Your Money or Your Spiritual Life!

            No, it’s not a new line to use at church before taking up the offering next Sunday. And it is not a mistaken version of the street thief’s threat of “Your money or your life!” It is the reality of how serious money is as a spiritual issue.

            Money really matters to spirituality. The Bible has more to say about it than most of the topics preachers address. In those biblical texts about money, the emphasis is also different from the ones you likely associate with the sermons you may have heard on money. The Bible speaks less about donating money to church than about handling your own purse properly.

            Here is a high-level sampling: work to earn money, be honest in your labor, don’t make money your life goal, don’t define yourself by your money, don’t look down on people who don’t have lots of money, and don’t kiss up to those who do.

            If those aren’t enough, here are some additional themes: don’t envy success, don’t expect others to pay your way, avoid debt like the plague, and don’t stand as security for another’s debts; do share with people on hard times, do pay fair wages to anyone who works for you, do pay your debts as contracted, do save for the sake of lean times, and do share generously with people in need.

            Get a concordance and count the texts where words such as money, wages, debt, greed (or its old synonym “covetousness”), borrow, share, and give occur. You will wind up with a much longer list than for such hot topics as millennium, abortion, speaking in tongues, marriage, or child-rearing. Why, there are more money-related texts than verses on baptism or Holy Communion. So the subject must be important to spiritual life. It must be very important.

            It wasn’t surprising to me that a recent article in USA Today reported that, in spite of some progress in the economy, “many American families are still in financial distress and lack the financial skills they need to climb out of debt.” My hunch is that Christians are – as a survey showed on marital failure – in about the same boat as non-Christians on money management, borrowing, and debt.

            Could this trace to our failure to live the Bible’s prudent advice? “The wicked borrow and never repay, but the godly are generous givers” (Psalm 37:21 NLT). “Just as the rich rule the poor, so the borrower is servant to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7 NLT). “You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24 NLT).

Note: My friend Dave Ramsey and I have hatched an idea about helping your children and grandchildren learn about the spiritual dimensions of money. I’ll tell you more about it next week.