Mark 4:18 The seed that fell among the thorns represents others who hear God’s word, 19 but all too quickly the message is crowded out by the worries of this life, the lure of wealth, and the desire for other things, so no fruit is produced.
I Timothy 6: 17 Teach those who are rich in this world not to be proud and not to trust in their money, which is so unreliable. Their trust should be in God, who richly gives us all we need for our enjoyment. 18 Tell them to use their money to do good. They should be rich in good works and generous to those in need, always being ready to share with others. 19 By doing this they will be storing up their treasure as a good foundation for the future so that they may experience true life.
James 5:1 Look here, you rich people: Weep and groan with anguish because of all the terrible troubles ahead of you. 2 Your wealth is rotting away, and your fine clothes are moth-eaten rags. 3 Your gold and silver have become worthless. The very wealth you were counting on will eat away your flesh like fire. This treasure you have accumulated will stand as evidence against you on the day of judgment. 4 For listen! Hear the cries of the field workers whom you have cheated of their pay. The wages you held back cry out against you. The cries of those who harvest your fields have reached the ears of the LORD of Heaven’s Armies.
5 You have spent your years on earth in luxury, satisfying your every desire. You have fattened yourselves for the day of slaughter.6 You have condemned and killed innocent people, who do not resist you.
The word for wealth/money in Mark 4, I Timothy 6 and James 5 is the same word. I’m sure everyone knows that wealth itself is not a matter of different things, but of different decisions, different goals, different choices, different appetites nurtured and so on.
Money is money. Americans have it. Starving Christians in the global south have it. Corporations have it. Churches have it. You and I have it.
I live in one of the poorest counties/congressional districts in the United States. I drive past disgusting examples of poverty every time I travel. And, of course, many of these scenes are poignantly furnished with irony. Outside of a trailer with no doors and sheet plastic windows will be 2 or 3 all-terrain vehicles and a satellite dish. Inside, a large flat-screen television and video games will be prominently displayed.
It’s a decision about what to do with something that can be good or bad. The wealth is neutral. It could buy clothes or a door or windows. It could buy gas to a job. It doesn’t.
Jesus and the Apostles made it plain that wealth can be a worry. It can also be a means of blessing and helping others. Or it can be a curse, filling the world with pain and oppression.
The ministry where I serve spends a lot of time teaching students to not waste food, water and other resources. Every day I eat in our dining hall, I see amazing examples of food waste by young people who just haven’t yet learned how to think about these things. They have the opportunity to put food on a plate and they do so as an expression of their freedom. Then I meet them at the window where we take our trays and silverware, and there is all the food going into the trash.
“I didn’t want it.” I’ve heard it a thousand times.
But before you are shocked, ask yourself if you have learned to think about money and resources like Jesus.
I’m not asking you to become an economist. I’m just asking if you and I have come far enough down the road of thinking like Jesus that we’re seeing the possibilities and the tragedies of how we use money and wealth.
The ministry where I work is the third least expensive school if its kind in the U.S. (as far as we know.) Even then, we give a substantial amount of need based financial aid to our students.
One thing you can be sure of: Among those requesting financial aid for our already inexpensive ministry will be someone who will actually write something like this:
With the economic downturn, times are very difficult for us. With two house payments, three car payments and our credit cards maxed out, we need as much assistance as possible. In fact, we may have to cancel a family vacation to Aspen this year if my husband’s practice doesn’t pick up.
This is a way of thinking. It’s a way of seeing ourselves that ignores connections and makes assumptions about “normal” that need to be deeply challenged.
Following Jesus is a process of personal transformation. It isn’t a process of becoming like other Christians. It is a process of becoming like Christ. The unmistakable evidence of the New Testament and Christian history is that Christians and their communities became aware of the meaning of economic power and possibility. Among the behaviors they valued the most in discerning faithfulness to Jesus was whether you could SEE the poor and how to minister to them in a Jesus-shaped, responsible way.
When Zacheus met Jesus. He didn’t become a beggar. He remained a tax collector as far as we know. What he became was tax collector who used his money and influence differently. Maybe it cost him his job. I don’t know. Interestingly, the deepest connection he made was that Jesus was a far more satisfying and security-producing master than his wealth.
So how easily can you let go of it? How much do you want to understand about how you use wealth? Are you prepared to undertake the journey to using your wealth in different way?
Start small. What is a $20 change you could make this month – $5 a week- toward being economically a follower of Jesus?
Today is St. Clare’s feast day who founded the Poor Clares with help from St. Francis. What perfect timing for this message.
“Following Jesus is a process of personal transformation. It isn’t a process of becoming like other Christians. It is a process of becoming like Christ.
Thanks Michael, I forget sometimes.
Sometimes I think all of Christian practice is more easily said than done. This is just one example. I know I’m supposed to embrace my cross and fully detach from the world out of the love of God alone, but doing it joyfully and consistently eludes me.
The prosperity message is simply wrong, it’s telling us what we want to hear. But even when the message is correct, following the Christ is hard.
I wonder what you mean, Memphis Aggie, by “fully detach from the world out of the love of God alone.”
From my understanding the love of God should be the force that allows us to embrace the world around us. God calls us not to escape from our environment but to commit to the redemption of our environment.
Disclaimer 1: I am not Michael. I am not worthy to lick his boots and all that sort of stuff. Nom-de-plume similarity is purely coincidental.
Disclaimer 2: The following is an un-paid advertisement shamelessly promoting a particular ministry. I have not received any compensation of any kind from GFA, though my sister in law is a missionary with them.
GFA is a good place to give those extra few dollars each month since each donation goes 100% toward the missionaries. Since they’re native missionaries, they can do some pretty spectacular things with $20 a month, even after the US dollar has taken a beating in exchange rates.
I use them in youth group as a second baby step toward doing the two big charges of Christians – spreading the Good News and caring for others.
They have a free book, “Revolution in World Missions” which is a challenge that fits in well with this post. (and it really is free – not “free after donation” or “free, but you pay for shipping” – gfa-dot-org) Michael, if you haven’t read it, I would highly suggest it since it tracks very closely with where you seem to be walking recently. It might be preaching to the choir to you, but it’s really good preaching. :^)
Ok, end of shameless promotion.
We are now sponsoring our second pastor through GFA. We’ve been supporting them for over ten years. When my mom died, we directed all gifts to them and raised over $1200.
I am a total supporter of GFA.
I’ve always wondered what would happen if I stood up during a church service sharing time and read James 5:1-5 in their entirety and then sat down. Maybe some day I’ll get the nerve. Thanks for the good post.
What the heck is a Memphis Aggie (I’m from Texas and a proud Aggie father).
Seriously, the post is convicting.
I don’t want t hear anymore of your whining that you don’t preach anymore.
Hi Kenny,
Detachment from the world is what I read is required from statements like : “he who loves his life will loose it” and the offer Christ made to the rich man to sell all his things and “follow me” or the the man who wanted to bury his parents. Attachment to creation , no matter how sweet, is ultimately death. We must detach (the word is “hate” in the Bible) from even our wives and children! We must love the Creator first and not the creation. We must seek Jesus for love of him, and not just for His generous gifts. Seek the eternal and forgo the temporal. This is what I mean when I say for the love of God alone.
Like I wrote before easy to say but very hard to do. This teaching relates to some of the more difficult passages in the Bible that, as Michael points out, gets tossed in prosperity Gospel. We want to reform our circumstances but God wants to reform our souls.
Plenty of others dig into this observance of wordly detachment in pursuit of Christ: Merton, Kempis, St. Francis, St. John of the Cross, St. Faustina , St. Gertrude, St. Therese of Liseux, St. Theresa of Avila, etc.
It’s not my idea, it’s a Catholic understanding of what it takes to love God wholeheartedly. Fortunately we rely on His Mercy because no one, not even the righteous man who fails 7 times a day, is going to get to perfection on their own.
First: This is a wonderful ministry you have spoken of before.
Right now I’m unemployed and living off severance and unemployment. I’ve also bounced from job to job trying to find something better – the best I’ve done since 2001 is about $25K/yr. I’ve taken an awful wad of money from my elderly widowed mother.
And just as I finally convince myself how well I really do have it and am thankful for, I get rude awakenings of how others have had it better. I’m not a slacker, I think, and work hard for a favorable result which is elusive.
A reader mentioned St Theresa of Avilla whom I believe said something like :
When there is something I want and ask God for, but He gives it to someone else ,I rejoice because He does give those things at all.
Yes, your post is aptly titled and well developed. Yet the conflict rages within.
To Memphis Aggie.
Thanks for defining your thought. I am familiar with the concept from studying Thomas Merton in college. I am also familiar with all the passages you cite. I disagree with the concept in general when it is used as a form of escapism.
#1. Love God.
#2. Love Others.
Everything hangs on these commandments. So loving God means loving others. Loving God means engaging your culture, engaging your world, interacting with those around you in a way that shows the love of God. Not abandoning culture, sequestering oneself in order to more perfectly be one with God.
I admit we’re probably splitting hairs over semantics.
Hi Kenny,
I agree on the escapism issue. I know this meme as “holy indifference” which is understood to be the detachment that allows compassion to function. I’m sure you know people who are well meaning and love children but could never function in a children’s hospital because they would be paralyzed by attachment to each and every patient. So they fail to act charitably because of attachment. By contrast Mother Theresa of Calcutta was able to function and relate and even laugh with her charges even though she was immersed in a overwhelming poverty of such a scale that it is hard to imagine. She had enough detachment to be there and help.
Now in keeping with the title of the post there is another kind of detachment, also rare that is exemplified by Daniel. Daniel was indifferent to wealth and prestige and was able to function faithfully to God, speaking honestly to men who could (and tried) to kill him in an instant. Most of us who are fat and happy in the US are at risk spiritually from attachment to wealth and temptations to pride. You can only be truly righteous and wealthy at the same time if you can be detached from the wealth, willing to toss it aside the minute Jesus says follow me. I believe that some of the wealthy are righteous but I expect it’s rare and I have to wonder how I’d do if tested hard enough. So that’s one of the purposes of almsgiving – independent of whether your money makes a real difference in the recipients life – it’s important to give to train yourself and practice detachment from wealth. Note in Matthew Christ says “when you give …” don’t let the left hand know what the right hand is doing. Not if you give or if you fast but “when you” fast.
Which reminds me, fasting is one of those things I don’t do as well as I should that really helps develop self discipline. Daniel fasted from rich fare in the Babylonian emperors care his whole life. I’m sure the practice helped prepare him. So keying in on what you wrote Kenny, Daniel was keenly involved the culture, not at a all sequestered, but he still maintained a detachment. The semantics can be confusing, but the Biblical examples clear it up.
Excellent Blog: “This is a way of thinking. It’s a way of seeing ourselves that ignores connections and makes assumptions about “normal” that need to be deeply challenged.
Following Jesus is a process of personal transformation. It isn’t a process of becoming like other Christians. It is a process of becoming like Christ.”
Truly, following Jesus’ example, to surrender to the will of our Heavenly Father daily… causes us to become conformed to the Image of Christ.
The truth I experience is: when the power of Father God’s truth comes into our heart… and we embrace it as our own, choosing to live it as our reality through our union with His Son, it not only changes our thinking and thus desires, but our ways of being.
Yes! The Spirit of our mind is renewed/transformed by that which the Spirit of the Lord makes alive within… and calls us to live out through the gift of grace it is, as we grow in Spirit and Truth, according to Father’s Sovereign plan.
Truly… the battle to overcome that/lies/darkness which once ruled our thinking, and ways of being before the truth/power of Christ and the Gospel of God our Father is revealed… manifests the mystery of death/life/redemption… so the new creation in/through Christ we have become, are discovering within can come forth in/through HIS power…. establishing God’s Kingdom within and on this earth.
When we are brought to the place where His desires have become our own… we find it is easlier to let go… to receive afresh. That which is temporal looses it’s hold on us… we desire only that which has eternal value…
Choosing to be willing to be willing to surrender to Father’s revealed will… letting go… is one of many steps along the way… where one walks, knowing Jesus is both the initator and finisher of our faith and the provider of all we ‘need’… to accomplish that which Father knows is yet to be, for the good of all.
Yes, facing fears of the unexperienced with faith in the goodness of our Father and His eternal plan is truly one of many challenges the Spirit of the Lord calls those who overcome through Christ, to walk through…
Bless You Father we do not walk alone…. may we evermore choose not to follow after the lusts of the flesh… but after Jesus… having heard Your call….
I absolutely appreciate your desire to encourage others to use their wealth for Jesus. I *really* appreciate it. I wish more people would honor Christ with their resources in sacrificial ways.
One side-note: the encouragement to the children not to waste food is good, I think, but I would also be conscientious about causing them to feel guilty about stopping eating when they’re full. Obviously, your judgment would come into play with this, but as someone who struggled with weight and the guilt associated with not finishing everything on my plate… well, anyway, it’s just something to think about. I’m sure you know your kids well enough to know which of them may struggle with it, and I certainly encourage you to encourage them to take small portions and then come back if necessary. Nevertheless, I think it’s absolutely important that you step in to curb unnecessary waste (I think of some of the guys in my junior high class and know exactly what you mean- mountains of mashed potatoes, right?). Anyway, I will pray that your message gets through to them in the way you want it to, and again I absolutely support you in speaking out about the issue.