I think most of us want very much to love and follow Jesus faithfully. Especially when the matter comes to money and material possessions, we endeavor to say what He would want us to say because He Himself had a lot to say on the matter: Jesus lived a nomadic lifestyle, derided rich Pharisees and tax collectors, and ate with beggars and prostitutes. We admire that He was so willing to be poor because He was so aware of what true wealth is. Theologians debate back and forth about what it could mean that the Beatitudes in Matthew say "Blessed are the poor in spirit," and the equivalent verses in Luke read simply, "Blessed are the poor." Sermons tell and re-tell the story of the poor widow who, in giving her last mite to the church, gave a bigger contribution than the other more prosperous donors. And so on.
There are also many who tend to temper this profligate dismissal of the value of money with arguments for good stewardship and counterarguments on the side of material pursuits. These people are the people who would say, "Well, if you really believed that, then what's to stop you (or everyone) from donating all their money away and living a happily ascetic homeless existence?" They would continue with that thought, "See, you don't really believe that Christians shouldn't have money. It would be poor stewardship and horribly irresponsible if you didn't take care of your family and their future. Plus, you have to earn money to give it away. Also, the whole Bible talks about taking care of the poor and destitute among us. If having no money isn't a significant thing, why make such a huge deal about them being poor and us not being poor?" Some such arguments may be motivated by a desire to preserve a comfortable status quo, but a lot of it is well-intentioned and well-thought-out.
So if tomorrow, you suddenly and unexpectedly incurred a $100,000 dollar debt, how would you react? It would be a wonderfully pragmatic test to see what you really thought about the matter of money.
I suspect many Christians would interpret such circumstance as exactly that: a test. Either they need to pray and believe harder, or it's one of those karmic what-goes-around-comes-around phenomena, but if they wait it out in faith, then eventually God will bless them, and probably (although never voiced aloud) financially. Either that, or there's some lesson hidden in the circumstance that they have to figure out, some revelation about how they're living their life, and if they figure it out, God will restore normality. It's how our common interpretation of the book of Job and Chicken Soup for the Soul resolve: no one just dies poor and alone without the closure of either a belated reward or a valuable life lesson.
"The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the earth produced its fruit." -- James 5:16-18
"And the Lord restored Job's losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed, the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before." -- Job 42:10
The other extreme is also pretty conceivable. Many people simply divorce the issue of money from any sort of spiritual application. Money is one of those necessary tangibles, the currency of this temporal existence, and something that won't exist in heaven, so why bother placing all this spiritual value on who has it and who doesn't, and how you spend it?
"Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord." -- Job 1:21
"Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moths nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." -- Matthew 6:19-21
"Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit,' whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away. Instead, you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that.'" -- James 4:13-15
Those people are like the people who are quick to point out the Biblical distinction that the love of money, vice money itself, is the root of all evil. There's a lot of Scripture out there that would suggest that distinction is simply splitting hairs: that to seek or have lots of wealth is to keep a Pandora's Box on top of a gasoline tank next to a live, plugged-in arc welder. What I'm saying is, a lot of Scripture almost makes you uncomfortable to be on the side of the rich.
"Come now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming upon you! Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver are corroded, and their corrosion will be a witness against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have heaped up treasure in the last days. Indeed, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of the Sabbath." -- James 5:1-4
"Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him? But you have dishonored the poor man. Do not the rich oppress you and drag you into the courts? Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called? If you really fulfill the royal law according to the Scripture, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself,' you do well; but if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors." -- James 2:5-9
"Now godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. And having food and clothing, with these we shall be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation and a snare, and into many foolish and harmful lusts which drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. But you, O man of God, flee these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, and gentleness." -- 1 Timothy 6:6-11
The funny aspect of being $100,000 in debt is that there are a million Christian books and solutions for how to manage the money you have in a Christ-honoring way, but few satisfactory answers to the issues of having no money. And probably the best way to think about that one is to do what Paul said in his final letter to Timothy: remember Jesus Christ.
"Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." -- Matthew 8:20
"You were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold [...] but with the precious blood of Christ." -- 1 Peter 1:18-19
"For you were bought at a price." -- 1 Corinthians 6:20
If you had suddenly and unexpectedly incurred a $100,000 debt, and you had to pick among a myriad of Christian perspectives, my hope would be that the circumstance would draw you closer to the mind of Christ, and that it would tangibly remind you that once you were in grave and inescapable debt, and that God paid it for you at great personal cost. And that oh, to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be.
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10 comments:
wow, interesting...i just read the end of Luke 7 with the Jesus' parable of the man and his two debtors.
i also wonder about Luke's beatitudes--or rather, their counterparts, the woes. "But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation." but i wonder if the word "consolation" is key in understanding the sentence. you've made wealth your consolation. i wonder then, if it comes down to what you desire, what you take delight in. david was king of israel and was he impoverished? but i think your comment about the whole money-issue being a pandora's box best describes the conundrum.
I've always wondered what Jesus' rhetoric would have been like if the society he lived in was a middle-class majority as opposed to a complete polarization.
I like your use of 'Come Thou Fount'. Now you've got me trying to make a mental comparison between owing 100k and owing your eternal soul. Contemplating it makes the monetary debt seem insignificant. Living with the knowledge of it is another story.
I'm very uncomfortable about the idea of being rich. Or, rather, living as a rich man, in luxury. Seeing as how I probably stand to make a boatload of money in the near future, I've been wondering how this is going to play out. My Dad always points to the likes of Lazarus and David to show that luxury is alright in God's sight, but anything more the modest living seems highly insensitive to the very real financial needs of work of the Kingdom of God.
Mithun, I'd agree with the modest living part. I think generally, there's no real good reason for extravagant living, though I do wonder about "storing things up"...
That's the nice thing about living in a pluralistic society, Mithun - I'd be more than happy to see to the distribution of your excess wealth. Everyone wins! Seriously, though, isn't it a bit tricky to define "modest living" in a world in which there's such an enormous gap between the rich and the poor? Is "modest living" a 1-bedroom apartment with electricity, indoor plumbing, hot and cold water, and internet access with a television, a laptop, a cell phone, a large wardrobe of always-clean clothes, and even a car and access to modern medicine? That's much more than what the vast majority of people have, after all. I'd want to be careful of defining "modest" and "extravagant" in a society-dependent way - it seems to me that unless one takes account of third-world standards of living, a desire to live "modestly" is just a desire to be able to ignore one's privilege instead of having to decide what actions one's privilege demands. The permissibility of this hinges on the purpose of living modestly, I suppose. If the point is just to not let luxury go to one's head - if the goal really is just to not feel wealthy - then I guess it's fine. But if the point is to actually not enjoy a standard of living far above what the vast majority of people have, then I don't see how you can argue with Matt's hypothetical ascetic (obviously you don't go that far - you maximize your income less cost of living and use the profit to do good).
It is interesting the way that Christianity (to my knowledge) favors the poor over the rich to a greater extent than earlier religions (Islam is also relatively young - what does it say?). Nietzsche had a lot to say on that. I wonder to what extent the difference is just down to its youth - Christian thought hasn't yet adapted to the fact of Christian power. It didn't begin as the religion of a whole society, and its texts don't seem to envision Christians ever having worldly power (until the Second Coming, of course).
You've got a point, Billy. But, for me, I suppose it comes down to the fact that, while I may not be able to define what modest living is, and while the standards for modest may be relative, I can certainly say what type of living *isn't* modest. And I suppose that's better than nothing.
And yet another standard put forth by John Piper (eat your heart out, Lindsey), is the "wartime living" view of money: money is spent, some times lots of it, but it is always used in advancement of the cause (in this case, the Gospel). Again, though, I can see how these things are hard to define. In the end, however, it's not about not "feeling" wealthy, so much as what your heart is set on.
The Biblical text, Old Testament included, does seem to favor the poor over the rich. But I wouldn't say that Christian thought has lagged behind the reality of Christian power and prosperity. Far from it: Christians have become far too accommodating of power and prosperity, integrating it into their theology far too much! One can even say that the foundation of over a millennium of European monarchy was a Christian theology of power (however wrong this theology might have been). This reality is so true even today, that not only have Christians adapted, other Christians have already formed strong reactions what's sometimes called this "Prosperity Gospel."
Point taken on European monarchies and Christianity. Slipped my mind, somehow. I suppose I'm still a bit surprised that scripture was never really edited to make it easier to be rich, powerful, and Christian, but perhaps I'm underestimating the ability of people to get whatever they like out of a text.
So the important theological issue that the proper way to live modestly hinges on is whether the problem with being rich is that one isn't doing as much as one could to help others or if it's that one's wealth somehow goes to one's head (that wealth becomes your "consolation"). Something of a faith/works distinction there, I guess, in that it could be something that you ought to do with what you have or it could be how you ought to feel about what you have. Though it seems most reasonable to me to take it as something of both - to suppose that it's wrong to amass wealth for oneself far in excess of that available to suffering people in far away lands as a matter of action (not helping them) and of thought (using the culturally-relative modesty of one's living arrangements to ignore the issue).
I would agree with your last point: the vast majority of times, the faith/works issue presents a false dichotomy. The type of living and active faith called for by God is inseparable from the works which necessarily flow out of them. Thus, when Jesus passes by the disciples and says nothing more than "follow me," either they follow or they don't: and that work is dependent on whether they have faith or they don't. While faith may have directly preceded the physical action, it would be ridiculous to think of the faith without the action.
In the same way, if you truly have the righteousness attitude towards money, then necessarily you will do great things for God with the "excess," even if the "excess" is your last two mites.
All of this is, of course, hilarious to philosophize about, seeing as how we're all probably dirt poor.
It's that last sentence that I have a hard time understanding. It's difficult for me to square my subscription to XBox Live with being "dirt poor". Surely "excess" starts well short of online video games (or cable, or Dr. Pepper) considering the real and significant good that that $60/year could do for certain other people. I don't know how seriously "WWJD" is taken as a guide to Christian living anymore, but I have a hard time buying that Jesus would spend anything near what I do on creature comforts (and I'd wager that I spend much less on creature comforts than do most American Christians). Is it just that we all fall well short of having a righteous attitude towards money?
There are times when I'm convinced that the thing about the rich man and the camel and the needle is directed precisely at those who don't think of themselves as wealthy. That's the whole problem - it's very easy for people who really have quite a bit to convince themselves that their wealth is actually modest and that they don't have any special obligations. It's easy to think that what sacrifices you do make are enough, when they really don't come close. Googling the context, that seems to be exactly what was going on - the rich man talking to Jesus thought of himself as good, and thought of himself as keeping all of the commandments. It comes down to Jesus saying that it's those who have "forsaken all" that will "inherit everlasting life". In Matthew, I'm not even seeing mention of the seeker as wealthy until after Jesus tells him to give up everything he has as if it were a commandment. The very wealthy find it hard to give it all up, but everyone, it seems to me, is called to give it all up. As long as there are people who have next to nothing, the rest of us are wealthy (and those of us in the developed world are fantastically wealthy). I suppose a case can be made that "with men this is impossible" excuses us from giving everything up, but then he moves on to talk about a group of men who really have given everything up (or who have at least given up much more than we have), and he reaffirms that "many that are first shall be last". Who is "first" if not us, with our comfortable and safe lives, luxury goods, and spare time?
I meant that last sentence jokingly, but I get your point. We are ridiculously well-off compared to 99% of the world. While WWJD may have gone the way of parachute pants and Reaganomics in cool Christian circles, it's still a legitimate question. Or rather, WDJD, What did Jesus do? The problem with that is, even though Jesus was poor "and had no place to lay His head," we're not all called to that. Just like we're not all called to be carpenters until we're 30, and then go into full time ministry.
You bring up the story of the Rich Young Ruler, but again, I don't see Jesus' command to him to sell everything he has as universal. The principal reason being that He doesn't give that command to everyone. While some may certainly be called to that, there are many Jesus encounters where He doesn't ask that of them. Looking in the Old Testament as well, God didn't seem to have much problems with Abraham or Job being rich. I think Jesus' larger point was that our heart has to be in the condition of surrender, and if we aren't there, we can't follow Him. The Young Ruler did not want to surrender his wealth, and this was pointed out by Jesus through Jesus' demand. Some, for example, may not be willing to surrender their sexuality and become chaste; if that is so, they can't follow Jesus, but that doesn't mean everybody is called to celibacy.
But the point is still valid that we seem to called to live less extravagant lives as we are. I acknowledge this gap between what the Bible seems to recommend and Christian practice, and yet I do have to point out that, likely, our main experience with Christians are (1) American and (2) Young. Being American is basically defined by consumerism, so if there is one place where our cultural background as American Christians falls especially short, it's in our use of wealth. Second, Christians our age are very immature in their faith, even if we forget it sometimes. It wouldn't be fair for aliens to figure out the abilities and practices of humans by abducting a five year-old and studying her alone.
Enough with the lame excuses of our lack of righteousness. What *should* we do? I'm not going to set up rules. I'm not going to say that your X-Box subscription is an affront to good stewardship. But I think one way to look at it is whether the wealth is being used to advance the Kingdom of God. Maybe, I would posit, living a lifestyle of the rich and famous enables you to minister to those in that circle. After all, they need the Gospel too, and they might not hear it at all if all Christians were beggars. This, of course, can quickly slide down into endless rationalizations for bad stewardship, but if we keep honest with ourselves, I think it might be an appropriate way to look at things. In the end, though, you're right, the vast majority of us American Christians do "fall short."
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