Christians and Wealth

I struggle with what is “right” for a believer. There seems to be a great deal of subtle emphasis in Christian circles on the cookbook approach to finances. “If I tithe and am faithful with what God has given me, He will make me financially comfortable.” I do my part, and God is obligated to do His.

Personally, I haven’t found this to be true. He said He would provide for our needs. He determines what our needs are. Paul reflected this by saying if he had food and clothing with that he would be content. Even more, he had learned to be content without those basics. In “nakedness, peril, or sword ” we are “more than conquerors through Him who loved us”.

When the scriptures talk about “God works all things together for good”, what is the good God works towards? Not necessarily what we consider “good”. He means to make us look like Jesus in the end. He means the cross. Not comfort. He means death. Not good health and long life. He means remaining faithful in the face of adversity. “Having done all, to stand.” And if Jesus learned obedience through what He suffered why should we think we can learn obedience through comfort?

But what is the payoff? In my own situation I suspect the Lord is working a contentment with Him along the lines of Psalm 73. He gives Himself. And isn’t He better than stuff? As it is written, “God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever”.

Q. 104. What do we pray for in the fourth petition?
A. In the fourth petition, which is, Give us this day our daily bread, we pray that of God’s free gift we may receive a competent portion of the good things of this life, and enjoy his blessing with them.

Outside the Box

He was dubbed “The Wizard of Weston” and enjoyed the allusion to Thomas Edison, “The Wizard of Menlo Park”. Stanley Mason may not be a household name, but his inventions are. It seems we’ve always lived with granola bars, microwave cookware and dental floss dispensers.

Let’s take a peek into how his mind worked. It was 1949. “My wife asked me to put the diaper on the baby. I held up the cloth diaper, and it was square. I looked at the baby, and it was round. I knew there was an engineering problem.” What resulted was a form fitting disposable diaper.

Mason taught innovative thinking at the University of Connecticut. He felt corporations squashed creativity and was fired several times for his unconventional solutions. In spite of bureaucratic lethargy, many big organizations turned to him for new product ideas through his eight man think tank, Simco.

When his daughter’s dorm room was burgled, he designed a doorknob mounted alarm system. He collaborated with a toilet manufacturer, an expert in ceramics, to develop microwaveable cookware. He’s the guy who invented the stringless Band aid package, plastic dental floss, baby wipes, a sonic method for sealing chip bags, Depends, and hundreds of other things.

So what does all this have to do with frugality? It’s seeing the need and figuring a way to solve it with what you have. It’s our brother in law Dave, who coming up north to face car inspections for the first time, rigged small Christmas lights over the dashboard to illuminate it. (Dave also “grilled” cheese sandwiches on his dashboard during a drive to California, but we won’t go there.)

So what are your needs? When tackling them, remember the Wizard of Weston.

Needs Vs. Wants

In the personal finance realm, this is the line that separates frugal wimps from triple black belt tightwads. It cuts to heart priorities. What must I have to be content? What must I have to survive? If I lose everything, will I really die? (As in, "I’ll die if I don’t have a cell phone.") It’s a useful exercise to take a sharp look at expenditures and priorities and align them with what they should be. Standard budgeting procedure.

A long time ago I co-taught a junior high Sunday school class. My friend Ruth used an ice breaker involving index cards. Each student wrote down the five most important things in their lives, one to a card. We formed a circle with our chairs. And so the story goes, disaster struck. A fire took one. They threw that card in onto the floor. A robber took another. Another discard. A flood took a third. An accident took the fourth. They were left with one card apiece. "Is this one thing the most important thing in your life? If it isn’t your relationship to Christ, it will not last." From there we segwayed into an overview of Job’s life, who having lost children, wealth, flocks, servants, health, the respect of his wife and friends, could still say, "the Lord gives, the Lord takes away, blessed be the name of the Lord". So what do I really need?