Who wouldn’t want the ability to do whatever you want, whenever you want, with whoever you want? Sounds like being God.This guiding hope is what many new entrepreneurs are shooting for, working towards a reality that comes with complete autonomy. On a darker flip side, it does have an effect of making someone discontent with what is perceived as a underserved life.
This popular goal, freedom, among those in the personal development and network marketing field is quite a driving force in the secular mind, to be able to do “whatever you want, whenever you want with whomever you want.” The sky is the limit, right? Granted, it sounds rather self-promoting to me if you have no other guiding philosophy, yet it can be a kind of a shooting for the moon ambition that motivates many people.
In network marketing, if you can get 100 people to just move the needle of product selling, you are likely to achieve a reasonable amount of success. And then you need to keep the ball rolling so that others can achieve what you’ve achieved and you can achieve more. Some people call it a pyramid scheme. I may have written a long time ago that pyramid schemes work fine as long as the work done is done ethically (and how is that possible? you may ask).
You might consider that we are all involved in a form of pyramid scheme taking the gross corruption in state government, when the average citizen is just oblivious to how they are getting fleeced as they go about their day to day lives while they slowly lose their freedom and purchasing power while tolerating policies they never voted for. Yeh, so it’s easy to pick on something obvious like someone trying to start a network marketing company but you are blind to how corrupt politicians and unelected bureaucrats are focused on pulling the very foundation of your rights away (at least if you live in the United States).
Tragically enough, there are many churches out there who have distorted the gospel message into something similar, “to live your best life now.” I write “tragically” because this kind of pastor led heretical debauching of the gospel becomes part of the wide path that leads to destruction. This idolatrous view of what heaven is life and what God has taught, it plays to the sin nature of man.
If you need a counterpoint, presuming being a true disciple of Christ is reflected in lives who were the most influenced by the Lord Himself, just look at the Apostles who came nothing close to having lives of affluence, and Judas Escariot in particular. Judas was looking for the best life now and betrayed His own teacher in the process. I think these facts are ones that the mainline Western church chooses to turn the proverbial blind eye to because it doesn’t fit the want to be tolerant, non-prejudicial and nice in order to attract congregants and to drown in their own self-righteousness.
While each human is endowed with freedom to choose, nowhere in the Bible does God suggest that you are free if you are free to do whatever you want, whenever and with whoever you want and that is somehow a measure of success.
If you let that sink in, it’s dangerously self absorbed, slavery to one’s own ambition. It is an alarm when you say you did it for your family but your family never knew you. Or more to the point, when the Lord says on the Day of Judgment, “I never knew you.”
The fundamental problem is that your wisdom, your worldly wisdom that is a slave to the wants of the media and the world’s institutions wants for you what it wills. So what you want, how you want it, where you want it and with whomever your want to do it with are not only manifestations of your own self-idolatry, but it’s a self that is constantly being manipulated by the culture, the media, 24/7 advertising, propaganda AND the growing unregulated soft porn that most people can see by just logging into most advertisement bars, if not your own email tool, sidebars.
With a worldly and materialistic concept of your desires, from a Christ perspective, what do you really hope to gain?
About 11 to 12 years ago, I took the time to study network marketing and in principle, theory and on paper, it can be an honest way to make a living. I tried to put it into practice since my wife was involved, I figure we might make a team. We immersed ourselves in the particular lifestyle of that network marketing community for a couple of years. There are real hurdles that anyone must overcome and that is the suspicious nature most people (including own initial suspicions) have of network marketing and the significant role one must embrace as a salesman.
A network marketer is encouraged to “Go for No,” which is (A title of a popular book by Fenton and Waltz) sales principle based on a statistical objective to get someone to go along with your program. Simply, you have to endure many people who will not to get to the one who will. It’s an integral part of the basic network marketing business plan, though more sophisticated people in the business focus on running paid training seminars to draw the people will often not do the work but would rather sit in continuous training in hopes that doing the work will be easier.
Unfortunately, there is good reason people distrust network marketing and that is because some people who are leaders and mentors who have skewed attitudes regarding fair treatment of others, the crux is, there seems little regulation to govern the practices and behavior of those who run local network marketing organizations (at least in my observation). When business novices are blinded by get rich presentations, they can then be pressured to make purchase decisions that are based on hype and not based on business principles (i.e. buying more than you can ever sell).
Are there good people involved in network marketing? Yes. The problem is, most people willing to get involved will only do so with the promises of getting rich but not with the understanding that it requires hard work based on sound ground up business principles. And nowadays, consumers have the internet market place at their finger tips and enjoy the freedom to buy what they want, when they want, from whomever they want.
Now, seeking what God wants, whatever He wants, whenever He wants and with whomever He wants, that results in eternal rewards. Rewards that survive into the invisible realm, of God’s heavenly kingdom. The goals of the heavenly kingdom, I’m must say, has little to do with having nice cars, great vacations, and a team of hardworking people looking to you as their inspiration and mentor to become wealthy. Seeking God may lead to material wealth but material wealth is never a goal in itself. Wealth can be a very useful tool nevertheless.
However, a life following God may lead to minimalist attitudes towards wealth though material wealth or that kind of worldly resourcefulness is a blessing. The point is God uses each person and their wealth or lack of wealth to the His glory. Zaccheus the tax collector, in Luke 19, is a good example.
The promises of God are based on the Gospel, and that is founded on Christ’s obedience to the Father’s will in effort to save humanity, or more precisely, to save each person who will believe in faith in Christ from the sin that they would otherwise suffer for. Each person must take a step forward to enter the gate that is made possible by Jesus’ crucifixion and death on the cross where he paid the penalty that we deserve for the sin we committed. He was righteous and sinless and took upon himself our sins so we may live in eternality in the beauty of God’s glorious kingdom.
He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. – 2 Corinthians 5:21
A servant of God is true freedom, one that is within the realm of obedience, in harmony with ourselves made in God’s image, not to your depraved self concept, but to the holy, righteous, yet caring and merciful God who created you for life in His kingdom.
For a one minute explanation of the Gospel from the late Pastor John MacArthur, watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCP9UcC7BzE
For a review of the Ten Commandments: https://www.challenyee.com/the-ten-commandments/
All quoted excerpts have footnotes removed, usually from Legacy Standard Bible (LSB), sometimes from New International Version (NIV), on rare occasion the Amplified Bible (AMP).
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5/26/24