Should the devout expect to have better lives in this world than non-believers?

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Tis_Bearself said:
Eh, there’s nothing wrong with expecting God to help us get what we need from a “temporal goods” perspective.

The key is what we need…what HE thinks we need.
Not what WE think we need.

Temporal goods can also be a lesson or a cross and God can give them to someone for that purpose.
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Yes, can be.
Expecting temporal goods? In so many ways the expectation of temporal goods is the antithesis of the Christian life.
Our Catholic readings of the last week of the sermon on the plain spell this out explicitly.
We may have temporal goods for the furthering of God’s kingdom, but we should not expect them as part of living a Christian life.
 
Expecting God to help us provide for our needs isn’t an “expectation of temporal goods”.

If you have no job and you are actively seeking a job and you pray, “Dear Jesus, please help me find employment so I can feed and support my family”, that’s a reasonable ask. It’s not like you asked him to make you a billionaire or give you a closetful of designer clothes and a Ferrari.

It’s also not some kind of bad or evil thing for you to pray for God to help you succeed in your career.

People really take the idea of temporal goods prayers to extremes. At one extreme we have prosperity gospel churches, at the other extreme we have the people who think everybody has to give away everything they own and live in a commune with a toothbrush and a change of underwear.

Just be reasonable and focus on God.
 
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If truly devout, that implies living a virtuous life. A virtuous life certainly makes this life easier. Even dealing with suffereing is easier for the virtuous. I am most certainly proposing the prosperity gospel, just saying that loving others is a key part of personal happiness.
 
Thanks, Peeps. As I mentioned previously, this is an issue that I’ve bandied about in my mind over the years, so I was just curious how others viewed it.

I appreciate everyone’s insights who have contributed to the thread. From my own experience, which I realize is just one of many on this thread, I think – in general, and I stress in general, there are practical benefits in this life to living a devout life, as others have noted. However, “the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike” (Matthew 5:45) and so there are bad things that can happen to us that are out of our control, like having a hereditary disease or being a victim of a crime or car accident, or being born into poverty without much hope to get out of it.

In short, there are so many factors that influence the kind of life we lead, many that we cannot control. However, in those areas we are able to control, I believe that living a devout life based on the teachings of Jesus can help us have a better life on earth than we otherwise would have had without it.
Thanks again, everyone. 😀
 
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Peeps said:
I think a lot of us who come from Evangelical backgrounds, and also some Catholics, use a modern marketing approach to reach out to non-churched people. We extol the benefits of becoming a Christian and getting involved with the Church, and we list the ways our lives will be better.

And that’s good, because there are many benefits to following Christ and as others have spelled out in this thread, our lives are better, even if we have to endure suffering.

But we certainly don’t present the suffering, poverty, frustration, lost love, children who go the wrong way, etc.!
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This an excellent point.
After I had lost my faith and was trying to find it again, I was enquiring amongst several faiths in Christianity and, being from a Jewish background, was a target of much evangelical efforts.

Several big mistakes from my point of view was…
Ability to go to heaven or hell. When you don’t believe in heaven and hell, this makes as much sense as going to Krypton or Kobol. You have to believe they exist first! And I had lost that belief.

Second was telling me how much better off Christians were for having their faith. I simply pulled up statistics showing that most Christian denominations had no better lives than secular people and in many areas were worse…teenage birth rates, divorce rates, incarceration rates, etc.

Be careful what you claim! I have no idea if I had been presented with the expectations of increased suffering or earthly trials being expected would have shifted my view but I do believe it would have been a more honest approach. No one ever presented the ideas present in these comments to me so I’ll never know…
 
Some should expect eminently worse lives than nonbelievers and great sufferings. Some are not called to as many sufferings. It all depends on how we define “better”, since in both cases they should still have the great joy that comes from Christ (joy as separate from mere happiness, but a higher happiness that is difficult to explain if someone doesn’t know what you mean. Or I could just be bad at explaining things, which is often the case).
 
No. because although God is true and rewards them in his own way with Grace’s and undying faith, they still suffer when they see others suffer. Many times wish they could take on the suffering of others.
 
My opinion can best be summed up in the following song by Christian singer Matt Redman called ‘Blessed be Your Name’ in which he uses scriptural verses to proclaim that God’s name is to be blessed whether we are going through good times or bad times.

 
Tommy999 said:
I am wondering if it is logical and reasonable to expect a person who lives by the tenets of the faith to benefit in this world, as well?
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Well, I COULD say something pious about the providence of God, and how even if it SEEMS like God is not answering your prayers or looking after you, God has your best interests at heart and in the long run everything will turn out OK.

I COULD say that, but if I did, I would be lying. God created the universe. God created all the physical laws that govern the universe. Does God constantly intervene in the universe to “fix” things? If you believed that, how would you defend your belief logically? God made a mistake and has come back to “fix” it? God didn’t really know the future when he created the universe? God foresaw that the unfolding of the universe would lead to a rather poor outcome for Tiny Tim, but now God thinks better of his previous decision and changes his mind? Maybe Tiny Tim was real pious and prayed a lot, and God listened, and swooped down and gave him the winning lottery numbers? None of these make any sense whatsoever.

A virtually forgotten verse of Luke, 13:4-5, gives a very good indication of what Jesus thinks about all this. Jesus and the Apostles were walking along, and the Apostles were discussing a recent disaster: The Tower of Siloam had collapsed, killing 18 people. In the opinion of the Apostles, these 18 people must have gotten what was coming to them. This was a punishment for their sins.

But Jesus said: "Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them–do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! " I.e., it had nothing to do with the guilt or virtue of the 18 people. It just happened. A chance event.

The universe is governed by physical laws. Among those laws is random chance. Now it’s quite possible that what we think of today as “random chance” is nothing of the sort; it’s quite possible that we just haven’t figured out the mathematical formulas that explain what we THINK is random chance. (Just as the mathematical concept of fractals describes with precision what was previously seen as random patterns.) Maybe we’ll never be able to explain it. But chance governs our lives from birth to death. Remember the saying in sports: “I’d rather be lucky than good.”
 
Stronger spiritual lives, yes, meaning through faith and following Jesus we can endure our promised trials with eternal eyes, with the strength and peace that comes from Him, but better lives as in earthly than I don’t believe so as St. Paul stated if we only live for this world what a loss that would be. (paraphrasing).
 
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No, I don’t think life gets better upon adopting the Christian faith. The jews were tempted to go back to Judaism, so the writer of the book of Hebrews wrote a whole book explaining that there’s nothing to go back to. Christ is greater than living under the law. The point that Christianity makes is not “Follow Jesus and your life will be better”; rather, it is “God is so good that He’s worth following no matter what comes”.

Can you honestly say to a homeless person that their life will somehow get better if they become a christian? will becoming a christian give them a roof over their head? will becoming a christian get them enough food to survive? or is their something greater than transcends whatever suffering they may be experiencing?
 
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Your assessment is accurate. Faithful Catholics will avoid sin and therefore avoid the natural consequences thereof, but righteous living is itself a rebuke to the wicked and provokes them to hatred without cause. Which is worse to endure is a matter of opinion, but sin also has consequences in the next world, and woe to the one who rejects God to be admired by the world.
 
I would be circumspect. There was a priest who went on a retreat. He met with the spiritual director and said the following. He got out of bed 1/2 earlier than the other priest so that he could pray. He prayed all 15 decades of the rosary every day. He made the stations of the cross every day. He spent at least one hour in meditation on holy subjects every day. The spiritual director asked him, "Do you feel that you are holier than the other priests?
The priest said, “I should think so.”
the spiritual director said, “No, you are behind each and every one of those other priests and going down the wrong path with that kind of mentality.”
 
drac16 said:
Can you honestly say to a homeless person that their life will somehow get better if they become a christian?
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In theory, the answer is yes. the reason being that they become a part of the community, and the community should help support them. But some people are homeless more by their own choice, and they have said this to me.

I had the privilege to spend some time with a man who had been homeless for five years, he carried everything he owned in a couple of bags. He said, every night when he find somewhere to sleep, he reflect on his day, and find several things to thank God for.

I met another homeless man, he told me several times that he has no worries because God loves him.
 
I truly believe how well someone fares in this world is determined by how willing they are to “learn by love” as opposed to “learning by fear”. One can be solidly devout in their faith, but if they aren’t open to receiving love their perceptions of what happens to them and around them will most likely be much less than they could be.

It doesn’t mean you can’t be poor, etc. I have known many “rich” poor people (those who have nothing in the physical sense, but everything in the spirtiual sense). They have considered themseleves ones who have fared well in this world. It is all about perception and the story we tell ourselves.
 
Yes, but with those sufferings comes a deep sense of peace and joy, which is promised us by God. The sufferings don’t change–they may get worse–for those who love God, but the person has been changed by God to accept them and transform them. If we only really knew their value, united with Christ’s sufferings, to save our own souls and that of many others. This perspective takes a great deal of spiritual maturity. It is something to strive for and to pray for.
 
St Paul sums up his life of suffering.

2 - Corinthians 11.
23 Are they servants of Christ? (I am out of my mind to talk like this.) I am more. I have worked much harder, been in prison more frequently, been flogged more severely, and been exposed to death again and again. 24 Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was pelted with stones, three times I was shipwrecked, I spent a night and a day in the open sea, 26 I have been constantly on the move. I have been in danger from rivers, in danger from bandits, in danger from my fellow Jews, in danger from Gentiles; in danger in the city, in danger in the country, in danger at sea; and in danger from false believers. 27 I have labored and toiled and have often gone without sleep; I have known hunger and thirst and have often gone without food; I have been cold and naked. 28 Besides everything else, I face daily the pressure of my concern for all the churches. 29 Who is weak, and I do not feel weak? Who is led into sin, and I do not inwardly burn?
 
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