An Honest Evaluation: Money (Giving V)

What does giving look like in your life? Where and how are you giving your time? Your energy? Your other resources?

Let’s get more concrete: what are you doing with your money?

Martin Luther purportedly said there are three conversions for a follower of Jesus: conversion of the mind, conversion of the heart, and finally, conversion of the wallet.[1] One reason that Jesus talks so much about money is because what we do with our money reveals the posture of our hearts.[2] The transformation of our financial life reveals, and perhaps most clearly, the transformation of our hearts. Money represents safety, security, and the ability to try to craft the life we want. The action of surrendering our money—thus directing it to uses beyond our own security and comfort—represents a surrender of power; it means choosing to replace our own means of control with a marked trust in the generosity of God. So when the Scripture tells us to use our resources not only to provide for our family but also to provide for the poor and to support our church and other churches, it’s an invitation to practice a life of trust at a most intimate level. By investing our money in others, we move our focus off of ourselves and we surrender some control over our lives. This can be scary, but it’s one of the surest ways to open the doors of your heart and life to God. No wonder what we do with our money matters so very much!

Think about the last month and consider how you have used your money. The Scripture makes it clear that money is a gift from God to be stewarded generously; we are to provide for our family, give to our spiritual family, and help to provide for those in need.[3] Have you done this?

Are you arranging your life around the principles of generosity first, in the spirit of the words of Malachi?[4] And in the spirit of sacrificial—and not just easy—giving? In other words, are you giving in a way that you feel the cost of it?

I often think of a story from my community of faith. When I became pastor, we had very little money and very few people. I tell people that I would have been terrified if I hadn’t been so green, but it just seemed normal to me at the time, so I rolled with it. The blessing of ignorance. We were a payroll cycle or two away from having no money to pay anyone on staff, myself included, and we had a huge lease hanging over our head. About this time, our governing elders, who are responsible for the spiritual direction and practical oversight of our community, made a decision. They had looked at our numbers and saw that we, as a community, were giving away less than ten percent of our total income to other churches and to those in need. Let me say that I’m not someone who believes we are under a law to give a tenth of our income away, but I’m also inclined to think we are called to give away a lot more than that![5] I was also inclined to think it was unwise for our community to be giving less than ten percent, since that number is so important in the story Scripture tells. This was the orientation of the elders, too, and they made a beautiful decision that—despite the fact that we had almost no money in the bank—we were going to immediately start giving at least ten percent of our income away. Beyond that, we decided to restore salaries that had been cut during the previous year, to support our staff members and honor the work they were doing. It was a glorious, faith-forward, trusting decision.

Seven years later, our community is in a very different place. In fact, it was only a short time before we were in a better position. It’s not that we were suddenly flush with cash or that it’s always been easy financial sailing, but rather that we have continually seen everything we’ve needed provided. I’m not saying that the elder’s decision caused the provision (but I’m also not not saying that). I absolutely believe that the elders’ open-handed action unlocked provision—water in the nozzle—that was ready to be unleashed. And I credit our elders for their trusting posture of faith that expressed itself in clear, unmistakable action.

Let me ask you, then: When’s the last time you trusted God, “putting Him to the test?” What would it look like for you to do that with your money? Where can you press into your generosity with joy, knowing that God loves our cheerful giving and that it’s more blessed to give than to receive?[6]

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

[1] While this quote is often attributed to Luther, the actual quote is probably anonymous.

[2] Matthew 6:21.

[3] An echo of three-fold division in “Mission is Not Too Big: Three Categories of People” in ‘Chapter 2: Ambassadorship and The People Jesus Gives Us to Love.’

[4] The spirit of giving our first fruits, not our “whatever I have left” fruits.

[5] For some, ten percent is a starting point. It’s hard to imagine that, in the Age of the Church—which is the Age of the Spirit, marked by the boundless generosity of God—we would be either required or restrained by a percentage. Rather, the invitation of the New Testament is to give abundantly and sacrificially out of all we have, which may far exceed ten percent. Cf. Paul in 2 Corinthians 8:11-12: “Give in proportion to what you have. Whatever you give is acceptable if you give it eagerly. And give according to what you have, not what you don’t have.”

[6] 2 Corinthians 9:7, Acts 20:35.

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.

Isaiah 58, Revisited (Giving III)

God invites us into this posture of open hands—in no uncertain terms—through Isaiah the Prophet, as discussed in ‘Chapter 2: Ambassadorship and The People Jesus Gives Us to Love’:

“This is the kind of fasting I want:
Free those who are wrongly imprisoned;
lighten the burden of those who work for you.
Let the oppressed go free,
and remove the chains that bind people.
Share your food with the hungry,
and give shelter to the homeless.
Give clothes to those who need them,
and do not hide from relatives who need your help.
Then your salvation will come like the dawn,
and your wounds will quickly heal.”[1]

The principle is straightforward: If you focus on others (on bringing life, on blessing, on making wrong things right for others, on giving to others, especially to the bankrupt and downtrodden and forgotten), then your own light will break forth like the dawn. The discipleship process we developed at Long Beach Christian Fellowship is founded on this verse and others like it, because Jesus’ entire discipleship process was built this way. Jesus teaches, in essence, to open your hands and give, and you’ll discover who God really is. There’s a reason Jesus gets his disciples “out of the classroom” and into the field, feeding the poor, healing the broken, lifting up those who are caught in shame and guilt. By focusing on others, Jesus knows that a windstorm of salvation will be released all around, in, and through both him and his disciples. Discipleship without this focus on loving others (above acquiring more information and group accountability, as important as those things are) is not apprenticeship in Jesus.

To get a sense of the context of this Isaiah passage, imagine a wasteland, full of reeking darkness. On this landscape, people are walking about doing all sorts of religious things. They are dressing up in their finest clothes, praying long, ornate prayers. And they are patting themselves on the back, thinking God must be looking down on them with a thumbs up. But they aren’t seeing any of the people around them who have fallen into pits, who are covered in smoke and darkness.

Their problem? They are self-focused. They have replaced caring for others with mere religious observance, attending festivals or religious gatherings, just as we would attend church. They fast from food as a demonstration of their own piety, but with hearts that are closed in on themselves. They can’t see past their own religious noses.

It’s not incidental to note that, seven hundred years later, Jesus had the same rebuke and same message for his generation. And now, two thousand years after Jesus, I think we can find our own story in those who heard (and were rebuked by) both Isaiah and Jesus. After all, we live in a world that inculcates our hearts and minds into endless self-focus, ultimately leading us to live with closed hands, even if we don’t realize it. As Catholic theologian and author Ronald Rolheiser writes:

If we are not a generation in love with itself, we are, undeniably, a generation obsessed with itself… When we stand before reality preoccupied with ourselves we will see precious little of what is actually there to be seen. Moreover, what little we do see will be distorted and shaped by self-interest. The outside world has little power to penetrate or even distract you. Your reality has been reduced to the size, shape, and color of your own inner world. It is not surprising that we have trouble believing in the reality of God when we have trouble perceiving any reality at all beyond ourselves.[2]

Both baby boomers and millennials have been called “me” generations. And indeed, we are often supremely focused on our own selves. Me, me, me; my schedule, my wants, my needs. And yet, this is not some historical aberration. This sort of self-focus lives deeply within our human DNA, in every generation. But perhaps the prosperity and technology of our present historical moment have amplified our ability to focus on our own selves.[3]

Augustine defined sin as a state of being curved in on yourself, the opposite of living with hands open.[4] Imagine a body and a heart curved inward, hands closed, head bowed down to see only its own body, focusing only on its own self. We live in a world that, now and always, encourages us to adopt this posture! This is a tragedy, because hell is basically the loss of the ability to see others. Heaven, on the other hand, is very close to self-forgetfulness and a full awareness of God and others. Heaven is communion with others; hell is being trapped in yourself. As John Paul II said (to paraphrase), hell is not primarily about a place but about a state of mind and heart.[5]

And again, even religion can be curved in on itself, as Isaiah points out. It can have the appearance of wisdom with very little real spirituality or care or compassion in it. And what does the prophet say? Stop! Stop thinking that this—your ability to keep the letter of the law and get all the prayers right—is what God cares about! It sounds a lot like Jesus, doesn’t it? Like Jesus, who said, “These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.”[6]

And what is the remedy? The way out? To care for others. God always directs us to give. To take action. Not just to agree or give mental assent that God cares for the broken, but to take some sort of action for the sake of another. This is how we throw ourselves out of the boat and into the water of God’s love.

If the people will do this, the prophet says, the wasteland will turn into a garden.

Take that picture of the wasteland, then, and imagine it being transformed, filled with light, with grass and flowers. Rebirth. Resurrection. Dawn breaks out, the divine dance is unleashed. Imagine that resurrection in your own life. Picture yourself living with hands open, such that warm sun and refreshing rain fall on your palms and you are able to joyfully receive it. This is the prophetic invitation. We are to become people who can hold the light and love of God’s goodness.

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

Or, to read more posts on transformational topics, click here.

[1] Isaiah 58:6-8.

[2] Ronald Rolheiser. The Shattered Lantern: Rediscovering a Felt Presence of God. The Crossroad Publishing Company, New York, NY. 2005.

[3] As Neil Postman so presciently saw.  See his classic Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Penguin Books. New York, NY. 2005.

[4] incurvatus in se, in Latin.

[5] See his papal statement made July 28, 1999.

[6] Cf. Matthew 15:8.