our age. We often think that if we could just have a bit more money, all our problems would go away. Confidence in uncertain times is a function of where we place our security and most of us instinctively turn to our bank accounts.

I don’t claim to be any different, I’ve started renting out the spare room in our house and taken on extra work to make ends meet.

At the same time I know, as I think we all do, that money won’t make me happy in the end and it cannot provide ultimate security. So why do we crave money knowing it’s not the answer?

Andy Moore for Solas

In 400BC, Aristotle said that we do, and we seek things, according to what we think we will gain from those actions, revealing a hierarchy of purposes and motivations which link all the way up to one thing we value more than anything else.

For example, work earns us money, so we can buy a house, a house becomes a home, a home allows us raise a family and so on. That seems like pretty sound logic.

Then says Aristotle; if there is some end in all our actions that we wish for because of itself, wishing for all the other things we wish for because of it alone – this will be the chief good: “If we could know it, it would have great significance – like archers with a target we would be so much more successful in hitting the point.”

Unfortunately for him, this is where Aristotle came unstuck. He never worked out what that ultimately worthy pursuit could be; the source of happiness, enduring security.

Fast forward a few centuries to Jerusalem and Jesus Christ comes along with his answer: Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness – and to paraphrase – everything else starts to make sense under that.

In the trenches of day-to-day life we find it impossible to keep focussed on the right things. When we’re in survival mode navigating financial pressures we construct security using pieces of a jigsaw which only add up to a picture reflecting this world: the mortgage, job security, husband, wife, children, girlfriend, boyfriend, the environment, charitable causes, voluntary work, qualifications, status in society.

These things are important – but we need to look through and beyond them – to see where true happiness can be found, and where our security can be reliably anchored.

The author CS Lewis said the good things of this world are like the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we’ve never visited.

That country, according to Jesus, is the Kingdom of God. When everything else fails, it will stand. Sometimes it feels like God is not there, or if he is there, he’s got no interest in our lives – but Jesus said that “life is more than food” and that our Heavenly Father is committed to providing for us.

So, when our relationship with Him is what we pursue above all, we receive a security that all the money in this world cannot provide. Many in our culture are starting to discover that Jesus might have been on to something. What about you?

Andy Moore for Solas