Cure For The Common Life Order Printed Copy

Author: Max Lucado
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About the Book

"Cure for the Common Life" by Max Lucado is a self-help book that encourages readers to find their unique purpose and passion in life. Lucado discusses the importance of discovering and utilizing one's God-given talents and gifts to live a fulfilling and meaningful life. He offers practical advice and exercises to help readers identify their strengths and align their lives with their true calling. The book emphasizes the idea that everyone has a unique role to play in the world and challenges readers to break free from mediocrity and pursue their personal excellence.

Augustine of Hippo

Born in 354 CE in the North African city of Tagaste to a Christian mother and pagan father, Augustine began his career as a pagan teacher of rhetoric in, among other places, Carthage. In search of better students, Augustine traveled to Rome in 383, assuming considerable personal risk in doing so, but was disappointed to discover his newfound students lacking the virtue he thought the necessary prerequisite for a proper education. Failing to acquire satisfactory students, Augustine moved once again, this time to Milan where he accepted a position as a professor of rhetoric. It was in Milan that Augustine adopted the study of Neoplatonism in earnest, though he had shown a fondness for classical philosophy, particularly the works of Virgil and Cicero, from an early age. In Neoplatonism the still-young Augustine thought, with great confidence and enthusiasm, that he had found an academic school capable of uniting the teachings of Christianity with those of Greek and Roman philosophy. Shortly thereafter Augustine converted to Christianity and, returning to North Africa, accepted the position of bishop in Hippo in 396, one that he would retain for the remainder of his life. It was arguably his encounter with Neoplatonism that caused Augustine to recognize the teachings of the Church as a source of intellectual insight not unlike that of classical philosophy. An autobiographical account of his religious conversion is the subject of Augustine’s Confessions, which numbers among the most famous and influential of his works. Upon rising to the position of bishop, Augustine increasingly immersed himself in the daily routine of monastic life and became entangled with internal Scholastic controversies facing the Church, particularly those involving the Donatists and Pelagians. Because of his considerable intellect and rhetorical skill, Augustine grew to be a particularly skillful and persuasive defender of Christianity against critics from multiple directions. At the same time, Augustine appears to have grown increasingly skeptical of his youthful opinion that Christianity and classical philosophy might be readily reconciled by way of Neoplatonism. Though Augustine’s work De Civitate Dei (The City of God) contains considerable praise for Platonic philosophy and its intellectual inheritors, more apparent within the work are the major differences between the Platonic tradition and many of the teachings of the Church, with Augustine, not surprisingly, lending his own support to the latter. In his personal life, Augustine is described as living a life of tireless work and rigorous denial of earthly pleasures. Augustine devoted his final days to prayer and repentance as he battled illness and watched his home, Hippo, besieged by Germanic invaders. Shortly after his death in 430 the city was burnt to the ground by its attackers, who, nonetheless, left Augustine’s library unharmed. He was subsequently canonized and was named a Doctor of the Church in 1298. He continues to serve as the patron saint of printers, brewers, and theologians.

How God Impacts Our Money and Stuff

The love of money is more than dangerous — it’s spiritual suicide. The consistent warning of Scripture is that the people of God better watch their backs when it comes to the allure of financial gain (Matthew 6:24; 1 Timothy 6:10). Earning a stout salary can be a good thing, but what we do with those earnings is all important — and the writer to the Hebrews can help us. In a list of practical exhortations, he writes, Keep your life free from love of money, and be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5) This is a simple verse, but the line of argument is astounding. Notice the first two lines. The commands parallel one another: keep your life free from the love of money and be content with what you have. Contentment and Freedom The commands look like different angles on the same posture. We are exhorted to free ourselves from the love of money (and its siren call to acquire more), and then, in the same spirit, we’re exhorted to be content with what we currently have. This latter command (“be content”) functions as a sort of development from the former. In order to really keep ourselves free from the love of money, we have to sincerely believe that what we already have is enough. There’s food on the table and clothes on our back. We’re going to be all right (1 Timothy 6:8). If we lack contentment — if we are always thinking about what we want next — then our orientation on money creeps along from value to veneration. Money becomes our ticket to more. It becomes our gateway to that thing that will give us what we think we’re missing, which means it becomes a hero. And anytime we attribute savior-like qualities to something, however subtle it might be, our affections are sure to follow. If we keep dreaming about what we don’t have, we’ll soon be doing an adulterous rendezvous with the revenue. The most vehement traction against this slippery slope is too simply be okay with what you have. The writer to the Hebrews says to be content. We’re good. We’ll be okay. We can pause our panting for more. And then he tells us why. He Is There Keep your life free from love of money and be content with what you have, for [God] has said, “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” The command for us to be free and content is grounded in God’s promise to always be there. The quotation here is taken from Joshua 1:5, but now carries an amplified meaning after the ascension of Jesus. In the Commission to his disciples, Jesus says clearly, “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:20). And as he told us about the Holy Spirit, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever” (John 14:16). We have the Trinitarian surety that wherever we are, God is there. Whatever circumstance, whether we have abundance or want (Philippians 4:11–12), God is there and he’s not leaving us. This might seem like a strange influence on our financial situation, but it’s really not. The presence of God, as with so many other things, drastically alters our perspective on money and stuff. We don’t love money, and we are content with what we have, because we have God. We don’t love money, and we are content with what we have, because we have God. We can always say, no matter the state of our earthly assets, that “we have a better possession and an abiding one” (Hebrews 10:34). God is our portion (Psalm 73:26). He is a feast for our souls (Psalm 63:5). “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” he says. Our treasure — the most desirable Being in the universe — is irreversibly committed to keeping us close forever. So yeah, money is just money, and what we already have is plenty. Article by Jonathan Parnell