In what must have been my first stage performance, I recited a four-line poem about putting Christ back into Xmas. This felt important to me as a first grader in my one-room school in rural Kansas, both because I got to take part in my first real Christmas program and because growing up the way I did I couldn’t imagine leaving Jesus out of anything.
Today I'm even more concerned about how little of Christ or of his teachings are typically associated with concepts like a “Christian world view,” “Christian values” or our “Judeo-Christian heritage.” We may cite leaders like Moses, Joshua, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther or Daniel to support a kind of Christian nationalism, for example, but fail to even mention Jesus in the process.
I recently had an email conversation with a friend of mine in which I contrasted Jesus’ teachings about wealth with the views held by the late philosopher and novelist Ayn Rand. My friend had read “Atlas Shrugged” and knew Rand was adamantly anti-religious and believed that altruism, not the love of money, was actually the root of all evil (she was fond of wearing a pin in the form a of a dollar sign). Nevertheless he defended many of her positions as consistent with a Christian world view, based on the following:
1. The Bible teaches that those who will not work should not eat.
2. Likewise, the Bible states that those who will not support their families are “worse than infidels.”
3. Also, the tenth commandment clearly states that we are not to covet what belongs to others, a mindset that leads to “a sense of ‘entitlement’ to what others have earned.
4. Above all, a Christian world view teaches that charity should be totally voluntary – and only for widows, orphans, and others who are “poor through no fault of their own.”
There is much here one can agree with, but none of these particular points happens to be based on the actual teachings of Christ. This in spite of the fact that Jesus had more to say about wealth and about giving generously to the poor than almost any other single topic.
I’m not one of those "red-letter-Christians" who pays little attention to anything but the actual sayings of Jesus in the Bible. But dare we opt for a "white-out-Christian" perspective, in which many of his teachings are seemingly blanked out or ignored?
For example:
Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth.
You cannot serve both God and money.
If you want to be perfect, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you wil have treasure in heaven.
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me...'
Of course many of us may find these teachings hard to accept and even harder to follow. But I don’t believe Jesus intended them to be "hard sayings." One of the gospel writers notes that when Jesus confronted the “rich young ruler” he loved him. He knew he would be liberated and blessed by obeying his command to share his wealth with the poor, and then to enjoy vast holdings in the “treasury of heaven.”
This is the real “prosperity gospel” Jesus wants celebrated and shouted from the housetops.
Showing posts with label giving. Show all posts
Showing posts with label giving. Show all posts
Monday, May 23, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Worth More Than Diamonds
Can money buy happiness? Maybe, if we invest it right.
I remember reading a Readers Digest story many years ago called “Wealth Beyond Diamonds.” It was about two people in love who were working their way through college during the Depression. The couple decided that instead of buying a diamond for their engagement they would use the money to help a friend with the tuition he needed to stay in school.
Turns out this friend went on to do well for himself, and was so grateful that he in turn became involved in helping others with similar needs, multiplying the effect of the original gift. All of which made the couple feel so rewarded for their original investment that they decided to make a lifelong practice of helping deserving students.
In their old age, they felt enormously rich in the satisfaction, the friendships, and all of the other rewards they experienced from the way they had invested their money. The best investments, they came to believe, were in assets that truly last, like people. Which may be what Jesus had in mind when he taught us (Luke 12:33) to store up treasure in the "bank of heaven" (through giving to the poor) rather than in things that moths can destroy, rust can tarnish or thieves can break in and steal.
In the end, what better legacy could we leave behind? The dividends are priceless, worth far more than diamonds.
I remember reading a Readers Digest story many years ago called “Wealth Beyond Diamonds.” It was about two people in love who were working their way through college during the Depression. The couple decided that instead of buying a diamond for their engagement they would use the money to help a friend with the tuition he needed to stay in school.
Turns out this friend went on to do well for himself, and was so grateful that he in turn became involved in helping others with similar needs, multiplying the effect of the original gift. All of which made the couple feel so rewarded for their original investment that they decided to make a lifelong practice of helping deserving students.
In their old age, they felt enormously rich in the satisfaction, the friendships, and all of the other rewards they experienced from the way they had invested their money. The best investments, they came to believe, were in assets that truly last, like people. Which may be what Jesus had in mind when he taught us (Luke 12:33) to store up treasure in the "bank of heaven" (through giving to the poor) rather than in things that moths can destroy, rust can tarnish or thieves can break in and steal.
In the end, what better legacy could we leave behind? The dividends are priceless, worth far more than diamonds.
Sunday, December 12, 2010
Re-gifting at Christmas
I once read a Dear Abby letter in which a reader lamented, “How do I get a person to stop re-gifting me? Often it's her used clothes, used decor and knickknacks that she no longer wants. This person can afford nice things, which is why she thinks I would like her old stuff. I find it insulting when I get it in the form of a gift. It is always wrapped beautifully and presented as though I should be so grateful. How do I get her to stop?” Secondhand Rose
Abby's response was, "Dear Rose: If I selected a gift for someone and she didn’t keep it--or exchanged it--I would give it one more try. If it happened again, from then on I would send a lovely card to mark the occasion, or a bouquet or plant. And if I was really ticked off, I would re-gift her gift back to her."
I'd like to offer a slightly different take on the concept of re-gifting in general, based on my belief that at some level everything we give, at Christmas or at any other times, is a form of recycled gift.
I first came to that realization years ago after I had finished leading the offertory prayer at my congregation. As folks were putting their gifts into the offering plates it struck me that some of those very funds would be given back to me as their pastor. In other words, I was at the receiving end of the church’s charity, a direct recipient of God’s money. And so whatever I gave or spent was a re-gifting.
My next thought was that we’re all pretty much the same in this respect, that we are each gift receivers more than we are earners or givers. What these church members had given to the church was also in some way first a gift to them. Which means that in a sense we've all been on God’s welfare since conception, and are, at best, working welfare recipients.
For a start, none of us has ever earned the priceless gift of life itself. And the privilege of being born to parents who loved us and took good care of us (at no charge), and of being born in a land of abundance instead of in some poverty-ridden country, were also things we could have never negotiated, bought or paid for. Besides, many of us received a free public school education, one paid for by others' involuntary gifts--in the form of taxes.
Later some of us got to enroll in institutions of learning we could have never been able to create (or afford to attend) without the generous gifts of hundreds of unnamed donors. Add to that our good health, our sound minds (most of the time), and whatever talents or gifts we've inherited--all helped us get whatever positions we’ve had, and are examples of amazing, unmerited grace.
When I was six, my parents were able to buy a farm with the help of a generous uncle who helped us with the financing. Here we grew and produced food for a living, but we could have never done that without the unearned blessings of God’s soil, sunshine and all of the other natural resources that makes a farm productive. In return for whatever we invested in money and labor for the harvests on our farm, we usually got sufficient payment to cover our costs, with some extra in the form of a gift known as profit. In the same way, whenever any of us buys or sells anything, this kind of gift-swapping takes place, grace for grace, blessing for blessing.
So that’s how I’ve come to believe that all of life is just one big gift exchange, a re-gifting.
Not that that’s a bad thing. It’s a good thing. I disagree with dour economists who say gift giving doesn’t make rational sense, in that whatever we choose to give seldom has the same value to the recipients as if they had been able to choose something for themselves, so things lose their value in the process. But that assumes that the benefit of being gift donors and gift recipients is based only on the market value of things, not on the serendipity that happens in the act of giving and receiving. I believe that in that exchange, value is added to value, and everyone is enriched. We are able to better realize our dependence on others, and our interdependence with all creation.
I’ll never forget one of our sons, at around 9 or so, deciding to take his entire piggy bank full of gift money he’d accumulated to give as a Bible School offering one summer for Heifer International. We didn’t realize how much he had gotten caught up in the enthusiasm to help raise as much as possible to send a heifer or some goats, rabbits, or other animals to some needy families abroad.
What he was doing wasn’t motivated by guilt. He saw it as an investment, a re-gifting for something he really believed in. He did it because it made him happy.
Once we realize how much we’ve been given, it no longer seems like a burden to freely pass on what are, after all, undeserved gifts.
I once read the story of a medieval landowner who came across a vagabond wandering across his estate.
“Get off my property,” he ordered.
“What right do you have to keep me off this part of God’s good earth?” the man asked.
“I own the land. It’s as simple as that,” the landowner replied.
“And how did you come to own it?” he asked.
“I inherited it from my father.”
“And how did he get it?”
“He inherited it from his father, a general in the king’s army. He fought for it, and was given the estate as a reward.”
“Then let’s you and I fight for it,” the man replied, “and whoever wins will own the land.”
Point of the story? If you look back far enough and hard enough, you realize that everything is first a gift. At Christmas, that’s a good thing to remember.
You and I just get to exchange. So let's pass good things around and around. Let's re-gift with abandonment.
Abby's response was, "Dear Rose: If I selected a gift for someone and she didn’t keep it--or exchanged it--I would give it one more try. If it happened again, from then on I would send a lovely card to mark the occasion, or a bouquet or plant. And if I was really ticked off, I would re-gift her gift back to her."
I'd like to offer a slightly different take on the concept of re-gifting in general, based on my belief that at some level everything we give, at Christmas or at any other times, is a form of recycled gift.
I first came to that realization years ago after I had finished leading the offertory prayer at my congregation. As folks were putting their gifts into the offering plates it struck me that some of those very funds would be given back to me as their pastor. In other words, I was at the receiving end of the church’s charity, a direct recipient of God’s money. And so whatever I gave or spent was a re-gifting.
My next thought was that we’re all pretty much the same in this respect, that we are each gift receivers more than we are earners or givers. What these church members had given to the church was also in some way first a gift to them. Which means that in a sense we've all been on God’s welfare since conception, and are, at best, working welfare recipients.
For a start, none of us has ever earned the priceless gift of life itself. And the privilege of being born to parents who loved us and took good care of us (at no charge), and of being born in a land of abundance instead of in some poverty-ridden country, were also things we could have never negotiated, bought or paid for. Besides, many of us received a free public school education, one paid for by others' involuntary gifts--in the form of taxes.
Later some of us got to enroll in institutions of learning we could have never been able to create (or afford to attend) without the generous gifts of hundreds of unnamed donors. Add to that our good health, our sound minds (most of the time), and whatever talents or gifts we've inherited--all helped us get whatever positions we’ve had, and are examples of amazing, unmerited grace.
When I was six, my parents were able to buy a farm with the help of a generous uncle who helped us with the financing. Here we grew and produced food for a living, but we could have never done that without the unearned blessings of God’s soil, sunshine and all of the other natural resources that makes a farm productive. In return for whatever we invested in money and labor for the harvests on our farm, we usually got sufficient payment to cover our costs, with some extra in the form of a gift known as profit. In the same way, whenever any of us buys or sells anything, this kind of gift-swapping takes place, grace for grace, blessing for blessing.
So that’s how I’ve come to believe that all of life is just one big gift exchange, a re-gifting.
Not that that’s a bad thing. It’s a good thing. I disagree with dour economists who say gift giving doesn’t make rational sense, in that whatever we choose to give seldom has the same value to the recipients as if they had been able to choose something for themselves, so things lose their value in the process. But that assumes that the benefit of being gift donors and gift recipients is based only on the market value of things, not on the serendipity that happens in the act of giving and receiving. I believe that in that exchange, value is added to value, and everyone is enriched. We are able to better realize our dependence on others, and our interdependence with all creation.
I’ll never forget one of our sons, at around 9 or so, deciding to take his entire piggy bank full of gift money he’d accumulated to give as a Bible School offering one summer for Heifer International. We didn’t realize how much he had gotten caught up in the enthusiasm to help raise as much as possible to send a heifer or some goats, rabbits, or other animals to some needy families abroad.
What he was doing wasn’t motivated by guilt. He saw it as an investment, a re-gifting for something he really believed in. He did it because it made him happy.
Once we realize how much we’ve been given, it no longer seems like a burden to freely pass on what are, after all, undeserved gifts.
I once read the story of a medieval landowner who came across a vagabond wandering across his estate.
“Get off my property,” he ordered.
“What right do you have to keep me off this part of God’s good earth?” the man asked.
“I own the land. It’s as simple as that,” the landowner replied.
“And how did you come to own it?” he asked.
“I inherited it from my father.”
“And how did he get it?”
“He inherited it from his father, a general in the king’s army. He fought for it, and was given the estate as a reward.”
“Then let’s you and I fight for it,” the man replied, “and whoever wins will own the land.”
Point of the story? If you look back far enough and hard enough, you realize that everything is first a gift. At Christmas, that’s a good thing to remember.
You and I just get to exchange. So let's pass good things around and around. Let's re-gift with abandonment.
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