We’re looking this week at how our views of money change as followers of Jesus. Here are the words of Paul, one of the first Christian leaders, to his protégé, Timothy.
But godliness with contentment is great gain, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs. (1 Timothy 6:17-19 ESV)
A Christian author, NT Wright note that we give lip service to the maxim that “money can’t buy happiness” and then give life-service to the opposite.
We don’t need to prove it, we’ve all seen this kind of thing.
One example, when someone is quite wealthy, they might buy more homes. But since they can’t be everywhere at once, they need to get security systems or guards, repair people, landscapers and more.
With more wealth comes the need for lawyers, accountants, investment advisors, and all the work and stress of coordinating them properly.
A friend owns a home by the lake, which is beautiful. But the amazing view comes at a cost, as they are constantly replacing shingles after every windstorm.
Another example: Justin Bieber’s incredible success and wealth may also be his downfall. He is able to try and buy happiness in cars, drugs, and surround himself with friends so dazzled by it all that they won’t try to stop him. But we’ve seen recently, that it’s not working. His wealth has turned into a trap, a snare.
Is Paul saying money is bad? Or houses by the lake, or pop music? No, but money is also not good, or happiness, in and of itself.
This is why Paul says carefully, the love of money is the root of many evils.
Money isn’t the good to be loved. It represents the good, it’s just a piece of paper, metal or computer data used to exchange for actual goods and services. The further our modern currency gets from the actual goods it was meant to represent, the closer it gets to an idol for worship in and of itself. Money is a stand-in for actual goods, and becoming less and less grounded in reality since treasuries no longer actually have to have gold on hand for every dollar they print.
What are idols? They were things like statues worshipped for rain, sun, fertitility, whatever people wanted to control. They stand in for a real relationship with God who can’t be controlled. They allow us to become ungrounded from reality, since we elevate ourselves to the status of controlling nature through our gods.
If we pursue money alone, we are pursuing something at the whim of the markets that is ultimately meaningless. We can see this as the Canadian dollar recently plugned below 90 cents US. Manufacturers who signed contracts at $1.00, bought supplies at $0.95 and got paid at $0.90 have all seen just how subjective money can be when it’s unhinged from the actual goods it is meant to represent.
The risk is that we’ll pursue this kind of thing in life, and worship things in our lives whose value is constantly in flux, hardly eternal. They may not be little statues anymore, but idols are very much objects of worship today.
That’s why Paul states the obvious truth: we brought nothing into this world, we cannot take anything out. Despite that, we regularly treat money, possessions in life as if they are permanent and of eternal value.
Question: When have you seen someone’s love for money lead to evil?
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Hi welcome to redeem the commute, I’m Ryan your host of the daily challenges. Today’s Tuesday is the day we explore in the Bible our topic for the week and this week we’ve been talking about how following Jesus resets our views of compassion and service to others. We saw yesterday how people can show compassion for a lot of wrong reasons. They can be doing it to increase their profile and image. They can be doing it just to get volunteer hours. They can be doing it to somehow earn a reward from God or good karma. Whatever it might be, these are selfish reasons to do something that would otherwise have been selfless. A true act of compassion is something selfless and sacrificing. When we gain from that it ceases to really be compassionate and is actually about showing compassion to ourselves.
We’re finding ways to serve ourselves by serving others. Followers of Jesus aren’t meant to benefit themselves from serving and caring for others, are they supposed to do it and if so why? There was an article I saw making the rounds on Facebook a couple weeks ago from the Onion a satirical news source. The article was headlined Local Church full of Brainwashed Idiots Feeds Town Poor Every Week. Sources confirmed today that the brainwashed morons at First Baptist Assembly of Christ all of whom blindly accept whatever simplistic fairytales are fed to them volunteer each Wednesday night to provide meals to impoverished members of the community.
“Unfortunately there are a lot of people in town who have fallen on hard times and are unable to afford to put food on the table so we try to help out as best we can.” said 48-year-old Kerri Bellamy, one of the mindless sheep who adheres to a backward ideology and is incapable of thinking for herself, while spooning out homemade shepherd’s pie to a line of poor and homeless individuals. At press time, the brainless, unthinking lemmings had donated winter clothing they no longer wore to several needy families and still hadn’t opened their eyes to reality.
Well the Onion is a source of satirical news but as satire works it always reveals something that’s somewhat true. Here we have an article that actually does a really good job of pointing out that those who appose Christianity for whatever intellectual reasons they might have can often do it without much compassion. I have a hard time wrestling with the fact that those who they think believe something untrue find that it drives them to great acts of service and compassion for others. A whole concept of modern hospitals has arisen from the church. Many schools have their origin in the Christian church.
We can go through many of the ways that our society particularly western society cares for the poor and needy and although it’s managed by our government today or it’s managed by a nonprofit organizations without explicit Christian connections very often the very notion of serving the poor and needy in our culture has come from Christian faith. It’s easy for opponents of Christianity to attack a few easy targets especially distant ones like crusades hundreds of years ago or religious persecution that may happened in places far away around the world. In reality there are millions of Christians every day simply serving the poor and needy in their community, giving up high paying jobs to go and work for a nonprofit.
Flying halfway around the world to help build homes and schools, the list could go on but there is something to Christian faith that has driven people to acts of service and compassion even when there is nothing in it for them. This isn’t a new thing either, hundreds, thousands of years ago we can find Christians serving others even at their own expense. In some of the earliest days of the Christian church there was a plague that hit Rome and one early historian and Christian bishop Eusebius wrote the following about how the Christians acted in that community. “All day long, some of them, (the Christians) tended to the dying and their burial; countless numbers with no one to care for them. Others gathered together from all parts of the city a multitude of those withered from famine and distributed bread to them all.”
You can see how even in its earliest days followers of Jesus were those who stayed when others fled. In those days if you could flee the city during hardship whether it was a famine or a plague or otherwise, you could get out of the city and fend for yourself you did. If you had the resources to do that you took advantage, yet it seems to have been the Christians who were remarkable for having stayed behind to care for those who were sick even if it meant they were going to become sick themselves. Why would people be so sacrificial? What model had they seen? What motivation did they have? Well, I think we can find it in the words of Jesus.
Here’s what Jesus said, “For I was hungry and you gave me food. I was thirsty and you gave me drink. I was a stranger and you welcomed me. I was naked and you clothed me. I was sick and you visited me. I was in prison and you came to me.” Then the righteous will answer him saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you drink? When did we see you a stranger and welcome you or naked and clothed you? When did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?” The king will answer them, “Truly I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
What Jesus has done in that teaching is he’s reset our view of ourselves and others. Imagine if a plague hit our community, others would suddenly become a risk to our health and well being. Think back to when [inaudible 00:06:19] happened, suddenly we started to see each other differently. Others were potential risks, they might get us sick, they might kill us. People stayed home, they got out of town if they could. I remember traveling during that time and people being afraid of me because I was Canadian.
It was a time when humans became a risk and that’s a time for followers of Jesus to overcome that risk and to say you know what we still need to serve one another. Be careful, take the necessary precautions but we’ll do what we need to do. At the time I was a volunteer paramedic and I remember the fear that struck many of us and yet we felt we still needed to do our jobs. Followers of Jesus are meant to be the same. We’re meant to continue doing our jobs of serving others as if they are Jesus Christ himself simply because it’s what followers of Jesus do even when it’s a great risk to ourselves, even when it’s a sacrifice, even when it calls for us to give more then we think we can handle. What Jesus has done is he’s reset our view of ourselves and others. Others have shifted from being risks to opportunities.
We shifted from being victims to being potential hands and feet of Jesus serving others whom he loves as well. I’ve got a question for you to think about today.
Question: Who are you afraid to help? Who do you think is a risky person to help? How does following Jesus transform them from a risk to an opportunity to serve in Christ’s name?
I hope you share this discussion with somebody else you know, somebody from the train or the bus from work or from your neighborhood, just somebody you know who can watch the videos on the same days as you and whenever you’re together you can discuss.
We’ve got a growing network of these small groups and please let me know if you’re discussing these challenges regularly with others, I’d love to hear about your group and what you’ve been discussing. Have a great one, I’ll see you tomorrow and don’t forget we’re reading the Bible in sync as community as well. See our website or app to see today’s Bible reading, bye for now.
When our computers get bogged down and unmanageable, we know to hit a reset button to simply start over. Wouldn't a reset button be great in life? We know it would be complicated, with all our responsibilities and routines to consider, but imagine the freedom and refreshment of a new start in life! What would you do differently? What would you pay more attention to, and what would you ignore? How would you avoid getting bogged down and broken again?
The great news is, in coming to earth as Jesus Christ, God has begun to "reset" our universe, our world, and even us. We're invited to start over with him, in what he calls his kingdom. We're invited to start a new life with a clean slate.
What gets wiped clean, and lived differently, when God resets our lives? We'll explore how God resets these key areas of our lives:
Reset: Goals
Reset: Time
Reset: Money
Reset: Work
Reset: Body & Food
Reset: Sex & Marriage
Reset: Family
Reset: Compassion
Reset: Nature
Reset: Society
Reset: Death
Join us for the next several weeks, and invite God to reset your life.
