Let's Talk Money
Why money matters in a rule of life practice
Earlier this year, I read Myles Werntz’s essay for Christianity Today titled, “The Tithe that Binds.” It was a treatment of a subject that we often neglect, hesitating to offend. Money.
Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash
Werntz writes about money, as a source of social division we largely neglect; money, as a temptation to self-delusion; money, as a lure to other temptations like power, prestige, luxury, flattery, self-sufficiency; money, as the invisible ecosystem in which our lives are operating, determining where we live and who we are friends with.
Historically, Christians have sounded the dangers of wealth and advised people to rid themselves of it, though this isn’t a message we hear very much these days. I appreciated Werntz saying as pointedly as possible: “The wealthy have responsibilities the poor do not.”
I wanted to write about money this month as a part of this year’s exploration of a rule of life practice. Though some think of a rule as primarily concerning our “spiritual” habits, its scope is far broader, far more ambitious. A rule of life, which I define in my forthcoming book, A Rule for the Rest of Us, is the practice of regular habits that sustain creative, faithful response to God’s loving voice.
Coming under the rule of Jesus Christ, a personal rule of life orders our priorities in our relationships, in our homes, in our engagement with larger social issues, in our spending. If everything belongs to God, everything must be offered up to him in worship. Like the Parable of the Talents makes so clear in Matthew 25, life itself is trust, given by God. A good and faithful servant multiplies that trust, not for his own gain, but for the Master’s.
A rule is about ultimate concerns—about deciding what does and does not matter in this life as illumined by the next. And maybe this is why we don’t want to be talking about money. Like the Rich Young Ruler, we grow sad that God should ask so much of us.
To be clear, as I’ve often written publicly, I am a have in a have-not world. Often, this causes me chagrin, though that embarrassment doesn’t feel like the most fruitful response. If I don’t name what I have (and don’t have), how can I understand what I’m offering to God in worship?
At the very beginning of A Rule for the Rest of Us, I situate my husband and I, in our neighborhood bodega, fighting about money. Where your treasure is, your heart will be also. Although I didn’t necessarily intend to do this purposefully, it seems I frequently return to the subject of money in the book, mostly because I know to be true exactly what Werntz has argued: “The wealthy have responsibilities that the poor do not.”
I cut one section of the book, in fact, in a later revision, but I thought to offer it here, as we begin exploring together this month the way a rule calls our attention to the way we spend and save, give and hoard.
Marriage, I read somewhere, is about surviving each other’s changes. It’s a lot more than that, to be sure, but it’s certainly not less. In our nearly three shared decades, the landscape of my life with Ryan constantly shapeshifted: five children, ten houses, an international move (and back). Ryan and I have done change, and we’ve often done it to our domestic spaces. We’re suckers for a renovation project.
I have sworn after every renovation project that we won’t tear down another wall or redo another kitchen, but I fear I’ll prove myself a liar. Even as a child, I was an improver of domestic spaces, always tidying up and wishing my mother took more interest in home decorating and household organization.
I’m feeling especially convicted after reading Elizabeth Oldfield’s book, Fully Alive, which explores the Christian faith by way of a self-probing tour through the seven deadly sins. If I’m honest, her chapter on avarice strikes a little too close to home. “I don’t want to wake up when I’m ninety and find I’m a well-dressed, well-accessorized slave to Mammon,” Oldfield writes.[1] At ninety, I won’t be able to do stairs, so at least that’s one limit on the scope of my material life.
A rule of life calls us into greater honesty. It can’t help but do this because its work is probing and prayerful, self-reflective and specific. Its essential questions always orbit around values and vision. What ultimately matters? What will I give my time and money and energy to? To acknowledge the constraints of our lives—and the nature of worship—is to remind us that we can serve only one God.
In my own materially comfortable American life, I can’t help but feel the weight of Jesus’s conversation with the Rich Young Ruler, as recorded in three different gospels. The man wanted to know what good he might do to be granted eternal life. Keep the commandments, Jesus told him—a reminder that the law still serves a purpose, even for those who follow Jesus.
The man’s curiosity not yet worn out, he continued to press Jesus. Which commandments? You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall honor your father and your mother, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus’s answer pleases the man, who begins to imagine his piety might meet the divine standard of goodness. “All these I have kept. What do I still lack?” the man asks. Perhaps he suspected he would be quickly off the hook, patted on the back for his obvious moral merit. But here’s where the conversation takes an unexpected turn toward the cherished idolatries of the man’s heart. If you would be perfect, sell your possessions, give to the poor; then come, follow me. Jesus wanted everything, in other words.
“He went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.”
Although it’s probably hard for any of us to consider taking a voluntary vow of poverty, there’s something liberating about material renunciation that we might not initially see. One Benedictine monk describes the joy of his experience in forsaking personal property, proving that the hardship may lie more with our habits of accumulation.
“As a monk,” he writes, “I never found the lack of possessions a big problem . . . Common ownership fosters an attitude that moves away from passing personal desires, while preserving the deeper, grander wish to live a life in tune with one’s values and philosophy.”[2] Renunciation of money, for the monk, provides the means to a greater freedom. A vow of voluntary poverty slips the handcuffs of the preoccupying concerns of a material life.
Renunciation is not just a monk’s discipline. It is every Christian’s invitation. What must I put off, in order to put on? Give up in order to gain? Abandon in order to find?
As Malcolm Guite expresses in the explication of his poem, “The Bright Field,” renunciation isn’t just about giving up; it’s about about making space. “It is about clearing out the clutter, not only making the space but taking the time for the kingdom. . . . We must glimpse the seed, buy the field, take the time, and not lose it all ‘by hurrying by.’”[3]
[1] Elizabeth Oldfield, Fully Alive, 80
[2] Thomas Moore, in Fry, xviii
[3] Guite, Word in the Wilderness, 22.
These things have been on my mind a lot lately. And this morning, I read the first two chapters of James before I read your piece! I’m in the position where I bring in no income, so spending is all I can control, and I have much freedom there. We are generally more conservative and generous than most people we know in our tax bracket, but is that enough? I have struggled for years with how to discern what’s okay and what’s frivolous. For example, I refuse to buy a luxury vehicle, but I know godly people who do. Is it simply a matter of feeling self-righteous? I don’t know! I could go on, but this is a taste of how I wrestle.