Does God Want You To Be Rich?
This was the title of the cover article in the Sept 18, 2006 issue in Time
magazine. I just read it after a friend sent me a copy of the article
itself.
It seems to me that, once again, we're asking the wrong question. Yes, I
believe there are lots of people who not only want to ask that question but
also want it answered (and people like Joel Osteen certainly want to give
you the answer they have)... But I'm not sure that there is a truly biblical
answer to that question... And here's why.
What we are told time and time again throughout the scriptures is that God's
primary concern is that human beings "grow up." What does it mean to grow
up? According to scripture, one's maturity is measured by how well one
loves. Of course, love has to be defined, too.
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son
as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. (1 John 4:10)
This is love for God: to obey his commands. (1 John 5:3)
"'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with
all your strength and with all your mind'; and, 'Love your neighbor as
yourself.'" (Luke 10:27)
And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have
heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love. (2 John 6)
Love is not primarily about what you feel towards something or someone.
Love is about what you commit to sacrifice for the welfare of the other.
Sacrifice means giving of yourself. It may be a "thing" that you give (such
as money) but there is something of your self that has been invested in it.
Love means sacrifice.
The question really isn't, "How much does God want you to have?" The real
question is, "How much does God intend for you to keep?"
Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched
the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people
threw in large amounts. But a poor widow came and put in two very small
copper coins, worth only a fraction of a penny. Calling his disciples to
him, Jesus said, "I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into
the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but
she, out of her poverty, put in everything- all she had to live on." (Mark
12:41-44)
John Wesley said, "Make all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can."
As my friend has said... It's that last one that's the killer.
Does God want you to be rich? Yes... In love, my friend, in love.
posted by Jim at 8:53 AM
2 Comments:
Hello Jim and all,
RE: "Does God want you to be rich?"
How about, does the Creator want some people to suffer and starve while others wallow in luxury? What about "serving mammon" (money and materialism) instead of truth, justice, and your fellow souls? How about the rich man and the eye of a needle? Talking about the blind leading the blind...
Here's some pivotal knowledge (wisdom) so people can stop focusing on symptoms and obfuscatory details and home in like a laser on the root causes of and solutions to humanity's seemingly never-ending struggles.
Money is the lifeblood of the powerful and the chains and key to human enslavement
There is a radical and highly effective solution to all of our economic problems that will dramatically simplify, streamline, and revitalize human civilization. It will eliminate all poverty, debt, and the vast majority of crime, material inequality, deception, and injustice. It will also eliminate the underlying causes of most conflicts, while preventing evil scoundrels and their cabals from deceiving, deluding, and bedeviling humanity, ever again. It will likewise eliminate the primary barriers to solving global warming, pollution, and the many evils that result from corporate greed and their control of natural and societal resources. That solution is to simply eliminate money from the human equation, thereby replacing the current system of greed, exploitation, and institutionalized coercion with freewill cooperation, just laws based on verifiable wisdom , and societal goals targeted at benefiting all, not just a self-chosen and abominably greedy few.
We can now thank millennia of political, monetary, and religious leaders for proving, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that top-down, hierarchical governance is absolute folly and foolishness. Even representative democracy, that great promise of the past, was easily and readily subverted to enslave us all, thanks to money and those that secretly control and deceptively manipulate all currencies and economies. Is there any doubt anymore that entrusting politics and money to solve humanity's problems is delusion of the highest order? Is there any doubt that permitting political and corporate leaders to control the lives of billions has resulted in great evil?
Here's a real hot potato! Eat it up, digest it, and then feed it's bones to the hungry...
Most people have no idea that the common-denominator math of all the world's currencies forms an endless loop that generates debt faster than we can ever generate the value to pay for it. This obscured and purposeful math-logic trap at the center of all banking, currencies, and economies is the root cause of poverty. Those who rule this world through fear and deception strive constantly to hide this fact, while pretending to seek solutions to poverty and human struggle. Any who would scoff at this analysis have simply failed to do the math, even though it is based on a simple common-denominator ratio.
Here is Wisdom
Doctrine of Two Spirits...
Peace...
While SSH starts with very legitimate questions, i'm afraid the conclusion misses the root cause. SSH says that the "solution is to simply eliminate money from the human equation..."
No, the elimination of money is not the solution. Even if money were eliminated and we were left only with a system of barter, the variable left in the "human equation" is sin in the human heart. Money is not the root of all evil, it is "a root of all kinds of evil." Sin, which can be relatively simply understood as selfishness (me first, me always) is at the root of every evil.
Eliminate sin... then we can move on. But can sin be eliminated? And if so, how? Jesus Christ has the answer to both of those questions.
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