The apostle Paul made a striking statement in Philippians 3:8. He said that he counted everything as garbage compared to knowing Christ. To describe everything in the material world as garbage sounds extreme, but Paul was not saying that all things are worthless. He was saying that, in comparison to a relationship with Christ, everything else falls away.

Garbage is made up of things we use up and no longer need, so we discard them. To view material things this way is not as unreasonable as it may sound, because that is ultimately what happens to all of them. Over time, everything ends up in a landfill. One civilization builds on top of the remains of another.

I often ask myself where all my possessions will be in ten thousand years. Many of them have already reached the landfill. Most of my beautiful cars have ended up in junkyards. There are people in other parts of the world who live in landfills, searching through discarded things for something of value.

This is how the apostle Paul viewed the temporal world we live in. He was comparing the temporal with the eternal. He was weighing a world that is fading away against deep fellowship with the Eternal One, who will never fade away.