Managing God’s Money

 If the polls are correct, many Christians spend more on their pets than they give to missionaries (our pets are better cared for than our missionaries).  If the polls are correct, most Christians only tithe about 2% of their income.  Even if those polls are a bit off, I think it is safe to say all of us need to hold a little (or a lot!) less tightly to our cash and coin.  So when I saw Randy Alcorn’s Managing God’s Money on the Tyndale Blog Network, I quickly requested a copy.  I’ve not read anything by Alcorn before this one; I was happy to see he did his best to summarize the Bible’s teaching on how Christians should handle the money God has given them to utilize as pilgrims and stewards.

The book consists of six sections: 1) Money and possessions in the Bible, 2), Perspectives that hinder biblical money management, 3) Stewardship in light of eternity, 4) Giving and sharing, 5) Wisdom and money, and 6) Training our children (and churches) about biblical money management.

One part I appreciated was (in section 2 above) Alcorn’s discussion of materialism.  He writes about the materialistic aspect of Western culture, how it affects all of us, and how we can fight it.  Alcorn also rightly criticizes the prosperity gospel: “Prosperity theology is like chocolate-covered rat poison.”  He mentions the suffering Christians are often called to and also explains that God often gives his people wealth so they can give it to others who need it.  Alcorn gives a great quote by Augustine: “Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others.”

One part of this book I wasn’t completely convinced by was Alcorn’s discussion of rewards in chapter 11.  He wasn’t suggesting that our giving earns us a place in heaven, but he did mention that heavenly reward should motivate us to give liberally.  There wasn’t anything terrible in this chapter, but it was ambiguous and could have been more nuanced and theological.  I also was disappointed that Alcorn never mentioned gratitude when it comes to managing money.  The book would be much better if he had discussed the gospel and how it motivates us to a life of thankfulness – including managing money in a way that shows gratitude to God for his saving grace.  To be fair, Alcorn did mention the gospel and he didn’t veer into legalism – I was just hoping for a clearer grace/gratitude discussion.

Having noted my critique, I still do recommend this book.  It is easy to read, full of wise biblical advice, and very applicable to all Christians.  From young married couples to older Christians who want to be better stewards of the money God has given them, the book will be a good help for many.  I’ll end with a few of my favorite quotes.

“God entrusts riches to us, not so we can keep them, but so we can give them” (p. 72).

“Abundance isn’t God’s provision for me to live in luxury.  It’s his provision for me to help others live.  God entrusts me with his money not to build my kingdom on Earth, but to build his Kingdom in Heaven” (p. 133).

“Whatever role saving has in our lives, it should always be secondary to giving.  And it must never be a substitute for trusting God” (p. 194).

“The almighty dollar bequeathed to a child is an almighty curse.  No man has the right to handicap his son with such a burden as great wealth.  He must face this question squarely: Will my fortune be safe with my boy and will my boy be safe with my fortune?” (Andrew Carnegie) (p. 209).

Read more about this book at Tyndale’s website (here).  My thanks go out to Tyndale for providing this complimentary review copy.

shane lems

A Great Resource on Acts

 A friend of mine recommended this book for studying the historical situation of Acts: Colin J. Hemer’s The Book of Acts in the Setting of Helenistic History (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 1990).  Hemer had just finished the manuscript of this book before he died in 1987; thankfully Conrad Gempf and others edited it and made sure it was published.  In case you were wondering, Hemer also wrote an outstanding commentary on the letters to the seven churches of Revelation.

 I don’t have the time and space to give a detailed review of the book here, but I do want to point out a few things to give you an idea what Hemer covered in this book.  (By the way, Hemer’s style, scholarship, and clarity reminds me of F.F. Bruce.)

One thing Hemer does well in this book is discuss the historicity of Acts in light of recent scholarship (critical and non-critical).  In a level-headed manner, he wrestles with the different scholarly approaches to the book of Acts (volume II of Luke’s writing).  Here are the different topics that Hemer covers:

Acts and Historicity, the relationship of Luke – Acts, Ancient Historiagraphy (how the ancients wrote history), Types of Knowledge in Acts (common knowledge, learned knowledge, etc.), Historical evidence in Acts (including idioms, cultural features, names, titles, locations, etc.), the relationship of Acts and the NT Epistles (focusing specifically on Galatians), the “We” Passages of Acts, and the Date of Acts.

The book also contains indexes - Scripture, modern authors, places, and subjects.  Most of the books I read either have no index(es) or brief ones.  Hemer’s book, however, has exhaustive indexes which make the book easy to use for future study.  The structure of the book is also straightforward so it isn’t difficult to read and follow.  Any student of the NT should easily be able to read it with profit.

By the way, Eisenbrauns nicely put Hemer’s table of contents on their website (here).  Here’s the description of the book from that website:

The Acts of the Apostles is the New Testament book that contains the most obvious ties to its cultural and historical milieu. Yet, until very recently, the trend has been for 20th-century authors to bypass discussion of the relation of Acts to the world and history around it. In this book, Colin Hemer examines various strands of interlocking data, ranging from the epistles of Paul to records of the corn fleet that sailed from Alexandria. The wealth of new literary, epigraphic, and papyrological data brings fresh light to numerous details as well as to the central question of Luke’s conception of Paul’s visit to Jerusalem. The result is a broader understanding of the Hellenistic world in general and a greater appreciation for Acts as a coherent and consistent product of its day.

Put this book in your online cart or wishlist today! 

shane lems

sunnyside wa

The Gurgling Gullet of Modern Religious Self-Confession (Barth on Hymnody)

 Tucked away in I.2 of Barth’s Church Dogmatics is a little section on hymnody.  It is one of Barth’s running footnotes (in smaller print) in his discussion on the subjective aspect of the Holy Spirit in revelation and man (I.2, Part III.16.2).  The section is quite long, so I’ll have to paraphrase it.

First, Barth talks about Luther’s hymns and how they were simply meant to teach the Word of God and Christian doctrine to the common people (quo verbum Dei vel cantu inter populos maneat).  He explains that Luther’s hymns are “completely lacking in…all emphasis upon the emotion of the subject.  What these hymns contain is adoration and solid communication, confession of faith, confession of sins, proclamation.”  Luther’s hymns don’t “demand to lay this or that” upon people’s hearts in a subjective, man-centered way.  ”In these hymns we never find either God’s child or God’s Church preoccupied with themselves, but always turning to the recognition and praise of God and his acts.”

He then traces Lutheran hymnody and mentions how it later shifted its “epicenter” to the “heart, the soul, the I, the We;” to the subjective aspect of the Christian faith and away from the objective truths.  As a side, Barth also mentions how the epicenter of worship didn’t shift as much in the Reformed churches because they held fast to psalms.  Fast forward to pietism and mysticism, to what Barth calls the “more self-conscious age” of “emotional” “self-confession.”  What happened when the subjective and emotional I/me/we began to dominate hymns?  “Confession and proclamation have now really given way to religious poetry…on the whole, participation in the singing of these hymns implies a congregation which is highly self-impelled, highly self-activating, and highly self-exalted, and no longer - we cannot fail to remark it – the congregation of Luther which is moved simply by hearing the Word in faith.”

In these self-centered, emotional, and subjective hymns, “the traditional Christology has turned unnoticed into an exoteric garment.  In Tersteegen [an evangelical hymnist of the 18th century] it is a garment for the exposition of a mystical experience of the presence.  In Gellert [another evangelical hymnist of the 18th century] it is a garment for the exposition of a solid moral attitude.”

Barth goes on to quote Tersteegen’s view of hymns: “Come, O souls ourselves, and let ourselves be rid of all visible things, of the senses, of reason, and of all idiosyncrasies, in order that, properly separated, simplified, pure creatures, we may enter into our spirit and soul-ground, and there find, behold, and love God who is also a Spirit, and enjoy his peace which passeth all understanding.” 

More:

“In the generation which followed Tersteegen and Gellert, the Evangelical Church acquired a purely subjective hymnody.  …The [modern] congregation’s confession has now really become a confession of itself. …Even Reformation praise of God disappears in the gurgling gullet of modern religious self-confession.”

Here’s how he summarizes this section.

“Protestantism has followed the way of apostasy from the Reformation.  The history of the hymn reveals to us the inner secularisation which has taken place. …The Holy Spirit has ceased to be the Spirit of Jesus Christ.  To all appearances He is still a spirit of God, even a Christian spirit.  In fact, however, He is the spirit of human inwardness and seriousness, the spirit of mysticism and morals.  In that spirit we do not yet enjoy, or enjoy no longer, the communion with God which is realised in the revelation of God.  On the contrary, for all our seriousness and with all our piety, we are simply alone with ourselves and by ourselves.”

Wow.  Can you imagine what Barth might have written if he would listen to the songs that pass for worship music today?  Karl Barth meet Michael W. Smith.  Yikes!

Ethics, Suffering, and Down Syndrome

Stanley Hauerwas is one of my favorite Christian ethicists.  I don’t always agree with his theological positions or his ethical conclusions, but I am always challenged, informed, and helped by his essays on ethics.  This morning I read “Should Suffering Be Eliminated?” found in chapter 8 of The Hauerwas Reader.   This essay was the response to a 1984 video that informed the public how to prevent retardation in children.  Hauerwas noted that the film meant well, but essentially made the issue worse than it should be:

“Too often medicine becomes the means by which, in the name of humanity, we eliminate those who suffer.  Thus it has become common in our society to assume that certain children born with severe birth defects who also happen to be retarded should not be kept alive in order to spare them a lifetime of suffering.”  “If justice comes to mean the elimination of the victim of injustice rather than the cause of injustice, we stand the risk of creating admittedly a less troubled but deeply unjust world.”

[As a side, like many others today, I don't like the term "retarded," and Hauerwas even notes the term is not a good one; yet he stuck with it because it was the common one in 1984.  Please don't take offense at the term in this blog post; I don't mean to be derogatory in any way at all.]

In this essay Hauerwas challenges the notion that all suffering should be alleviated; he also challenges the idea that having Down Syndrome equals suffering.  It may sound rough, but Hauerwas makes some careful and pastoral points:

“Perhaps what we assume is not that the retarded suffer from being retarded but rather, because they are retarded, they will suffer from being in a world like ours [including discrimination, lack of care, love, etc.]. …All this is certainly true, but it is not an argument for preventing retardation in the name of preventing suffering; rather, it is an argument for changing the nature of the world in the interest of preventing the needless suffering we impose on the retarded.”

“I am not suggesting that the care we give to severely disabled children (or adults) will always result in happy results for themselves or those around them.  But to refrain from such care to spare them future suffering can be a formula for profound self-deception.  Too often the suffering we wish to spare them is the result of our unwillingness to change our lives so that those disabled might have a better life.  Or, even more troubling, we refrain from life-giving care simply because we do not like to have those who are different from us to care for.”   “Ironically…the policy of preventing suffering is one based on a failure of imagination.  Unable to see like the retarded, hear like them, we attribute to them our suffering.  We thus rob them of the opportunity to do what each of us must do: learn to bear and live with our individual sufferings.”

I highly recommend this whole essay; my brief quotations here are just a snapshot of an excellent longer discussion.  Basically, Hauwerwas challenged all my own assumptions about myself and those with disabilities, and I ended up realizing that I certainly need to change my selfish thinking and acting in many ways.  I’ll end with these great lines.

“…The issue is not whether retarded children can serve a human good, but whether we should be the kind of people, the kind of parents and community, that can receive, even welcome, them into our midst in a manner that allows them to flourish.”

“Too often we seek to do something rather than first simply learn how to be with, to be present to, the sufferer in his or her loneliness. …Our attempt to ‘do for’ the retarded must first be governed by our ability to ‘be with’ them…we learn that they are not incapable of fellow feeling with us and, just as important, that we are not incapable of fellow feeling with them.”

This essay is found on page 556 of The Hauerwas Reader.

shane lems

Jack Rabbits and Ping-Pong

 I’m surprised how many times I hear people speak negatively about a pastor’s seminary education – as if knowledge is deadly to the soul (or ignorance is bliss).  Of course, this sentiment is a common American one that goes way back to the early frontier days of circuit preachers.  Billy Sunday even said, “I don’t know any more about theology than a jack-rabbit knows about ping-pong, but I’m on my way to glory” (he was right, by the way!).  If you read a lot of Christian books and hear sermons on Christian radio and TV, you’ll notice there are quite a few Billy Sundays out there today. 

Puritan William Gurnall discusses this topic briefly in The Christian in Complete Armor (I’ve edited it a bit to make it shorter and easier to read).  I appreciate what he has to say here; I firmly believe a pastor should have a solid and vigorous seminary education (Greek and Hebrew included!).

“Knowledge is so fundamental to the work and calling of a minister, that he cannot be one without it (cf. Hos. 4:6).  The lack of knowledge in a minister is such a defect that it cannot be supplanted by anything else.  Even if he were ever so meek, patient, excellent, and blameless, if he doesn’t have the skill to rightly divide the word, he is not fit to be a minister.  Even if a knife has a handle made of diamonds, if it does not cut it is a worthless knife.  If a bell does not ring, it is a worthless bell.  The great work of a minister is to teach others, his lips are to preserve knowledge, he should be as conversant in the things of God as others in their particular trades.”

“I know these stars [ministers of the gospel] in Christ’s hands are not all of the same magnitude.  There is a greater glory of gifts and graces shining in some than in others; yet so much light is necessary to every minister, as was in the star the wise men saw at Christ’s birth, to be able out of the word to direct sinners the safe and true way to Christ and salvation.”

Here’s a great analogy worth remembering (Gurnall ends the section with it): “He is a cruel man to the poor passengers, who will undertake to be captain, when he never so much as learned his compass.”  J. G. Machen would have agreed: ”The Church is perishing today through the lack of thinking, not through an excess of it.” 

Dear pastors, missionaries, elders, and seminary students: study hard, train well, learn the doctrines of grace – for the glory of God and the good of his church!

shane lems

sunnyside wa