“A checkbook is a theological document; it will tell you who and what you worship.”
The quote is by Rev. Billy Graham and it was shared today by the I Am UU project. And I am sharing it here because it is the Truth!
It reminds me of David Foster Wallace’s commencement speech “This is Water” where he speaks about a similar thing when he said, “There is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship —be it Jesus Christ or Allah, Yahweh, Jehovah, the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths, or some infrangible/inviolable set of ethical principles—is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.”
Pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.
A couple years ago I preached about this in my sermon “In Our Own Image.”
The basic message of the service was that we all worship something. And what we choose to worship can help us make sense out of life, even when life seems senseless. What we choose to worship can comfort us, bring us joy, and have us greeting each morning in gratitude. Or, what we choose to worship can perpetuate our suffering. We get to choose to whom we belong, which ‘god’ we will serve. The first step toward doing so is to understand the distinctions of conscious and unconscious worshipping. And, to circle back to the original post: our checkbooks provide a consistent record for us to refer to when in doubt.
And, this month, as we are deep in the spirit of gratitude, please consider supporting Thomas A Earthman’s I Am UU Faithify campaign. In doing so you will be supporting the continued creation of meaningful messages that promote our UU values and principles.
