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Biblical Stewarship - A different perspective

Very long for a first blog, but just thoughts that are floating around my mind...welcome friends

It is in my back room that I begin to *pen* these thoughts. Perhaps the back room because it is quiet – perhaps because it is tucked away amidst the noise. Either way these are the not so paramount thoughts that are running through my mind.

I sat in Church this morning (it doesn’t matter the specific morning – it could be any morning really) and listened as our Pastor spoke of Stewardship. And by Stewardship we are talking about money: how to act responsibly with it, how to spend it, how to save it, how we should give it to the church, etc. Never mind that we never spoke about stewardship in any other realm of our lives (things like time and the earth immediately come to mind) – that is another topic for another day – the things that immediately struck me while I was punching my “time” card are as follows:

First of all We (the “we” of course includes “me”) as followers of Christ really tend to place the person and message of Jesus in very easy to fit containers to answer our most pressing questions. For instance today the question was posed: “What would be different if Jesus took over our financial planning?” On the surface this was dealt with in a very practical manner. Things were presented like how to handle debt, prioritize our spending habits, and of course the concept of tithing. However, in my mind, this is a very complex and difficult question to answer. To start with, as Shane Claiborne really prompted me to wrestle with in his new book “Jesus for President”, isn’t it ironic that Jesus never had any money? So perhaps step 1 in Jesus’ financial plan would be to rid me of all money and resources and help me understand that his call outweighs all of these things and if he could go without money and resource in his world perhaps we should do the same. Perhaps he would open up my home for the homeless and abandoned in society in order that they might experience his love to a greater degree then my (our) giving the homeless money to “eat”. See – in my mind this question is so multi-dimensional and uncomfortable, yet we dealt with it very quickly as illustration.

Next, The point was made that Jesus, and subsequently Paul, were both very clear that the only things we needed were clothing and food to be content. Perhaps this is where Maslow got the jump start for his hierarchy of needs, but once again I found it rather soaked in irony that here we were in church on a Sunday morning everyone dressed in their “Sunday Best” (and this is not about clothes, but rather perspective because we wear what we think we are supposed to in order to impress "the people"). Everyone in this room was already planning the rest of the afternoon. The naps to be taken in our air conditioned houses, the cars to transport us to the movies, and pools and computers and video games and IPods and TVs to be swam in, watched, used and abused. All of these things were never thought through and never pondered in light of the message of both Jesus and Paul.

To begin to really digest this and try to figure out if our Western way of living should be altered by these ideas was not an option. Instead the idea of being content regardless of our financial position was the message of the day. The illustration to push home this point was that it was a proven fact that the average person pays an average $375 in a car payment every month for their entire adult lives. This money, it was stated, if invested would produce nearly 4 million dollars at the time of retirement over the same period. Never once was it mentioned what would happen if every month we spent that $375 on someone in need? It was not mentioned how many impoverished people we could put through high school or how many homes we could build or how many parks we could fund. Instead the concept was to invest, create a large sum of money for myself, and then give as I felt God was leading. Once again this topic seems so much deeper then we want to give it credit for…does the “Good News” of the Gospel fit in this Western Model? Can we reconcile the two worlds of God and Money? For our congregation this seemed like the perfect solution…eliminate debt in order to make more money….BRILLIANT!

Finally, the text of the day was I Timothy 6:6-10 and 17-19, which is of course is about money being the root of all evil and we should handle all of our finances with great care. We were then presented an illustration about a Pastor who, because of his financial planning, was able to tip well, buy police officer’s meals, and help out the needy in his congregation. It was mentioned that because he had no debt, tithed well, placed a certain percent of money in his IRA and retirement account, and invested well that he could always walk around with $75-$100 to be able to constantly do these “random acts of kindness”.

While I completely understand that random acts of kindness are awesome and I love to do them, it struck me as odd that part of our good stewardship as Christ followers is to make sure to put money away in our retirement funds and bank accounts. Also, I am not sure this is what Paul is speaking about when he encourages the wealthy in this early church to: “do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share.” Those things cost everyone. If I tip well, pay for others meals, and put tires on cars I am admirable by any standards, but if I give until it hurts and don’t save my money because instead I find the needy everywhere. If in doing this, I find myself in an uncomfortable financial position in the world’s eyes is it possible, just maybe, that I am closer to the “good news” that Jesus preaches about in the New Testament.

This is the part where I now bestow upon you the answers to the questions I have presented. Things like “Can Christians be rich?”, “How much is too much?”, and “How do I live in the world financially and not be consumed by it?”. However, the problem is that I have no answers. I have many thoughts, lots of questions, but no real answers. Think of it this way – if everyone choose the live simply within their means - perhaps even communally – imagine the number of good people that would be out of jobs and would present the new homeless: people that build homes, people that install sprinkler systems, people the will build your sun room or pool deck, financial planners, investment bakers, insurance companies, and the list continues on for miles.

However, I cannot stop wrestling with the fact that in the end Jesus has an alternate plan for those who choose to follow him – those that are members of a different “Kingdom” as Claiborne and others would say. Perhaps if we could begin thinking as members of this society and not members of a Western way of life then perhaps we could at least begin to wrestle with these things spiritually and begin to generate creative solutions to the problems we encounter.

There it is...blog #1...now i push out chest proudly and pound once or twice..."I.....have made blog!!!...."