Privilege

I have for some time been thinking about privilege and advantage, especially as concerns upbringing. I have been examining whether God plays favorites when He places people wherever.

Does God favor people he places close to cities and highways so that their little produce fetches best prices and sells as soon as it gets ready when someone far from those places will sell the same at throwaway prices and may sometimes even rot for lack of market?

How come there could be such a variance in pricing of basic needs between those areas? Why is it that the ones who sell the cheapest buy at the highest prices due to the distance between the market and industries? Someone sells milk at a quarter of the price the connected sells yet buys food at higher prices than the one near progress. One needs to sell four to five litres of milk to buy a kilo of sugar when the other will just need to sell a litre for the same amount of sugar.

Is God unfair? Is that advantage a privilege?

What is a privileged upbringing? What is the best gift a parent should give his children?

The God I know and serve is just. This means that He does all things right. But He also sees beyond what we can ever see.

An advantage can be the doorway to the greatest curse just like what we may think of as a disadvantage can open up into the greatest blessing.

But let me talk about raising children. What is  the best gift a parent can give to his children? Which heritance is best for a child?

Many people think, even unequivocally confess that the best education qualifies as the best inheritance for a child. This is because the best educated person can access the best employment opportunities. But is employment the best in advantage?

Others confess that offering investments is the best inheritance for a child. Again I ask, is being wealthy with things the ultimate success.

What does the Bible say?

Why are the best educated people not the most successful? Why are the wealthiest persons not the happiest? Why is there more depression and suicide in that quadrant? Or do you think it is because they are in the limelight?

There is more to life than that array of degrees or vastness of property.

Like Christ said, there is more to life than earthly things. The main reason is because these things not only are temporary; they can only take us as far as the grave. Sadly, many times they do not even take us that far.

How many highly educated people are unable to escape the lure of drugs, or immorality? How many lose their minds amidst that knowledge? How many are outwitted by illiterate conmen? How many die of depression or even suicide? How many die in bitterness against society and even God?

How many wealthy people are dying of loneliness in those fortresses they have built? How many live their lives so miserably because they are unable to trust anybody? How many have died in bitterness and regret because that same wealth they had invested their whole lives had somehow disappeared through an investment?

You see, investing in the temporal is temporary, however successful you become. Just like building your house using straw and grass means continued maintenance, building on temporal values will always be demanding your pound of flesh to maintain its level of relevance.

And that is what Solomon realized after attaining everything he desired and enjoying every pleasure he could imagine; vanity of vanities. It is utter uselessness, and immense pain at the end.

But God did not let us grope in the dark. He gives us a choice to either follow His way or pursue vanity. Only that His way demands more from us than these other pursuits.

You see, His way has Him and His for the focus whereas ours have me and mine for focus.

It therefore means two people can achieve the same things yet one dies with regret when his colleague lives in great fulfillment. One is bitter with life when the other is experiencing the best life. Yet they could be living in the same neighborhood, drive the same type of car, have their children in the same schools, and even attend the same church.

I have said again and again that self is to small an object to focus on. And that smallness is like a pin that pricks again and again, even destroying the one who insists on maintaining that focus.

How does someone overlook education in their pursuit for that elusive A? Why cheat in an exam yet want people to call you successful, yet not a successful thief? And why does a parent push their child to cheat yet become disappointed when the same child becomes a harlot or drug dealer in campus to buy the same grades? Or decides to procure an abortion or another as they continue getting into all kinds of relationships and marriages? Or is unable to stay married because they keep cheating?

You see, focusing on self is elusive as the goalposts keep changing. When you bought the leaks to ensure your child gets the best high school or course in university, you forgot that those same values will replicate in all of life. Those short term successes reproduce long term nightmares.

That is the beauty of following God’s way. And there is a verse I think fits here.

Bread of deceit is sweet to a man; but afterwards his mouth shall be filled with gravel. (Proverbs 20:17)

Do we seek to impart values in our children above grades? Is that ‘A’ more important than hard work and industry? Is grabbing this or the other more important that rescuing and helping out?

We must redefine what we think success is.

 The desire of a man is his kindness: and a poor man is better than a liar. (Proverbs 19:22)

What will make me proudest as a parent?

I would be proudest if my child, on finding some millions somewhere with no owner around will keep it and start looking for the owner instead of going to church to give thanks for the financial breakthrough. And that irrespective whether they have a coin to their name or pocket.

You see, God’s way ensure not only eternal rewards but also a better long term insurance.

Let me give a recent example.

A friend has a small rental place that he has been looking for a tenant. Then as we walked he met a son of an old friend who on hearing gets all excited. He even offers to buy it but this friend declined. He even offered to rent at a much higher rate. They agreed to talk.

Then I met my friend later and asked him whether he gave his friend the place and was surprised that he allowed the one who had been using it for negligible rent. Why? I wondered.

He does not trust his friend though they have been friends for close to fifty years. His friend is capable of bribing or cooking documents to deprive him of that small place.

That is what we do when we teach our children to grab any available opportunity without caring who is being disenfranchised by that advantage. And the world does not operate by grace.

On the other side I remember opening a workshop in a place barely anybody knew me. one day a person I had never seen passed by when he learnt that there was a repair workshop. He came, looked at me and asked where I came from. When he learnt about our family, he turned to his friend and assured him that I could never take anything from anybody, just because he knew the family I came from. And this in the face of the intense distrust between fundis (technical and repair personnel) and their customers. Imagine they left their TV for so long even after I had repaired it.

You see, when you buy that grade to ensure your child gets that school or course, you are actually stealing the slot from somebody who deserves it and chooses honesty. Your cheating buddies will cut you some slack but you can be sure the world will never do so. You will reap.

But if ye will not do so, behold, ye have sinned against the LORD: and be sure your sin will find you out. (Numbers 32:23)

Incidentally, it is not only our posterity that reaps from our lives and focus. We start reaping in this life. focus on self is the reason for the upsurge of illnesses like mental and depression and suicide since it is so frustrating to focus on self. Money and things can never substitute for the human touch that is the product of living for God.

What values are we passing to our children? That is what determines our posterity.

God bless you.