When I started this blog, it was to document and “think out loud” about a transition in my life. God had been nudging me for years to reconsider my relationship with money. Finally, in late 2017, it became impossible for me to maintain my denial and avoidance of the problem and continue to ignore God’s pestering. Writing was to help me see, and ultimately remember, how God was gonna work this transformation and sanctification in me. I knew I couldn’t just self-help my way to a new relationship with money. It’s not that I don’t understand how to make a budget or spreadsheet or pay down debt. It’s not that I need a better grasp on compound interest and investing or planning for the future. It was (is?) a deeper issue than that.
I need to know how to answer the question, What is money for?
I mean, obviously money is for buying things – things we need, things we want, things others want and need. The Bible has A LOT to say about wealth and poverty. In fact, the internet tells me there’s more than 2,000 verses about money. Second only to God Himself, the Bible speaks about the poor and money most frequently. This entire realm of existence — participating in the marketplace — is a big deal to God. Clearly, how I was dealing with money (which was largely to pretend to ignore it) was not what God wants. The Bible speaks so much about money because our attitude and use of money is fundamentally about our love of God and our love of others.
Weekly mentorship meetings with my good friend, Samantha, have been helping. (You can hear an interview with her here.) I’ve also been reading. My favorite years were the ones spent studying at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, CA. The professors, the classmates, the reading, the assignments all challenged my faith, greatly expanded my knowledge, and deepened my love for and adoration of God. I experienced immense personal growth and healing at Fuller. I remember enjoying a class called Wealth & Poverty in the New Testament, taught by Dr. David Downs. He demonstrated the Bible has more than one theme, perhaps as many as 5, in regards to money. Whereas the Bible can be very uniform and narrow in some of its positions (God as Creator, we can and should pray, work and rest are necessary for everyone), Scripture, at times, paints money as a blessing and reward from God for righteousness and, at other times, is why rich people won’t enter the kingdom of heaven. I had interpreted Matthew 6:24, “You cannot serve both God and mammon,” to mean focus on God and ignore money. This doesn’t work because we have to use money all the time. We have to engage with it. My question, really, is how to use money correctly?
The Bible doesn’t seem to be consistent in its teachings about money, especially if you cherry pick your verses. I mean, Proverbs 10:22 reads, “The blessing of the Lord brings wealth, without painful toil for it.” But then there’s James 5:1-3 saying, “Come now, you rich people, weep and wail for the miseries that are coming to you. Your riches have rotted, and your clothes are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you, and it will eat your flesh like fire.” Fun times.
So, is wealth evidence that God loves you or evidence that you’re going to hell? And how much money do you have to have to be considered wealthy by God? Obviously, when it comes to understanding the Bible, context and intention is important. So I reached out to Dr. Downs (since I have no idea where my notes are – surely in a binder in a box in the garage), and within a day, he sent me his syllabus and an extensive reading list. Yay!
The first book on the reading list I completed is Loving the Poor, Saving the Rich: Wealth, Poverty, and Early Christian Formation by Helen Rhee. Rhee’s book examines the writings and preaching of the early church during the first three centuries. This spans the time from when the early church was the home churches of the New Testament, a tiny minority in the vast Greco-Roman empire, through its geographical and numerical growth until the third century when Emperor Constantine legitimized Christianity. These writings – letters, sermons, apologies – were largely written by the bishops and leaders of the churches. Leaders like Tertullian in North Africa, and Clement of Alexandria, Cyprian, Peter of Alexandria, Origen, Ignatius, Eusebius, and their treatises like The Shepherd of Hermas, Gospel of Thomas, Didache, and Who Is a Rich Man That Is Saved?. These writings, as well as what would be canonized as the New Testament (which wouldn’t be decided until the 5th century), articulate how the leadership sought to form and protect the church in light of their faith in Jesus, their Jewish heritage and teachings, and their situation in the Greco-Roman society and economy.
As they waited for Christ’s return, they, like us, had to struggle with how to live out the Great Commandment – to love God, and to love their neighbors and money was a critical issue. Understanding what the Bible has to say about money means understanding the world in which it was written and interpreted.
For a textbook, it was fascinating and I wanna share with you all the cool things I learned. I’ve been writing and realized I’m already at 3,000+ words on my shitty first draft and nobody has time for that. So this is my teaser. Over the next few weeks, I’m going to share what I got from this book with you in bite size pieces. I want to know how the early church can help us answer the question, What is money for?