Bringing in the harvest…
Are Spiritual and Monetary Riches Compatible?
Jesus says that worldly wealth makes it nearly impossible for a man to keep his mind set on God but, with God anything is possible. Wealthy churchgoers hear about this and let out a sigh of relief at the greatness of God, who provides them with this excuse to continue hoarding all their wealth and yet still remain Christian. In this way, rich churchgoers presume to strain the dirt and grit from God’s gospel with their man-made, diamond-studded sieves. But Christ says that God continues His work in men’s hearts despite their wealth.
God’s answer to the western fascination with wealth is unavoidable. It must go.
How is this possible? When Christ melts down our gold-plated imaginations and reveals the spiritual impotence of material excess, then we might finally reduce the stuff that we bother to keep. We will reduce our excess of possessions when we perceive them the way Christ does, as mountains of clutter.
People with less clutter hear from God better. For this reason Christ is commanding His followers in the west to cease from clinging to material attainment and instead walk by the Spirit today.
Christ is pressing all willing westerners toward a reduction of material goods, so they might invest in greater, spiritual freedom. It is inevitable that anyone who is even partly of the flesh (which includes all people) will become dependent on material wealth if he or she has too much of it.
As long as any mortal person has “plan B,” which is a pile of money in the bank, then this plan B will push itself irresistibly toward the forefront of that person’s mind. Even the most devout Christians can’t resist this phenomenon. Having a lot of money on hand has the effect of altering an otherwise spiritual man’s perception on reality. To be specific, money seems to make it possible to accomplish the works of God without God.
Can this be? Is there no way around this? To be sure, the things I am talking about here will be offensive to anyone who is accustomed to justifying their hoarding habits. That is to say, Christ’s example is offensive to many people who claim to follow Him.
Granted, Christ addresses money issues on a number of occasions. For example, during his visit in the flesh, He paid his taxes just like everybody else. But this was only as a means to His ultimate end, which was and still is to keep distraction at a minimum in order to engender a radical kingdom mindset amongst His followers. In word as well as in His modest quality of life, He teaches the principle of not spending excessive energy or time accumulating or even thinking about money.
Many of us thank God reverently for our material excesses. Yet our thanks are at the same time not-so-reverent, as we hope He doesn’t notice that we are comforting ourselves more with our possessions than by depending on Christ’s divine authority. We might fool ourselves and maybe a few of our pew-mates if we’re lucky. But God knows better. He knows that it is impossible to keep up with Jesus while we drag our cartloads of junk behind us. And He is not afraid to acknowledge the real fears that drag down our otherwise lively faith.
Christ says that wild animals have holes and nests to lie down in, but don’t count on even having a hole to live in if you want to follow after Him. What this means for us westerners is that we can continue clinging to our silly distractions or we can embrace Christ’s radical, world-neglecting standards. In return for giving up our insecure little outlooks on life we will learn Christ’s superior, God-saturated outlook on life.
As we soak up more Christ, we will gladly relinquish all the things our flesh holds dear. At the end of the day, if all we have is Christ, then we may seem poor in the eyes of the world but, in God’s eyes, we will have inestimable, unfading wealth. Freedom in Christ is to be so consumed with admiration for Him that we cease to care about the world’s silly standards for measuring wealth.
If you are a monetarily well-off churchgoer, then you may have gotten this far by reminding yourself about something your heard one time from a Christian money-management seminar, something along the lines of being a good steward of what God so generously gives you.
I too have heard some heavily-loaded statistics about the number of times the Bible mentions money. Churchy financial experts go to great lengths to count how many times the “red letters” mention anything remotely related to money (which then helps them to sell their books to wealthy Christians). Christian financial engineers like to compare the number of times Christ mentions money with how many times He mentions other things such as going to the moon, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and French poodles, and (lo and behold) He mentions money more often than all these things! In this way, Christian financial lesson books and fundraisers lead people to believe that Christ had little else on His mind besides money.
Mainstream Christianity’s infatuation with statistics has also led to other useless endeavors such as trying really really hard to reach the broadest audience possible as quickly as possible with the nicest possible version of the gospel.
As a side note, free-thinkers in general should be wary of speakers and authors who quote statistics about their respective subject matters (such as “how many times (insert a subject) is mentioned in the Bible”) for the sole purpose of convincing their audience that their subject matter, or their expertise in that subject matter, has a right to exist. This goes for speakers and certified experts in general, religious or not.
Statistics and number-crunching appeals to fleshly churchgoers, but Christ is not concerned with such things.
If we follow Christ, then we need only consider whatever He is telling us to do right now. It is irrelevant whether we consider our current circumstances favorable. Remember, Christ purposely had His disciples report unfavorable statistics in order to highlight His authority to make something out of nothing.
We have ourselves assembled together as Christ’s church as an ideal example of Him making a heavenly something out of a people who deliberately made themselves into nothing.
If you are American or an average westerner and you desire to know the will of God in Christ, then you are in an ideal position to enjoy all the benefits of living with less. Because we seek the Lord amongst a distracted, Godless generation, therefore the less worldly clutter the better.
All this money talk is meant to be practical and encouraging, especially to Christ-seekers living in democratic, affluent, western countries. In this particular scenario there are much greater possibilities in Christ than are generally acknowledged. I am not talking about a new law, but rather one more clue pointing us toward a more relevant, more flexible obedience to Christ. Nor am I referring to an itemized recipe for success. I am trying to direct you toward this general principle, which is total freedom in Christ.
by Patrick Roberts
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