“A Worthy Life”
Philippians 1: 21-30
9/24/23
The last couple of Sunday’s we have spent in the 18th chapter of Matthew, as Jesus has talked to his disciples about life in the Christian community. He talked about how far God is willing to go to reconcile with us, and how far we should go in our efforts to be reconciled to each other. We’ve listened to Jesus talk to us about how to handle conflict, and the need to show unlimited forgiveness.
Today though, we dip our toes into Paul’s letter to the Church in Philippi. This letter is one of Paul’s most joyous writings. Paul is irrepressibly happy in this letter – which is amazing considering he’s is writing from prison. Paul doesn’t tell us we can be happy too, or even how to find happiness, but it’s clear that he IS happy, he is filled with joy – and he can’t wait to share that happiness and joy with friends at what is perhaps his favorite church.
Eugene Peterson, in his “Introduction to Philippians” in his translation The Message, writes that “joy is life in excess, the overflow of what cannot be contained within any one person.” (1)
That is what Paul writes about in Philippians – the joy and happiness he has found in the Christian life.
Back in 1965, a man named Leo Rosten write a piece for The Rotarian magazine called “The Myths by Which We Live.” He wrote, “There is a myth which gives me the greatest pain; the myth that the purpose of life is happiness, and that you ought to have fun, and that your children ought to have fun. Where was it written that life is so cheap? Where was it written that life is, or should be, or can ever be free of conflict and effort and deprivation and sacrifice?... the purpose of life is not to be happy at all. It is to be useful, to be honorable. It is to be compassionate. It is to matter, to have it make some difference that you lived.” (2)
Paul would agree. He talks about living a life worthy of the gospel of Christ – or as The Good News translation puts it – “your way of life should be as the gospel requires..” or as Peterson puts it in The Message, “live in such a way that you are a credit to the Message of Christ.” No matter what translation you prefer, what Paul is talking about is a life that is not centered on your own happiness, but on serving others and sacrificing your self-interest.
A worthy life – or as theologian Richard Rohr has put it – “Meaty Spirituality, must first of all teach us freedom from the self, from my own self as a reference point for everything or anything. This is the necessary Copernican Revolution wherein we change reference points. Copernicus discovered that Earth is not the center of the universe. Now we have to discover that we are not the center of any universe either. We are not finally a meaningful reference point. The big and full world does not circle around me or you.” (3)
Or, as Rick Warren famously said – “it’s not about you.” A worthy life acknowledges it is not about us.
Perhaps you’ve heard of a project called Effective Altruism. It’s a project that tries to find the best ways to help others and put them into practice. It’s not really an organization that you give money to. It doesn’t have a catchy name like Bread for the World, Habitat for Humanity or Doctors Without Borders.
It’s more of a concept that tries to identify the world’s most critical problems and how BEST to rectify the issues, or how to BEST alleviate the suffering of the most people. It’s similar to the old question about how to feed a village. Do you give everyone some fish and repeat this every week? Or do you give each villager a pole so people can fish on their own? Or do you teach them how to fish?
Effective Altruism recognizes that you can give two organizations $10 million, and one of them will do a better job of allocating resources in a way that does the most good for the greatest number of people.
You can read about it for yourself at their website – effectivealtuism.org. The project began as a theoretical approach to global issues in the early 2000’s at Oxford University but has since spread around the world. The key difference between Effective Altruism and all the other non-profits out there is that Effective Altruism is a way of thinking. Effective Altruism tries “to find unusually good ways of helping, such that a given amount of effort goes an unusually long way. You can find their core values on their website:
1. Prioritization
2. Impartiality
3. Open truth- seeking, and
4. Collaboration (4)
The Apostle Paul doesn’t have a modern website with his core values on display – but if he did, he might agree with Effective Altruism’s list.
First – Prioritization. Paul definitely had this at the forefront of his mind. He wanted to reach the most people he could in the best way possible. That’s why he travelled to all the major cities of his day, and didn’t limit himself to Jewish audiences only, but preached to the Gentiles as well, which got him into trouble sometimes – but he did it anyway.
We see some evidence of Paul’s priority in his opening comments today. He talks about the hard choice of going to be with Christ, or staying in the flesh, so he may be useful to the Philippian church instead. He is torn. He would prefer to go be with Christ, to shuffle off this mortal coil – but he knows his priority should be here, “to remain in the flesh, which is more necessary for you.”
Next up – Impartiality. This might be the toughest one for us to follow these days. We have a natural tendency to gravitate toward those who share similar interests and advocate on their behalf. We’re vulnerable to all sorts of biases we didn’t even know we had – confirmation bias (the tendency to seek out information that supports something we already believe), cultural bias, self-serving bias and many more.
We might ask the question – Well why shouldn’t we have a special concern for own family, our group, our friends, our city, our nation. We’ve seen this idea take firm root over the last 10 years with the rise of nationalism and “America First” agendas.
Well, here’s why we should resist that tempting position – Effective Altruism argues that “when trying to do as much good as possible… we should give everyone’s interests equal weight, no matter where or how they live. This means focusing on the groups who are most neglected, which usually means focusing on those who don’t have as much power to protect their own interests.” (5)
For example, when we speak as First Presbyterian Church of our Core Values including outreach to people in need and embracing inclusion, that is what we mean – striving to give everyone’s interests equal weight and focusing on the ones who don’t have as much power to protect their own interests.
Paul was great at this. He often spoke about the man he used to be. Once he was tribal, proud and boastful, rather parochial and tied to his position as a Pharisee. But then the Road to Damascus happened, and he was a different person. After his conversion, he was more globally minded, he was much more humble and self-effacing, and he became more mission-minded and visionary. Paul’s impartiality came shining through in his willingness to obey God and minister to those beyond his own culture, to those who were different.
The third core value of Effective Altruism is Open Truth- Seeking, a good value to have in any organization. Open truth-seeking is an ongoing conversation that considers many ways to help and seeks to discover the best ones. “This means putting serious time into deliberation and reflection on one’s beliefs, being constantly open and curious for new evidence and arguments, and being ready to change one’s views quite radically.” (6)
At the heart of this decision-making is cause neutrality, the idea that resources should be distributed “to causes on what will do the most good, irrespective of the identity of the beneficiary and the way in which they are helped.” (7)
Perhaps that prompts an evaluation about how effective we are in sharing not only the Gospel, but the resources of our time and talents. Are we doing what we can in the best possible way? What local agencies are doing the best work to meet local needs? How might we better assist them in their work? How long has it been since we’ve re-evaluated our own level of giving?
Giving What We Can is a philanthropic offshoot of the Effective Altruism movement. Its members all take the GWWC Pledge that affirms their intention to give at least 10% of their income to effective charities. More than 9,000 members of Giving What We Can have made public pledges to donate meaningful portions of their incomes. The Pledge to Give reads: “I recognize that I can use part of my income to do a significant amount of good. Since I can live well enough on a smaller income, I pledge that from now until the day I retire, I shall give 10% of what I earn to whichever organizations can most effectively use it to improve the lives of others, now and in the years to come. I make this pledge freely, openly and sincerely.”
Another intriguing subset of the Effective Altruism movement is the “Earning to Give” approach, in which young people deliberately choose high-paying careers so they will have more financial resources at their disposal to make difference. Some donate up to 50% of their income and attempt to live as simply and frugally as they can so they can donate more money. (8)
Paul was pretty close to this philosophy as his profession we are told was a tent-maker – hardly a high-paying career, but one that provided for his needs as he donated most all of his time to preaching and teaching and founding churches. He often described himself as a “servant of Christ.”
And finally, there is the value of Collaboration. We can achieve more when we work together. Effective Altruism is most powerful when it involves people united in being good citizens and working toward a better world. Paul speaks about this in this passage when he writes about the need to “stand firm in one spirit, striving side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel, in no way intimidated by your opponents – This is God’s doing.”
As the saying goes: “No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.”
We know from his letters that Paul was a big believer in collaboration. He partnered up with Barnabas and Silas and then worked with Priscilla and Aquila, Timothy, Apollos, Titus and Luke, among others.
One of the wonderful things about being an active worshiper and church goer is the aspect of collaboration. We can accomplish so much more when we have other people working with us.
For instance, one of our sister churches, First Presbyterian Church in Durham, North Carolina is one of many churches living a worthy life and practicing the principles of Effective Altruism. They are involved I raising money through the non-profit group RIP Medical Debt, which buys and forgives medical debts owed by people who can’t afford to pay them back. The church hopes to raise $50,000 as part of a capital campaign – enough to forgive $5 million in medical debt. (9)
That’s just one example of Effective Altruism put into practice. This is the kind of project that demonstrates the kind of worthy life that Paul calls us to today.
May God give us the vision and the courage to lead this kind of worthy life, giving credit to the message of Christ Jesus.
May God be praised. Amen.
1. Eugene Peterson, The Message, NavPress, Colorado Springs, 2002, p.2135.
2. Homileticsonline, retrieved 9/2/23
3. Ibid…
4. Effectivealtruism.org.
5. Ibid…
6. Ibid…
7. Ibid…
8. Ibid…
9. Homileticsonline, retrieved 9/2/23
