CONSUMERS AND CONTRIBUTORS

Someone once said that there are two kinds of people. There are the consumers and there are the contributors. In reality, of course, there are certainly more than two kinds of people: there are all kinds and all conditions. It is always easy to boil down differences into either-or, black-white, this-that. It makes distinctions that much easier to deal with.

As far as being either a consumer or a contributor, I would think it fair to say that there are relatively few people who are either one or the other. It is no doubt impossible to be either one or the other. But it is easy to be more one than the other. Babies are consumers and parents are contributors in the parent-child relationship. Students are consumers and teachers are contributors in that relationship.

But in many areas of our life the distinction is not so neat and clean. It is blurred, often overlapping. It is when it is not blurred, when it is quite clear who is the consumer and not the contributor – or vice versa – that problems arise. When it comes to one person carrying more of the load, or perhaps all of the load, then real divisions occur in a relationship – not "can" occur, but "do" occur. It is inevitable.

The greatest conflicts between my siblings and me, the greatest conflicts took place when one believed the other was not pulling his/her fair share. I know I used to run to my mother because I thought my brother was not doing his share of the house cleaning on Saturday morning. I was doing his. The fights, and the yelling, became nasty.    

It is the same in any relationship, in any community of people: family, work, school, church. Conflict occur because one believes another is taking advantage of the situation. But since we are all consumers of the end product in one way or the other, it is only right that we also be contributors in order to make that end product as good as it can be. In any relationship there is usually more than enough work to go around.

Given our human selfishness, if you are like me, we all like to be more on the consumer end, on the being-served end rather than being the one doing the serving. But if you are also like me, what we have all discovered, given an either-or choice, it is better to be the contributor than the consumer. There is more joy and pleasure, more reward, personal and otherwise, in serving than in being served.

Objectively it would not seem that way. It would seem that the real joy comes from consuming, from receiving, from using rather than from providing, giving and serving. As a consumer we come to want more, want better, want, want, want. As a provider, as a contributor of our time or talent or treasure, we also come to want – want to do more, to do better simply because of the joy we have found in giving.

That is not to say it is easier to be a contributor than a consumer. It is to say that given and either-or choice, as Christians our choice will fall on the side of the servant, the giver, the provider. The first time we have to make that choice, we might resist with all our might. What we discover, however, is that the decision becomes easier each time.