{"id":2953,"date":"2013-07-01T11:16:20","date_gmt":"2013-07-01T16:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=2953"},"modified":"2013-07-01T11:16:20","modified_gmt":"2013-07-01T16:16:20","slug":"possessions-and-worth-my-worth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=2953","title":{"rendered":"Possessions and Worth&#8230;My Worth"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a convicting quote from\u00a0<span style=\"line-height: 1.35; text-indent: -2em;\">\u00a0Luke Timothy\u00a0Johnson,<\/span><i style=\"line-height: 1.35; text-indent: -2em;\">Sharing Possessions: What Faith Demands<\/i><span style=\"line-height: 1.35; text-indent: -2em;\">. Eerdmans, 2011.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"csl-bib-body\" style=\"line-height: 1.35; padding-left: 2em; text-indent: -2em;\"><\/div>\n<p>&#8220;When the world is regarded as the means to worth, and when other people are defined as competitors for worth, and when the only way to measure the relative ranks of our being and worth is by what we possess, then my only logical response to other human beings is expressed in the body language of the clenched fist. The fist seizes what it can, closes fiercely upon it, protects it rigidly, and threatens any who would open it. To relax the hand, to relinquish my possessions, to share what I have, means to diminish my very <em>being<\/em>, which is held in existence at all only by my acquisitive effort. To lose one of my possessions is to lose part of my <em>self<\/em>. Allowing others to share freely in what is mine means that I have no way of distinguishing myself from them; I lose my identity. We do not have to look far from the evidence of this attitude toward possessions, this manifestation of idolatry. It is all around us, and within us; the call of faith leads us constantly out of idolatry because the idolatrous impulse never sleeps&#8221; (79).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here is a convicting quote from\u00a0\u00a0Luke Timothy\u00a0Johnson,Sharing Possessions: What Faith Demands. Eerdmans, 2011. &#8220;When the world is regarded as the means to worth, and when other people are defined as competitors for worth, and when the only way to measure &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=2953\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2953","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-wealth"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p34kFn-LD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2953","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2953"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2953\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2954,"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2953\/revisions\/2954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2953"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2953"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2953"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}