Money Management, Gift or Curse?

The gift of financial skills is the one most admired in our society, and the one most problematic to our souls. While John Wesley begins his comments on money with “Make all you can,” he tempers it with “save all you can and give all you can.” Alas, Jesus is even tougher on us saying it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter heaven, and sending the rich young ruler away sad with the comment that he must give away everything he owns to enter the kingdom of heaven. Meanwhile we benefit from the generous gifts of those who have used their God-given talent for making money to the benefit of God’s church.

The many verses in the Bible on this subject led me, for most of my life, to assume that poverty was good and wealth was bad. I was in the middle of my life before I could become to view money, and the gift of making money, as a blessing. I began to see the good that could be done by people of power and money who viewed their position as an opportunity to do good rather than as a right for them to enjoy. These individuals understood that their ability was a gift, and returned the results of their successful labor to the source of the gift.

The fact is, the ability to make and manage money is one of God’s gifts. When we refuse to use our talent for making money for God’s benefit, we aren’t being good stewards. The problem is, this one can be a tricky gift. I have written before about a large oak tree that grows beside my home. Its shade enables me to keep my AC bills low in the summer, a natural gift. However, during a wind storm a few years ago, a branch of my shade tree fell on the house removing part of the upper deck. This gift also includes certain dangers.

Spiritual seekers ignore the power of money at our peril. I know of no better description of of the potential bad outcome of possessing power, or trying to run away from facing power, than the stories of the Lord of the Rings. Who among us can risk possessing the power of money on our own? We need the companionship of a community to navigate this journey safely.

Caught up in the daily grind of trying to make a living, working toward career success, meeting the financial challenges of a society in economic stress, we often want to come to church to escape from conversations about money. We want the church to be a haven where we are protected from the many stresses of the world. For good reason, we refer to our worship space as a sanctuary. But my understanding of the church is not a place to which we escape, hiding from the world, but a place from which we can go out, fully engaged in the world, taking everything it has to offer, and returning it to God as a blessing. I believe the church doesn’t exist to shield us from the troubles of the world, but to enable us to face those troubles fearlessly. Our faith enables us to view our wealth, or our poverty, and everything in between, as an opportunity to demonstrate God’s abundant love in the world and in so doing, bring others to want to know this God who enables us to live with joy in the midst of trouble.