What Counts as Gain?

The Things That Measure a Life

For His sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish…

— Philippians 3

I know what it is like to wonder whether someone has looked at the visible evidence of my life and found it unimpressive. I don't have many of the material markers we commonly associate with success. And sometimes I have wondered whether people see those absences and make other assumptions: perhaps I wasn't ambitious enough, didn't work hard enough, or simply didn't amount to as much as someone whose accomplishments are easier to see.

Paul knew something about visible credentials. In Philippians 3 he gives us quite a résumé: his ancestry, his religious identity, his education in the law, his zeal and his standing within his community. These weren't necessarily bad things. Some were things about which he had every reason to be proud. But then Paul does something extraordinary with his accounting. The things he once counted as gain he now counts as loss compared with knowing Christ. Eventually he uses an even stronger word. He regards them as rubbish.

I don't think that means a house is rubbish. Money isn't rubbish. A successful career isn't rubbish. Financial security matters, and possessions can make life safer, easier and even more joyful. But perhaps the belief that these things establish my worth belongs in the trash. And so does its opposite: the belief that someone who possesses fewer of them must somehow be worth less. Some things belong on the balance sheet without belonging in the measure of a life.

We live in a world overflowing with things, and I participate in it too. I like comfort. I worry about money. There are things I want and things I would rather not live without. But I wonder how different our world might become if more of us occasionally asked how much is enough. What could some portion of my abundance do for somebody else? What am I buying because I need or enjoy it, and what am I buying because it says something about who I am? The danger isn't simply possessing things. Perhaps it begins when I need my possessions—or achievements, credentials, titles and accomplishments—to tell me what I am worth.

And there is an uncomfortable mirror in this for me. I know how it feels to suspect that someone has looked at my life and found it wanting. Have I ever done the same thing to somebody else? Have I looked at another person's job, home, clothing, education or circumstances and quietly calculated their value? Paul invites me to throw away the entire measuring system.

Yesterday I reflected upon what fear might unnecessarily prune from the life still ahead of me. Today Paul asks a different question: What am I willing to leave behind because I have finally discovered that it isn't worth what I thought it was? Maybe some of the things I have spent a lifetime trying to prove were never things I needed to prove at all. There is loss in Paul's story, but there is freedom in it too. Once I stop confusing what I have with what I am, some things become much easier to call rubbish.

Reflectionary is an ongoing conversation with Scripture. If these reflections are meaningful to you, please subscribe and come back often. And by all means, join the conversation—your questions, disagreements, insights and reflections are always welcome.