State Farm has a commercial in fairly heavy rotation at the moment¹ – it’s got cars in living rooms and LARPing… so, yeah. Cranking hard on the laugh lever? Anyhow, there’s a little snippet in the middle where a bride tosses her bouquet and grabs a toaster with the line “Gimme! Gimme!” Not a big fan of the commercial – although the LARPing is entertaining for 10 seconds.

Eh… I’m probably being a curmudgeon. But the YouTube comments are interesting. Wait, there’s a point here…

Kingdom of Man²-style-thinking says “Grab all you can get, shove it in your garage, and if you run out of room get a storage unit.” Or “Sell it on Craigslist and get the cash.” “Gimme!” Or something.

But I think most of us know that the “Gimme!” bit isn’t really all that socially acceptable – maybe that’s why State Farm used it to fish for laughs?³ Even in the Kingdom of Man, at some point accumulating stuff crosses a line from “Reasonable.” to “Umm… that’s a bit excessive.”

But the general feel is “We receive in order to keep.” That’s the heart of the Kingdom of Man.

There are a couple of other versions of this – like “You’ve got to give and take in a relationship.”⁴ That’s a pretty big step away from the Kingdom of Man – there’s some actual giving in addition to the accumulation. And there’s a relationship involved, so that’s good. The problem is the word “take”. It’s still grabby.

Seth Godin, who I have massive respect for, gets a little further away from the Kingdom of Man by suggesting that we have to give in order to receive. It’s a much, much better way of running a business and living life than trying to capture every dollar on the table or advantage in a relationship. It’s a step in the direction of giving first and hoping to receive with no guarantees.

But the Kingdom of God takes this even further. In the Kingdom of God, we receive in order to give. As in: the whole point of receiving anything is so that we can turn around and give it away. There’s a story in scripture about a conversation between God and Abraham⁵ where God tells Abraham “Hey, I’m going to give to you. And the point is so that you can give to others.”

This flips the purpose of our finances and resources. The reason we have stuff is so we can give it away to people who don’t have finances or resources. And, if we give our stuff away – instead of, say, shoving it into a storage unit – then we can be trusted with more resources. So the third marker of the Kingdom of God is this: We Receive In Order To Give.

Photo by Fancycrave on Unsplash