Read Your Bible (Giving IV)

Maybe Isaiah is just being provocative, right? Perhaps he’s just trying to get hold of a particularly stubborn people at a time where they’ve really drifted from the knowledge of God?

Nope. This invitation is a constant in Scripture, cropping up all the time, interrupting our dogged human tendency to live from mere ego. In fact, a good topical study of Scripture would be to mark your Bible every time God or His prophets tell His people to direct their focus to loving others. Buy a good marker, it will need to last.

Let’s just take a sampling.

In Deuteronomy 15, God tells His people to forgive debts and to be generous (open-handed), caring for those in need.[1] They are told not to harbor wicked thoughts of stinginess, which points us to the reality that thoughts are something we either hold onto or release, depending on our posture. This inclination toward closed-handedness can be overcome as we train ourselves into postures of generosity through habits of giving.

Consider how radical God’s instruction is: rather than defaulting to an economy based on punishment for unpaid loans, you should base your economy on a system of forgiveness of loans, and this will actually bring more increase. Um… what?

This makes no sense to a capitalistic mind. Apparently it made no sense to the Israelites either, as there is no record of them actually practicing these commands as a people. But the promise is there: if you do these things (verse 5), God will bless you. God interrupts our human impulse to make sure we get what’s “ours” on our own terms (which is a mindset of scarcity inevitably connected to The Human Paradigm). Then He gives the promise of blessing if we will live from a different paradigm.[2]

The idea is echoed years later through the Prophet Malachi:

Bring all the tithes into the storehouse so there will be enough food in my Temple. If you do,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies, “I will open the windows of heaven for you. I will pour out a blessing so great you won’t have enough room to take it in! Try it! Put me to the test! Your crops will be abundant, for I will guard them from insects and disease. Your grapes will not fall from the vine before they are ripe,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. “Then all nations will call you blessed, for your land will be such a delight,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies.[3]

God basically says, “Try me!” He interrupts the human impulse to hold back, to play it safe, to keep things in our own hands with the promise that by giving with hands open, all sorts of abundance will be unlocked. As always, faith must express itself in action. It’s always action, and not theoretical intention, that leads to abundance.

And of course, this idea of giving with open hands is reinforced time and again by Jesus himself. Take Jesus’ words in Luke 6:38:

Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full—pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.

Jesus also hammered forgiveness, believing that it works according to the same principle as our material resource.

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.[4]

Jesus isn’t saying that the Father is stingy; far from it. He’s trying to make it clear in no uncertain terms that our willingness to be like our Father and forgive is an urgent matter of life and death for us and, further, that our willingness to take action unlocks the resource of God’s generous reign. God thus interrupts the human impulse to live in bitterness by commanding us to forgive.

The picture that emerges from Scripture is clear. Imagine, again, a spigot that’s full of water, a cooling stream ready to gush. The water inside represents the mercy and grace of God, and it’s all free. There is nothing we can do to earn His favor because He’s already adopted us in. And yet, we can leave the water in the pipe.

This is the paradox of grace: we do nothing to earn it, and yet we must position ourselves to receive it. As with receiving a gift, you must take it in your hands and unwrap it. As Dallas Willard said, “Grace is not opposed to effort, it’s opposed to earning.”[5] In the same way, while we do nothing to earn the grace of God, we do have to put our hand on the spigot and turn the nozzle. The Scripture makes it clear that we do this by giving: by forgiving debts, by giving what we have, by releasing forgiveness. And, as Isaiah said, if we practice this life of giving until it becomes part and parcel of our life, God will empower us to live in the abundance of His kingdom. Indeed, we will find life breaking forth on every side, as Isaiah envisioned.

We can know this principle is true because it’s been hijacked. Revolutionary principles always are so that, rather than challenging us, they can be made into something that gives us a sense of control. The American Prosperity Gospel is the belief that God is, essentially, a slot machine.[6] Put a quarter in and you’re guaranteed to get your return. This is not what Scripture is saying; the Divine can’t be reduced to some quid pro quo gumball machine that we use to get what we want. What the Scripture does say is that, if we give, we will be rich in every way that matters, even down to our material needs.

Bottom line: we get to trust God and live into the principles of giving and discover the abundance that awaits us as we turn the nozzle of the spigot. We get to live with hands open, ready to receive the water that is already pouring.

For all of these readings in one place, order my book 'Learning to Live and Love Like Jesus.'

[1] See all of Deuteronomy 15, especially verses 1-11.

[2] See “The Human Paradigm (Life Outside the Kingdom of God)” in ‘Chapter 1: Adoption and Two Paradigms of Spirituality.’

[3] Malachi 3:10-12.

[4] Matthew 6:14-15.

[5] Dallas Willard. “Live Life to the Full” in Christian Herald, April 14, 2001. See http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=5 [August 23, 2017].

[6] The prosperity gospel is the belief that God wants you healthy and wealthy, and wise. While it carries a great kernel of truth (God does care about our well-being, deeply), it confuses well-being with comfort. God is not interested in making us comfortable; he is interested in transforming us so we can partake fully in the divine dance of Love.