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Rector's Blog
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Getting It
At some point, you get it. Perhaps you open your accounts online, and there it is. You call the bank and learn the total. It comes in the mail. It's handed to you as you leave the office. Or it's placed on your desk. In times of work in some capacity it comes. At some point, you get your money.
And then what do you do? These days, how do you translate your money into what you have? What do you get with your money?
Here's a bottom-line truth about Jesus: in the gospels he never tells people what to do with their money. The gospel writers do not record Jesus saying anywhere: "everyone, tithe!" Instead, Jesus teaches people what to do with their love of money. He challenges them to love something more valuable. It's outlandish, but Jesus actually tells one man to give all his money away and then to come and follow him—why? Because here is a secret about us: you and I are worth a lot more than as suckers for loving our money. Instead, we can put over our love of money our love for God.
You, too, can give everything you have away. Why not? It's your money! Here's how: you can practice your faith by letting your money follow your love for God. The biblical standard of tithing to God puts our love of money out by the curb. And tithing, many people here can affirm, teaches you that your money—the other 90%—is both yours to have as well as God's for you to steward. It's yours, and it's not only yours. You effectively give it all away by putting your love for God first. That is, with God's help, you can really get it.
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Friday, October 19, 2007
Most of us would like more of both—more money and more happiness. We may look out our windows and see houses that cost more than ours and look more appealing. Our friends may seem a little happier than us because of what they have. We can believe in these times that increasing the former increases the latter: "if I just had a little more money, I'd be happier." Yes, we can understand that the recent research show us otherwise. (According to researchers at University of California, Berkeley, publishing in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, June 2003 once enough money is earned to meet basic needs, money and happiness cannot be objectively correlated. "Once you get basic human needs met...more money doesn't make a lot more happiness," notes Dan Gilbert, a psychology professor at Harvard University and the author of the new book Stumbling on Happiness.) But knowing these results doesn't change the way we can feel. In the consumer culture in which we all participate, money—and having more of it—gets translated into increased happiness.
But each year at this time we have the opportunity to commit to seeing our money in another way. We can commit ourselves to viewing our money, and what we have through it, not as a commodity to compare ourselves to others with, but as an expression of our values. Our money follows our values, and our values follow what we worship. And to worship God as an intentional follower of Jesus is to practice our faith with our money. Through tithing, or committing 10% to God, we can give joyfully to God in thanks for all that we have. The other 90% through giving 10% becomes more clearly abundant than we could have seen before. We can become happier with what we have. The capacity for our happiness with what we have increases.
100% of life is a gift—what we have, and what we can have. And we can be happy with it. We don't have to let the more costly houses down the street, or the seemingly happier people with whom we may associate, rob us of being happy ourselves. We can be happy with what we have. We can have gratitude. And our gratitude becomes stronger through generous giving: attaining the biblical standard of giving 10% back to God in joy and thanksgiving is a worthy and faithful practice. To tithe means putting first who we worship, and letting our values and our money follow. To tithe means moving beyond comparing ourselves with others, and into gratitude with what we have, and even more happiness.
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