The Truth about Worldly Security

Insecurity has gripped people all over the world. It stems from economic uncertainty as a result of massive unemployment arising from a global pandemic we know as COVID-19. Since the Great Depression of the 1930s and the global financial meltdown in 2008, there has never been a time when people have felt more insecure about everything, especially about the future. Fear and paranoia are at an all-time high.

Please don’t get me wrong. Working to save for a rainy day and meeting our obligations are not bad things – in fact, they are the moral thing to do. But working till we drop dead so we can accumulate more stuff – that’s a different story.

The late Fr. Benedict Groeschel, CFR, author of Arise from Darkness: What to Do When Life Doesn’t Make Sense, says it is not wrong to feel a bit more comfortable in times of greater security. “People have a right to some economic security from what they can earn by work and careful spending. But this right is more properly seen as our obligation to take care of ourselves so as not to be a burden to others.”

He adds, with a tone of lament, “What has happened in the rich nations is that security has become a false god.”

Security is a fraud

Fr. Groeschel relates that when he studied psychology many years ago, personnel directors noticed that graduates fresh out of college and looking for jobs were already inquiring about retirement policies! He says this feeling of security turned out to be a fraud.

“It caused people to forget that our worldly accomplishments are passing and temporary,” he says. “Health and life insurance is part of the great deception about security. It is really sickness and death insurance. They are collected only when you are sick or you die.”

Fr. Groeschel gives his two cents’ worth: What is true in physics is true in economics – what goes up must come down.

Even if a person were to have a great deal of apparent economic security, what about health? What about the particular vicissitudes of life? What about the hundreds of possible calamities that would come in an instant to cause one to lose his or her security? Loss of employment, loss of one’s home, danger to health, aging and in the later years of life, chronic illness – these are the things that reveal the lie underlying a false sense of earthly security

True security

Here is a bit of very sound and practical advice revealed in his book: “Whether you work in the stock market or the stock yard, remember you’re not secure. We’re all living on the edge and we approach eternity at exactly the same speed: 24 hours a day, seven days a week.” His book list some suggestions on how to keep one’s deepest sense of security:

First, we should put our ultimate trust in God, not in worldly possessions.

That being said, Fr. Groeschel notes that it is by no means wrong to enjoy a bit of security and peace of mind, but we should not put our trust in anything that passes away.

“Trust in God does not mean everything is going to work out just the way we want it to. It doesn’t mean that he is going to restore the false sense of security that we had before. It means that, whatever happens, we believe that God is there with us and that if we cling to him, he will bring good out of evil, even out of the evil that He has only permitted to happen,” he says.

Second, we should get our priorities in order.

Fr. Groeschel advises that we owe it to ourselves to give an example of right priorities to our families and friends, many of whom have become incredibly materialistic.

“We need to remind them by frugality in our use of things, by modesty in what we wear, and by the plainness of the things we use,” he says.

Third, we should overcome our feelings of financial insecurity by generosity.

He says it is necessary to be generous both when you are secure and also when your security is threatened.

Just think of all the junk, expensive toys, the garbage bought at Christmas time and given to people who don’t need these things or want them or know what to do with them. If you see the prices on things advertised in the paper for ‘people who have everything,’ you realize that they don’t have everything – they don’t have a prayer.

If anything, he says, people should be insecure about the right things. He says he has been insecure about the fact that he has not spoken up enough against evil. (I plead guilty to that as well.)

The bottom line

It’s a cold, hard fact: we can’t take our possessions with us to the next life. Yes, we should try to live the days of our lives well and work to the best of our ability. But, our efforts should be focused not on our possessions or accomplishments to fill the void that only God can fill.

Our attention should be focused on how we can get to His heavenly kingdom by means of the mundane chores that we do every day, in the daily situations that we presume are of little consequence, and in persevering every day to lead an authentic Christian life.