Tag Archives: Entitlement

Stiff-Necked, Still Chosen

December 16, 2025 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.
Deuteronomy 9:6 (NIV)

Yesterday’s post faded to black with me and Wendy sitting at the breakfast table naming our blessings and whispering after-meal blessing of gratitude. If I’m not careful, this chapter-a-day journey too easily compartmentalizes each chapter. While I love the rhythm of letting one chapter speak in to my day, I try not to forget that there is a flow to the text. Yesterday’s chapter and today’s chapter are connected.

Yesterday’s chapter and my meditations fit hand-in-glove with the Christmas season. My soft heart loves Christmas. Every day brings cards and photos of family and friends we don’t see often enough. With each one are fond memories and good feelings. Wendy and I have been watching beloved Christmas movies (yes, Die Hard is a Christmas movie) and feeling all the feels. Family gatherings are planned. I can feel the desire to be together, to name our blessings, and to feel the gratitude.

This is sentimental remembering. Warm feelings, meaningful memories, and full hearts that feed the positive emotional endorphins. That’s where I exited yesterday’s post.

Today’s chapter, however, channels a very different kind of remembering.

Moses stands at the Jordan River with this next generation of Hebrews gazing across at the Promised Land. They are about to cross over and take possession of it while Moses stays behind and takes his final earthly breath. They will take the land. They will be blessed. They will prosper. But, Moses tells them, there is a truth that needs to sink deep into their hearts before they set out. It is a truth so spiritually vital that Moses repeats it three times like Jesus asking Peter three times: “Do you love me?”

…do not say to yourself, “The Lord has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.” (vs. 4)

It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land… (vs. 5)

Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the Lord your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people. (vs. 6)

Moses then painfully and deliberately hits the rewind button:

Golden calf.
Stiff necks.
Tablets shattered like dropped china.
Tear-stained intercession that kept the nation from annihilation.

The message lands bare and unflattering:

You didn’t earn this.
You didn’t deserve this.
And you still don’t.

Which—oddly enough—is very good news.

This is what is known in Hebrew as zakhor—not memory as the emotional fog of sentimentality, but memory as moral restraint.

It is Cain remembering the stain of his own brother’s blood on his hands.

It is Abraham remembering the painful casting away of Hagar and his son Ishmael.

It is Israel remembering that he was a deceiver who stole his brother’s blessing.

It is Moses remembering his murder of an Egyptian overseer, fleeing for his life, and his years of living on the lam in Midian exile.

It is David remembering his adultery with Bathsheba, his murder of her husband, and the death of their first-born child.

It is Paul seeing the face of Stephen and all of the other believers he persecuted and had executed before he met Jesus on the road to Damascus.

It is me remembering my long list of moral failings. Failings that trace all the way back to being a five-year-old stealing all the envelopes of Christmas cash off of Grandma Golly’s Christmas tree and hiding them in my suitcase.

In the quiet this morning, sentimental twinkle-light memories get balanced with the sobriety of zakhor memories. Moral memory isn’t shame, it’s schooling. It’s not reproach, it’s reinforcement of reality.

All of this abundance of blessing that surrounds me each day? The blessing that is so abundant that I sometimes forget that’s it’s a blessing?

I didn’t earn this.
I didn’t deserve this.
And I still don’t.

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast.”

Moses is channeling the Gospel of Jesus 1500 years before Bethlehem.

As I soak in a little moral remembering this morning, I find my heart humbled. Like the Hebrews standing on the border of the Promised Land, I find myself chosen, called, and blessed – not because of who I am and what I’ve done but despite it.

Sometimes the fog of sentimental remembering lulls me into thinking that blessing is an entitlement. Moral remembering cuts through the fog and grounds me in the reality of His grace.

As Bob Dylan sings,
“like every sparrow fallen,
like every grain of sand.”

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

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Chapter-a-Day

Cost-Shifting

June 20, 2016 Tom Vander Well 1 Comment

Moreover from the time that I was appointed to be their governor in the land of Judah, from the twentieth year to the thirty-second year of King Artaxerxes, twelve years, neither I nor my brothers ate the food allowance of the governor.
Nehemiah 5:14 (NRSV)

I have witnessed a change in the culture around me during my life journey. As a child, I learned by example that making your own way and being responsible for your own provision was of great importance. There were a few basic principles that were part of the fabric of the culture around. Living by these principles not only said something about your character, but they also benefited society as a whole:

Earn your own way.
Don’t take what you haven’t earned.
If you borrow in need, pay it back quickly (and before spending more for yourself).
Avoid needing any kind of financial assistance. If you need help, then get back on your feet and off assistance as quickly as possible.

What I have observed in increasing measure is a shift towards the acceptance of cost-shifting. I receive something and the cost is paid by someone else. This was once considered dishonorable and immoral, but I see it accepted by more and more people without question.

A few years ago I overheard a young married couple talking among my local gathering of Jesus’ followers. They were highly educated, healthy, and capable people of middle-class midwestern upbringing. I listened as they proudly espoused their creative ability to “work the system” and get all sorts of welfare and entitlement money from the government. They eagerly encouraged their friends to do the same, explaining how the money and assistance they received from from the government allowed them to work less.

“It’s just out there,” they said of the government entitlement programs. “It’s free money. It’s going to go to someone. It might as well be me.”

I continue to be bewildered (and angered) by my friends’ misguided thinking. They were blind to their cost-shifting. The money they received were tax dollars others earned. They were quite capable of working harder and earning their own way, but they chose to work less and accept assistance they didn’t really need. The more people cost-shift, the more an economy and a culture struggles.

Nehemiah was dealing with a similar situation in today’s chapter. The people left in Jerusalem after the city had fallen to the Babylonians were cost-shifting in different ways. They were taking whatever they could extort from one another. The leaders were taxing people in exorbitant excess of the King’s minimum in order to live high off the hog. Nehemiah calls a community meeting and confronts the people about how wrong this cost-shifting was in God’s eyes, and how bad it was for themselves as a society.

Nehemiah then led by example. He chose not to take everything to which he was “entitled” by his position and power. He actively pursued a spirit of contentment. He consumed what he needed and was generous with his blessings. He flatly refused to adopt the “take what you can get” mentality he’d observed in his people.

It’s Monday morning and I’m grateful this morning for growing up in a culture that valued hard work and earning your way. I’m thankful for the blessing of my job. I’m grateful for the opportunity to earn a good living, provide for my home, pay my tithes and taxes, and to be generous with what I have been given.

Featured image by Kevin Trotman via Flickr

Chapter-a-Day

Freedom, Rights, and Responsibility

May 16, 2016 Tom Vander Well 2 Comments

“I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial.
1 Corinthians 6:12a (NIV)

When I was growing up there was premium placed on personal responsibility by my parents and grandparents. You took responsibility for your own needs, your own debts, your own responsibilities, and your own actions. Looking back, I believe that some of it was motivated by their spiritual principles and some of it was motivated by social pressure. No matter the motivation, there was a self-respect that simply came from doing what had to be done to make your own way and not be dependent on others.

It seems to me that the social pendulum has swung in the past fifty years. I perceive that the rugged individualism and value of personal responsibility that seemed rather pervasive in my youth has given way to a spirit of entitlement and a “take what you can get” mentality. A few weeks ago I spoke with an employer who was behind because a part of the work force on which he depended was choosing to be unemployed as long as possible in their off season to collect as much “free money” as possible. I recall a friend who was quite capable of providing for he and his family, but chose to manage their lives to get as much welfare as possible. “The money’s just sitting there,” he said. “If I don’t take it someone else will. Might as well be me.” I’m afraid that our world has become adept at taking for ourselves while shifting the cost to others.

In today’s chapter, Paul is addressing a parallel thought process among the believers in the city of Corinth. There were those who were acting out of a claim that they had a right and freedom to act in ways that were having a negative effect on themselves and the whole of the community. Paul points out that having a right and freedom to do something does not make it beneficial for yourself or for the whole.

This morning I’m doing a little soul searching of my own. I’m asking myself a few hard questions. Where in life am I cost shifting? Where in life am I exercising rights and freedoms in ways that are ultimately not beneficial to me, my family, my fellow believers, or society as a whole? In what ways am I acting out of self-centeredness that may ultimately be detrimental to everyone else?

Chapter-a-Day

Charitable Work

July 23, 2013 Tom Vander Well 2 Comments

Then Boaz asked his foreman, “Who is that young woman over there? Who does she belong to?”

And the foreman replied, “She is the young woman from Moab who came back with Naomi. She asked me this morning if she could gather grain behind the harvesters. She has been hard at work ever since, except for a few minutes’ rest in the shelter.”
Ruth 2:5-6 (NLT)

Part of the story behind the story in today’s chapter is an ancient practice of charity. In the days before a central government and welfare, the society itself had to find a way to provide for the poor. In keeping with God’s laws, Farmers would leave part of their crop unharvested, or would allow the poor to follow behind the harvesters and pick up grain that was missed. Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi, both being widows, had no choice but to depend on this charity. Ruth followed behind the harvesters Boaz sent into the fields and gathered the scraps they left behind.

I am largely of Dutch heritage, and I sometimes think that “the Protestant work ethic” is knit into my DNA. There is honor in working hard. If you work hard as though God is your employer, you will be blessed. That’s what I’ve been taught since I was young along with being reminded of another simple teaching from God’s Message: “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.”

I find it interesting at how this simple principle was put into practice in ancient days. There was no entitlement. Ruth and Naomi had a recourse to get food, but it required labor and Ruth was working hard to provide for herself and her mother-in-law not realizing that she was about to be blessed in unexpected ways.