Sally and Joe went to a Dave Ramsey conference in the first year of their marriage and learned how important it was to save money every month so they could retire. Joe had steady work, getting raises every 6-12 months and the occasional promotion. Sally got a job to increase the income and secretly because she knew she would be appreciated more at a company than she was at home. She had to pay for the childcare for the summer and for the 3 hours after school before she got home. She was so tired and stressed out by the end of the day that she didn’t want to do the housecleaning or laundry, so she hired a housekeeper to handle these chores. She bought convenience foods more and more so that cooking would take less time (though they are organic convenience foods since this is one way the advertisements told her that she can take care of her family), and the family ate at restaurants twice a week on average. The family was busy with extra curricular activities, so they usually had a meal together once a week. Because of their new income level, they moved to a nicer neighborhood with better schools. By the time they turned 60 and are thinking about retirement, Sally and Joe have moved five times, each time just barely able to put 20% down on their new house, so the house they own at retirement still had a mortgage balance of $200,000, and a monthly payment of $1,800. Joe has heart disease and the Sally has type-2 diabetes. By saving 10% of their income and finding a stable mutual fund that always returned 6% APR (how did they do that?!), their retirement savings has increased to $850,000 by age 60, which will last them 10 years on their current cost of living. Of course, their medical bills will be increasing over those 10 years, so it probably won’t last quite that long. During their lives so far they have added thousands of pounds of waste to landfills, burned tens of thousands of gallons of gasoline, and added thousands of pounds of carbon monoxide to the atmosphere. They are not wealthy, happy, or healthy, and by their consumption have caused several families to live in subhuman conditions.
Wealth, and especially the love of wealth, has an incredible ability to distract us from God. In fact, Jesus is adamant that wealth is incompatible with a love of God. In addition to distracting us from our focus on God and our reliance on God, there are some things about wealth in this present world that cause compounding problems for the believer. Wealth that is concentrated in one family causes a lack of necessities for another family; global economics appears to actually be a zero-sum game. Unlimited growth and unlimited profit are not achievable. Wealth also lures us to conveniences that are often not healthy for the environment, and that cause other people, perhaps on the other side of the planet, to live in oppressive conditions.
Some scripture for reference:
Wealth, and especially the love of wealth, has an incredible ability to distract us from God. In fact, Jesus is adamant that wealth is incompatible with a love of God. In addition to distracting us from our focus on God and our reliance on God, there are some things about wealth in this present world that cause compounding problems for the believer. Wealth that is concentrated in one family causes a lack of necessities for another family; global economics appears to actually be a zero-sum game. Unlimited growth and unlimited profit are not achievable. Wealth also lures us to conveniences that are often not healthy for the environment, and that cause other people, perhaps on the other side of the planet, to live in oppressive conditions.
Some scripture for reference:
Mary Ann and I went to a Dave Ramsey seminar through our church. Steps 1-3 for getting out of debt quickly are good. The other steps, basically seeking wealth (to be generous with! to be generous with!) seems to contradict Scripture though.
ReplyDeleteYou go too far when you say that Jesus taught that wealth itself is incompatible with a love of God. We must not store up for ourselves treasure here, because it will rust and be stolen. Our heart must not be with it.
The rich are not commanded generally to sell everything, but to be generous (1 Timothy 6:17-18); Job was not wrong to be rich, but it was the blessing of God that made him so.
Your zero-sum model of wealth is not true either. If the Lord blesses one, he is not taking from those around him. Let them gather the gleanings from his field, let him represent them in court, and he is providing for the poor.
That said, there is much love of money in the church. Just preach against the idolatrous love of money, not against God's blessings, ok?
No, not okay. I could focus on the beatitude in Matthew's gospel "blessed are the poor in spirit" and just consider the attitudes and motives and love of money. But the beatitude of poverty in Luke's gospel is not the same thing, and it can't be ignored.
ReplyDeleteYou know, Jesus does say "Woe to you who are rich...for you have received your reward." It's in the same section where He says "Woe to you when all men speak well of you...for so they did to the false prophets." I see the error of saying "No, it's ok if all men speak well of me..." That is a direct contradiction of the Spirit's teaching. Can it be that wealth is the same?
ReplyDeleteIf so though, what about the rich man glorying in his humble circumstances and being generous (in James)? Our wealth is certainly passing away.
When I think of God's blessings, I usually thing about the grace that frees me from sin, the gifts of the Spirit, and so on. We often mistake the wealth that results from our greed with "blessings" either intentionally so we don't feel bad about it, or unintentionally as a result of the environment and mindset that we've grown up with. Jesus challenges us to think and act differently about material possessions; perhaps they aren't blessings after all.
ReplyDeleteNo, the covenant blessings in Deuteronomy included blessings of crops, children, labor, peace. God promised to bless obedience with fruitful abundance of all kinds. The covenant curses for disobedience included the withering of all these kinds of fruitfulness: crop failure, barrenness, slavery, the sword. Abundance wasn't a curse.
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