I’ve been a pastor for 20 years, and I have come to the conclusion that we Christians make one of two major mistakes when it comes to money and success.
The first mistake can be characterized by the phrase “Prosperity Doctrine.” This false doctrine is characterized by the position that God wants and needs you to be rich, and the way to get rich is to give money to God by giving it to the preachers of that doctrine so that God will bless them (the giver).
This is false. God does not need you to be rich. He does not make you rich just because you gave money. There are many poor who would have to assume that God does not love them if that were the case. This was one of the myths that Jesus came to dispel. God loves everyone who will turn to Him. While He promises to care for us, He does not promise to make us wealthy.
That said, God does promise to care for us. Jesus said to:
“seek first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be given unto you” (Mt 6:33).
This is true. And it Proverbs it says:
“A generous person will prosper; whoever refreshes others will be refreshed” (Pr 11:25).
And it Malachi, it says, Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,” says the Lord Almighty, “and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it. (Mail 3:10)
The error here is not in thinking that God blesses the generous, the Bible clearly states that He does. The error is in assuming that it means there is nothing else for the believer to do but give. But God created us to create. If we are to be generous, we must have something to share (Eph 4:28).
The Opposite Error
The other error is the opposite doctrine that God does not want you to be rich, and that only a very select few will have wealth, and they are to give as much of it away as possible, that is, to do good with it.
Furthermore, the same holds for those who are not rich. By this reasoning, Everyone is to give away as much as possible. But there is an error in that thinking as well.
The error here is an error of logic. If it is true that everyone is supposed to give away as much as possible, then how much giving is “as much as possible?”
I am a literal man. If I hear God say, “Give as much as possible,” then I want to do that. So what is possible? It is theoretically possible to give everything. In that case, we should give everything.
But what happens if we give everything? Here’s a thought experiment.:
Imagine that you decided that you would give everything you possibly could. Whatever you have today, is for giving away. You wake up in the morning, and you are getting ready to eat your oatmeal. But should you do that? Why do you have oatmeal this morning? Why did you not give it away yesterday?
You decide that you should go and check with the neighbors to see if they’ve had breakfast yet. You knock on the door, and they have not had breakfast yet. You, of course, give them your oatmeal. No matter. You have more oatmeal. You begin to make yourself another bowl, but you remember you have another neighbor. Has she had breakfast? You go to find out, and it seems that she has had breakfast, but… you are supposed to give everything away, so you give her your oatmeal so that she can eat it tomorrow.
Now, you have a dilemma, because you are out of oatmeal. No matter, you have some money, so you will go to the grocery store to get some more oatmeal. Why do you have money? Why did you not give it away yesterday? Try not to think about that as you go to the store in your car. (Why do you have a car?)
You get to the grocery store and pick out your favorite oatmeal. You are on your way to the counter to pay, but there are people in line ahead of you who have not yet paid for their groceries. You realize that you must pay for their groceries. So you do. And then you pay for another, and another, and then another customer comes to the counter. You pay for them all until your money is gone.
The good news is that you have obeyed God and given away everything. The bad news is that you have no oatmeal or money left to buy some. Someone takes pity on you and gives you a sandwich. How wonderful! Your stomach is beginning to ache from hunger. You received the sandwich just in time.
Just before you can take that first bite, you see a man walking by. Must you give him your sandwich? Well, do you think you are supposed to give everything? Do you think you are supposed to give as much as possible? You give him your sandwich. He’ll also have your shirt, your watch, and the keys to your car. Oh, and give him your house keys as well.
But wait! Was the man poor? Did he need the sandwich?
Does it matter? Who are you to judge his need?
But let’s say it did matter, and you only have to give away your stuff if there are needy people somewhere. Do you think you could find someone, somewhere in the world in need? You know you could. Pack it all up and send it to them.
Whew. Now you have absolutely nothing, and in about three days you will die for the cause of generosity.
“Of course no one expects that,” you say. Really? Why not? Didn’t you say to give as much as you can? What justification can you give for giving less than “you can”?
“No need to be extreme,” you say. But why not?
The problem is that Christians are forced to walk in a contradiction. Give all you can, but provide for your needs. But what are your needs? “Well, just don’t live in a mansion.”
Why not?
“Because it is too much house. You don’t need it.”
Okay, so live in a big house, but not a mansion.
“Yes, sure.”
But do I need a big house?
“Well, no.”
Okay, how about a small house, or a smaller house, or one of those tiny houses, or a tent, or a cardboard box? What is the standard?
And there is another problem.
The other problem with all of this is that it comes from a false dichotomy between the material and spiritual world. Christians learn that all material is bad, and all spiritual is good (except for satan and demons of course). This means that everything we do in the world is “worldly,” “natural,” and unspiritual.
Conversely, everything we do regarding God and church—prayer, reading the Bible, fasting, going to worship, and especially giving our money—is good.
What pastors preach then is, “Sure you have to live in the world and do something to make money, but you need to make up for it by ‘giving back’ in some way.”
And if when we talk about “giving back,” we say people should give as much as they possibly can, then we set them up for failure, or like our friend in above example, for a quick death.
Is anything wrong with that? Yes, because God did not make us to die. He made us to live. We will leave off living “abundantly” for now and just talk about simply living.
When God created man He said, “Be fruitful, productive, and multiply yourself and multiply your resources for living. Take the created world and subdue it to make stuff that you need to LIVE” (Gen 1:28). This is what it means to be a reasoning and creative organism made in the image of God.
And the other thing He said to man is “I want you to live and not die, so I’ve created laws for you to follow. Obey them and live. Disobey them and die.” God wasn’t being mean. He was being a good Father. Just like you warn your kids about hot stoves and gravity, God wants us to know the laws of reality and goodness, so that we can live in the world He created to function by those laws.
What has all this to do with the big problem of dealing with money?
If God called us to create and live, then He called us to produce. We produce food, shelter, and even fun. He has given us the capacity for joy, and He has tied that capacity to the goal to live. When everything in us is lined up with the truth, we will feel joy when we are moving towards life, and we will feel depressed when we are moving towards death. We will feel anxiety when we are unsure of what direction we are moving in.
So when someone comes along and tells you that your pursuit of life and the happiness that goes with it is bad because it’s natural, worldly, and selfish, then you feel anxious. When someone tells you to make up for it by spiritual activity and self deprivation, you feel guilty, because the standard is total, and total is impossible.
Give as much as you can.
Pray as much as you can.
Worship as much as you can.
Read your Bible as much as you can.
Do you see how you can never do any of these things “as much as you can,” but still live? It is because these things are not the point. They only support the point. The point is LIFE. Living.
Here is where the evangelist will say, “that’s why you need Jesus.” But that is not why you need Jesus. You need Jesus because of your past sins, just like the Jews needed the sacrificial system. God has given us a way to receive His forgiveness, and He knows we will make mistakes, so He provided a sacrifice.
But His ways are still causal. Even after we repent of sin and walk with Jesus, we still must learn that God has called us to life and a life abundant (Jn 10:10), and we can learn to value things in just the right order so that our joy is aligned with our pursuit of life and our sadness is aligned with a move towards death (which is not always our fault, e.g. sickness).
Now we can apply all this to what we should think about wealth.
My answer is that there is no reason why we should not go after it as part of our pursuit of life. But we should also work to understand what is valuable to a good and righteous life. Making money is part of that, but it is not all of it. Relationships, helping others, worshiping God are all part of a good and abundant life. Keep values in order and your emotions (joy) will align. Anxiety will virtually disappear, because you will not be confused. You will begin to see opportunities that you had not noticed before, where you can trade with others and add value that helps you get what you want.
There is much more to say, but this is a start. The real question now is, where does giving, praying, reading the Bible, and going to church fit into this life? These should be daily activities because they are good. You have a good Father in heaven who loves you and loves for you to know Him, and this is how we know Him.
He does love for us to be generous, and there are many wonderful ways to be generous with our resources that won’t kill us. He wants us to live a righteous and just life. He wants us to be merciful, as He is merciful. And as it pertains to the living of a holistic life, He does indeed enjoy seeing us prosper.
