After hearing a call in yesterday's service to live a life marked by generosity in giving, what do you think of the concept of saving? It seems that saving for the future and for retirement is a necessary and wise financial strategy - but at what point does it cross over into a lack of trust in God's provision? I don't think many would argue for either extreme (saving everything and not giving, or giving everything and not saving), but how do you negotiate this tension?
3 comments:
"trust in God's provision"
When we think of God's provision (particularly of the financial kind), I would guess we tend to think of starkly supernatural intervention. The shockingly coincidental arrival of a mysterious check that matches up nicely with a daunting bill. I wonder if we are ignoring a more subtly supernatural intervention on the part of God; our Church. The Church.
There was a time in the west in which (a) saving was fairly impossible for the common man and (b) those who could were discouraged from doing so. The Church expected that if you had extra money or resources, you would give it to them and they would give it to those in need.
Don't tell Micheal Moore this, but the whole of Christendom used to have socialized health care: it was called the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Even after protestantism gained strong footing, John Calvin wrote a great deal of strong language about the Church's responsibility to the sick, the poor and the uneducated. As enlightenment thinking replaced Christian thinking, we (the church) handed our responsibilities for compassion over to the State.
The enlightenment told us that we ought to worry about ourselves as individuals and that personal responsibility was necessary for its ethic of "Rights" to be effective. Jesus message was a slightly different one: Don't worry about yourself! Worry about God's Kingdom and each other!
The enlightenment also brought with it the sort of mindset that bemoaned those "charity cases" who need help. Jesus said "Blessed are the poor, meek, persecuted, etc."
So, what is a practical vision for "negotiating the tension" between saving and giving? What if we (meaning this generation) boldly stepped forward in the faith that if we gave and gave and gave into our communities, that would such a significant example to our children that when we can no longer work or are taken with a permanent disability or illness, they will give and give and give to us.
And no, this isn't something that we should do because its practical. It probably isn't, atleast as viewed through the eyes of your CPA. and its not something that we can do privately, as individuals. but that is exactly the point: its something we can do as the church in order to be the Church that Jesus called us to be.
Great thoughts, Jon... thanks for getting this one started. Is that kind of radical shift in our thinking about money practical in this day and age? Should it matter if it's practical?
Hi all, great blog.
Also, could you have your Website manager set up an RSS feed for it? Then folks can subscribe and add it to their Google Readers, etc. Thanks. Bryan.
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