Wealth: A Product of Piety or the Root of All Evil

Recently I have been thinking a great deal about the Christian response to wealth.

Please forgive me for making a simplistic generalization, but the Christian response to wealth seems to come in three flavors.

The first typical response is one that goes by the names Prosperity Gospel or the Word-Faith Movement; but essentially boils down to the idea that God wants His followers to be wealthy. This response is usually accompanied by some sort of teaching that links a person's piety with their potential net worth. In other words, if you are a good Christian then God will make you rich.

My complaint about this first response stems from the devastation I have personally seen in the wake. When the main goal is to be rich it is easy to sacrifice integrity and righteousness when they get in the way of making money.

The second typical response is one that wealth is bad or evil and that to be a good Christian it is best to avoid anyone that has money. This response is usually accompanied by the idea that governments should impose heavy taxes on the "rich" to by for government social programs and impose heavy restrictions on companies.

The issue I have with this second response is that it sacrifices Christian influence in the financial sphere of our culture in much the same way that past generations of believers abandoned academic pursuits such as art, science, and philosophy to the secular world by removing themselves and building a wall of separation between these areas and the Church.

The interesting thing is that the more I think about these two sides the more I realize that they are essentially the same thing: idolitry.

The first response makes God nothing more than a financial strategy or a genie in a bottle to secure the end goal of financial wealth. The second response makes wealth into a god that must be avoided because of some fear that this god can rival the real God.

Either way wealth becomes an idol because the focus is not on God.

But what about a third response?

What if my response to wealth was not first to the nature of the wealth but to the nature of my character instead? What if I was more concerned about my integrity than my paycheck? What if I saw money as nothing more than a tool to be used rather than an object to be idolized of vilified?

I read stories of biblical figures like Joseph, Daniel, and Nehemiah and can't help but notice that they seemed to understand how to walk this third path.

These men were not lovers of money. They were not out to get rich or make the Forbes list, they sought to be men of integrity. Neither were they afraid to use money to further the Kingdom of God.

How would these stories have been different had Joseph, Daniel, or Nehemiah chosen to respond to wealth in one of the first two ways?

Joseph became the second most powerful man in all of Egypt, second only to Pharaoh. And in doing so was positioned to not only preserve the House of Israel but the whole region around Egypt when a 7 year famine struck the land.

Had Joseph deemed wealth to be an evil vice it is doubtful he would have proved himself useful running the house of Potiphar, the prison he found himself in, or eventually the whole nation of Egypt. And had he lacked integrity his story would likely have been lost among the countless other stories of men who found success by compromising their integrity.

I am convinced that if Christians really are who we say we are we should be at the top of nearly every sphere of our culture. If we truly have a redeemed mindset we should be the most brilliant doctors and scientists, the most creative artists and philosophers, and the most successful business men and women.

How could our world be different if men and women of character, compassion, and integrity were at the helm of the largest companies on Wall Street? How could things be different right now had our major banks and investment firms been run with biblical truth and justice rather than man's greed and selfishness?

Albert Einstein is quoted as saying, “The problems that exist in the world today cannot be solved by the level of thinking that created them.” I believe he was right and that it is time that Christians adopt a new level of thinking when it comes to wealth.

criticism

Lately I have been trying to grow a little in the areas of grace, compassion, and understanding when it comes to ideas and opinions I disagree with.

My usual MO is a bit of a "scorched earth" policy; create an avalanche of information and facts that overwhelm my opponent until they have no choice but to back out of the conversation in order to save their sanity.

While this strategy seems to work in accumulating a simple tally of won arguments vs. lost arguments it does little to encourage open dialogue. In retrospect, I realize that in reality, "winning" an argument in such a way is probably not even winning.

I realize that not only does my combative argument style drive people away but it is very time consuming and labor intensive to maintain. I had to be up-to-date on every bit of information and theory in nearly every possible topic area or suffer defeat when someone countered with a piece of information to which I had not previously concocted a rebuttal.

As a husband and father of two young boys I just don't have the time it takes to maintain such an endeavor.

So what is the alternative?

To start I have decided that it is a priority to have principles. As I write this I read a re-post on Twitter that reads, "When one bases his life on principle, 99% of his decisions are already made." (Frank Sonnenburg). What this means to me is that instead of spending all my time finding out what other people think I spend my time concentrated on developing what I think.

The second part of my mini-transformation is, once I have a solid grasp on my principles, to listen better to what others have to say.

If I hope to have a genuine conversation with others that involves a give-and-take of ideas I have to be willing to listen to what they are actually saying rather than make a quick, assumptive generalization so that I can form my counter-argument before they finish their sentence.

I will be honest, I know this is going to be a stretch for me. I LOVE to talk and am VERY opinionated (perhaps an understatement) so holding my tongue so that I can understand another person's position is not natural for me.

But perhaps that is a good thing.

After all, if what was natural for me was the best thing for me I would have no need for growth or change and certainly no need of a Savior.