Money and resources are always finite/limited. If you're like us, every day or week various charities send us letters asking for our financial support. We have to choose which group will receive our check. (For us, we find it good to "cycle" our support to various favorite charities during the year.) This is understandable and necessary - we all have finite rather than infinite resources. But my husband and I still recognize that every valid financially hurting group which mails us a plea for assistance has a valid claim upon people's hearts and checkbooks. We hope and pray that if we can't send them a check this month, that someone else will.
We who are homeowners also recognize that we're always having to spend money to take care of our homes and our cars, if we own them. But there's a - and I use this word carefully - demonic attitude in society that constantly says to us that we should come first - always. That we need to be continually upgrading - getting the bigger, better more expensive house, the fancier, more expensive car, the Top Brand Name houses, cars, clothing and shoes.
When faced with society's constant, unreal, and untruthful suggestions and expectations like these, how do they - or do they - affect our spending habits, what we do with our money and how we accumulate bills? How do these demonic suggestions affect our egos, our self-perceptions, when we don't own the biggest, the fanciest, the most expensive, the best of everything? How do they affect our attitudes when we see the needs of others - or do they prevent us from seeing others at all, perhaps because we've overspent?
Some individuals or groups act as if one "hurting" group's needs is always superior to any other group's needs. But - since we're all important to God, doesn't God support ALL our needs? Doesn't God's Love desire that ALL people should flourish? Doesn't God want us to love with the same merciful generosity with which God loves - without preferences or strings attached? Doesn't God's just love roll down like waters?
Which is why I really like this Facebook post:
Lynne Twist puts it this way:
"It is a fundamental law of nature, that there is enough and it is finite. Its finiteness is no threat; it creates a more accurate relationship that commands respect, reverence, and managing those resources with the knowledge that they are precious and in ways that do the most good for the most people."
The Book of Acts( chapter 2, verses 42 - 47) gives us a perfect (although idealistic) example of how the members of the early Church shared their finite/limited resources:
"They devoted themselves to the apostles' instruction and the communal life, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. A reverent fear overtook them all, for many wonders and signs were performed by the apostles. Those who believed shared all things in common; they would sell their property and goods, dividing everything on the basis of each one's need....With exultant and sincere hearts they took their meals in common, praising God and winning the approval of all the people. Day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved."
What this Scripture is telling us is this: our view of others depends on our prayer life, as individuals and as a community. The more we go to God in prayer, the more we open ourselves so that we hear God's voice, touch His heart, allow God to live and move in us, then the more our compassion deepens and widens to embrace others as our greater community, beyond our immediate family or our church family. The early Church members were from all social strata, all incomes. Some were rich, some were poor. But they communicated enough, knew each other well enough, to care about what was happening to each other. Why wouldn't they know - they took meals in common! They cared enough to share with each other because they recognized that all people deserve to live a decent life with a roof over their heads, enough to eat and drink, and enough clothes to wear.
And, day by day, the Lord added to their number. Why? Because by their care for one another they were living witnesses of God's all-encompassing love for everyone. Why don't our churches have more people? Why are people deserting Christianity? Because we don't have the Heart of Christ. We have shrunken hearts. We are a scandal to our members and to those who don't believe, who watch from the outside, and laugh at our hypocrisy.
When we get caught up in an either/or mentality - them or us - we're saying that there isn't enough to go around. But there is - if we share. If we break free of thinking that we have to have the best and most of everything.
Lynne Twist, author of "The Soul of Money," identifies the three lies we or others or our country or other nations tell ourselves to protect what we have and justify not sharing it with others:1) There's not enough to go around. 2) More is better. 3)That's just the way it is. She explains the rationale behind these lies, which are based on thinking there's not enough.
"There’s not enough to go around. . . . Somebody’s going to be left out. . . . If there’s not enough for everyone, then taking care of yourself and your own, even at others’ expense, seems unfortunate, but unavoidable and somehow valid. . . .
"More is better . . . drives a competitive culture of accumulation, acquisition, and greed. . . . It distracts us from living more mindfully and richly with what we have. . . . We judge others based on what they have . . . and miss the immeasurable inner gifts they bring to life. . . . Our drive to enlarge our net worth turns us away from discovering and deepening our self-worth. . . .
The belief that we need to possess [more] is the driving force for much of the violence and war, corruption and exploitation on earth. . . . In the campaign to gain, we often pursue our goals at all costs, even at the risk of destroying whole cultures and peoples. . . .
"That’s just the way it is, and there’s no way out. There’s not enough to go around, more is definitely better, and the people who have more are always people who are other than us. . . .
[This myth] justifies the greed, prejudice, and inaction that scarcity fosters in our relationship with money and the rest of the human race. For generations, it protected the early American slave trade from which the privileged majority built farms, towns, business empires, and family fortunes, many of which survive today. For more generations it protected and emboldened institutionalized racism, sex discrimination and social and economic discrimination against other ethnic and religious minorities. . . . .
In [our] resignation, we abandon our human potential, and the possibility of contributing to a thriving, equitable, healthy world.
We have to be willing to let go of that’s just the way it is, even if just for a moment, to consider the possibility that there isn’t a way it is or way it isn’t. There is the way we choose to act and what we choose to make of circumstances.
Can we recognize that better comes from not more, but deepening our experience of what’s already there? Rather than growth being external in acquiring and accumulating money or things, can we redefine growth to see it as a recognition of and appreciation for what we already have?
It is a fundamental law of nature, that there is enough and it is finite. Its finiteness is no threat; it creates a more accurate relationship that commands respect, reverence, and managing those resources with the knowledge that they are precious and in ways that do the most good for the most people.
Knowing that there is enough inspires sharing, collaboration, and contribution."
If we go first to God to discuss our lives and resources, instead of going first to the demonic suggestions of society, God will help us recognize that there is enough for us, and also enough for everyone else - if we choose to live wisely and with God's heart of compassion and justice. Can we, basically, be content with what we have? Can we thank God for what we have as a precious gift? Can we take time to pray over our expenses and what we want to buy so that God can help us decide how to pay our bills, and live within our means? Can we pray over our money and possessions so that God can help us decide how to use what we own, not only for our good but for the good of others?
Can we recognize that there is not an either/or in God's heart? God loves us all and wants and demands the best for everyone!