The Simple Pastor
By Phil Whittall, church planter, blogger & book reviewer
RT @lukedvd: Hope his resignation from the England manager job will allow @JoelVirgo to focus on his church duties #nomorehairdye 15 hrs ago
If you hadn’t noticed it’s nearly Christmas, that time of year where we go slightly loco with money and stuff, and it’s a unique event. Rampant consumerism and the celebration of the birth of Christ in a stable, and it was combining those two things that led to this very clever advert. Of course in the race to condemn all this excess we may kill all the fun or so thinks Sarah Dunn. This chart shows Christmas spending by country.
Unsurprisingly, in America despite not having the most money they will spend nearly the most on gifts. This is because, as Eugene Peterson says in this short video, the most materialistic we have ever known and shows how to handle wealth! (Ht: Mark Meynell)
It was following a drive through America that Tim Challies began to seriously think about the issue of money. He found this prayer on stuff and contentment and then ways to think wrongly about money. He then asks the questions do I have to give? And if so how much do I give?
This all goes to show that we live in a consumer age and it’s a pressure not evenly felt. By that I mean, as this post says, ‘UK parents seem to find themselves under tremendous pressure to purchase a surfeit of material goods for their children. This compulsive consumption was almost completely absent in both Spain and Sweden.’ A thesis that our personal experience can anecdotally support.
The best antidote is to be generous and to cultivate gratitude and that takes some thought. It’s worth thinking about.
In this post (HT: Andrew Wilson) Wilson poses a thought experiment where you can double the incomes and welfare of the least but in doing do increase the wealth of the richest tenfold at the push of a button. He ends with this,
“This is your ethical “dilemma,” and part of your test is whether or not you even think of it as a dilemma. Would you refuse to push that button out of hard principle? Would you push it, but with a guilty conscience? Or would you, like me, push it while whistling a cheerful air, with your hat on the side of your head?
If you would not push it, or if you would push it reluctantly, then that urgent yearning for social justice that you feel all the time in your gut is not compassion at all, but cancerous envy. It is evil. It is a deadly sin that must be mortified. You don’t love the poor at all — you hate the rich, and you want to use the poor as a club. And why would this malevolent genie want to take your precious club away?”
On all counts I think Wilson is wrong. His over simplistic statements make too many assumptions and presumptions. First that poverty is an absolute and never relative, Wilson thinks he’s dealt with absolute poverty so everyone should be happy. But by massively widening and increasing relative poverty he creates plenty more problems.
Here are ten reasons to care about inequality, and five causes of inequality, one economist (HT: Freakonomics) who says, “There is perhaps some sort of failure in how our system is working.” For more on the ills of social inequality read The Spirit Level.
From my review of the above book, here is the result of greater social equality, “In more equal societies there is less crime so the money spent on prisons could be spent on education. In more equal societies there is less obesity and all its health related issues and the money could be spent on better transport and so on and on. Equality reduces crime, teenage pregnancy etc..and allows a society to continue to invest in the quality of life of the nation.”
What Wilson does is actually make a bad situation worse but pretend it’s better by simply looking at the bottom line. It’s the same reason that many millionaires don’t feel wealthy and why this commenter can say that someone earning $150k a year is struggling.
And lastly of course Wilson’s magic button has replaced the apostle Paul’s magic remedy: generosity. That it is the wealth of the rich (generously and freely given) that relieves the burden of the poor.
“For I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of fairness your abundance at the present time should supply their need, so that their abundance may supply your need, that there may be fairness.” (2Cor 8:13-14)
Which brings us to a more equal situation wouldn’t you say?
“By the end of the fourth century the Church had virtually captured society. In worldly terms of status and social influence, the episcopate of even moderately important cities had become an established career to which a man might aspire for reasons not exclusively religious.”
Chadwick describes the situation that while this mean that the church supported large numbers of the poor it also became an economic and political force.
“From the third century the question was being put with steadily increasing pressure whether the Church could occupy a position of influence in high society without losing something of its moral power and independence….Detachment from vanity fair was easier to those who expected the end of the world in the imminent future than to those who expected the historical process to roll on and who possessed some modest property to pass on to their children..”
Implication: the more you have the harder it is to not give in to persecution.
“In June, Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett started the Giving Pledge: an initiative aimed at getting billionaires to pledge at least half of their net worth to charitable donations. So far, 40 individuals have signed up. The roster includes household names like George Lucas, David Rockefeller, Ted Turner and, not least, founders Gates and Buffett, who have pledged significantly more than half of their net worth. While some have already argued that part of the estimated $600 billion that this initiative could raise would have been donated anyway, the impact of the Giving Pledge remains astounding. We break down the numbers in this infographic.”
See it here
Revealing isn’t it?
Job, like Abraham, is held up as an example that God thinks being rich is OK. If being rich in and of itself were bad then why would God bless Job? It’s a reasonable argument but the Bible also tells us that wealth is dangerous – wealth can deceive you (Mk 4:19). God it seems is putting dangerous goods into Job’s hands. It’s a bit like giving my baby son Noah the spoon while I’m feeding him. He could get it in his mouth or he could spray mushed carrot all over the room. It’s a dangerous move.
But God didn’t seem to have any such doubts because he knew the character and heart of the men in question. Job reveals the reason for such confidence in chapter 31. Job recognises that all he has came from God in the first place (Job 31:15). Job understands that generosity to the poor is the responsibility of the rich (Job 31:16-22) and perhaps most importantly Job doesn’t trust in gold or riches (Job 31:24-25) he trusts in God. God trusts Job because Job trusts God. God knows that when he gives great riches to Job it won’t pull him away, make him selfish and proud and Job won’t take from God what he is due (trust and faith) and give it instead to gold and money.
So, if you’re rich or God blesses you with greater riches (and remember that if you reading this then from a global perspective you are rich) don’t trust in it, don’t forget who to thank and don’t forget to be generous. Of course understanding what generous is, will help.
On that note yesterday I kept my laptop switched off all day, and found it hard to do…I think I’m addicted. Alternative ways of passing the time paled in comparison to either working or wasting time on a computer game. So I’ve decided I must have a computer sabbath each week. It’s not good for my creativity, imagination, soul to be addicted to a screen.
I’ve not yet mentioned anything about the Prosperity Gospel, it’s an argument I’m no longer interested in but it seems that it still kicks around which is a shame, so maybe I’ll post again. Anyway I think Luke is nearer the truth than the preacher he mentions. Do read his blog
I don’t know about anyone else but as I consider the church in the UK too often those differences are small if they’re there at all. OK so we give a little more to charity, we get divorced a little less, we probably smoke less but not so much as you’d be convinced that Jesus was really making a difference in our lives. Yet when you read the life of the early church what grabs me is that it was obvious to everyone that Christianity meant a new life and not just spiritually on the inside but lived out everyday!
So to take but one example (if I can I’ll work through others) in 1 Timothy 6/6-11, and in particular these words from St Paul
“For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it”
If we believed that and I mean really believed it then surely we wouldn’t fill the middle with the pursuit of stuff. We start with nothing and we finish with nothing and the actions of most people is to say, ‘Well hey I should just get hold of much stuff as possible and enjoy it now because I can’t take it with me’ and if you look inside the lives, houses, garages, lofts of most Christians then you’ll see they think that too. But what Paul is saying is that because we can’t keep it we shouldn’t really bother with it other than what we need to survive (he lists food and clothing and I might add shelter). Everything else could become a trap because we see in it the path to a fulfilled life instead of being the path away from a fulfilled life which is only found in following Jesus. And he had food, clothing and shelter was a bit iffy. The Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head remember.
Of course to really apply this passage to ourselves we need to be convinced that when the Bible talks about the rich it’s really talking to us. The biggest trap of all is to think I’m not rich, Bill Gates is rich or whoever. Well wealth is deceitful so I guess it’s no surprise that we think that.
So the next step is to be really think about that question – when the Bible talks about the rich is it really talking to me?
I believe Jesus when he said 'life does not consist in the abundance of our possessions'. I believe he offers something better. This blog is mostly about that search.
I'm also a husband, a father, church planter, keen runner, reader, and motorcyclist. These and a few other things make guest appearances from time to time.
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