$1,104,912.08
A person that makes this amount of money per year is in the top 0.1% in the whole world!
Now, what if you made this, after taxes, each month? Well, you would be a defensive lineman in the NFL who is, as of April, 2025, the 10th highest paid player at his position.
Currently this player is in a contract negotiation dispute with his employer because he is entering the last year of his contract and he, in one key statistical category, did the best of anyone in the league. Apparently there’s been some offense because his employer went public with comments saying that this player should be happy with what he’s been offered.
In what world can someone say that he deserves to earn more than $21 million/year? In a world that includes his little circle and those who want to talk about it (the gigantic sports world).
In much more subtle ways, each of can easily get caught up in our own little world. We feel trapped by the world that we create around us. Whether it’s one of luxury and fame or whether it’s a world of suffering and struggle. When we’ve convinced ourselves that there’s no way out or that this will be our situation until the day we die or that we’re alone, we start doing anything we can to find temporary ways to escape this world. This is why people from of all socio-economic categories are susceptible to lose hope. The rich and the poor, the famous and the average all give us examples of depression, loneliness, and addiction to drugs, alcohol, pornography, attention, etc.?
Like our friend in the NFL mentioned above, the only logic we see is from very limited viewpoints; viewpoints that either feed our pride or convince us that we’re worthless (which is another form of pride). Just like it’s easy for us to see how ridiculous it is for a person to squabble over whether he makes $21 million or $25 million each year, I’m here to tell you that you are not trapped in whatever situation you find yourself in.
How do I know? Well, because I felt trapped (and still do, to smaller degrees) when I pridefully determined to get out of a debilitating sexual sin problem ON MY OWN. I could have stayed in this little world, surrounded myself with cultural voices that say that I should just pursue more porn or that I should explore whatever sexual thought I had to be “true to myself.” Instead, I was found out by my wife of, at the time, 10 years, confessed my wrong doing, and for the first time told someone how it was weighing me down and causing me heartache. Finally, I was starting to gain a much more accurate and healthy perspective.
Assuming that nobody from the top 0.1% of the world is reading this, I’ll use the ultra-rich as an example of why we need to get a better (and bigger) perspective? After hovering around $4 million/year from 2015-2021, the average Major League Baseball salary has slowly climbed to over $5 million/year in 2025. I’m sure many Major Leaguers actually do maintain perspective, live well within their means, and spend most of their life using this money to do other things that they enjoy or to give to many things that they have a passion for. Similarly, you and I, no matter what struggle we feel we’re trapped in, or what life situation we can’t see a solution to, can still gain perspective. We can broaden our friend-base, look to God and the Bible for the things that are most important, and start putting ourselves in other peoples’ shoes by listening and learning.
There is a right and wrong perspective. First, hopefully, you can get to see the perspective the what makes you truly rich in life is filling it with things that matter, not the things that’ll soon fade away and lose their luster. Seek first your own little world and your own circle of influencers and you will continually strive for the next thing. Seek first God’s kingdom and all of the things in life that we tend to worry about will be taken care of and we will experience contentment and peace of eternal significance. See Matthew 6:25-34, Philippians 4:4-9, and Ecclesiastes 2:18-26 for some more good perspective.
