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Money is one of those rare subjects that almost everyone has opinions on, including most Christians. And of course there are so many cliches about money—’money can’t buy you love’ being a familiar one thanks to the Beatles. In fact there are also many myths about money as well. In this post I want to talk about a few of the myths that arise in Christian contexts. This post will be devoted to two of these myths. As we shall see, most of these Christian myths arise out of sound-byting small portions of Scripture and taking them out of context.
Myth One: If you just
trust God, he will give you ‘all the desires of your heart’
What the Scripture in question actually says is “Delight yourself in the LORD, and He shall
give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in
Him, and He shall bring it to pass”. ~ Psalm 37:4,5. This has nothing necessarily to do with
economic prosperity at all. The desire
of the heart referred to here is God! If
you delight in God he will bless you with more of the divine presence is all
the psalmist has in view. The problem here is with the phrase desires of the heart. Materialistic persons often just assume that the desires of their heart are perfectly fine and legitimate and that God is in the business of fulfilling such desires.
This unreflective approach never stops to ask whether there might not be sinful as well as good desires in the human heart. Just because they are genuine desires of a human heart doesn’t mean they are good. Jesus however is unequivocal about the desires of the heart often being enormously problematic— “For from within, out of your hearts come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly” (Mk. 7.21). This verse makes perfectly clear that one has to examine, process, and critique the desires of one’s hearts, for it is equally or even more probable that one has selfish and sinful desires than good and godly ones.
Myth Two: If you
‘seek first the kingdom’ then God will give you all the things you long
for. It’s just a matter of getting one’s
priorities straight.
Again, this is a profound misreading of what the Biblical
text says. Jesus in Mt. 6.25-34 has been
talking about the basic necessities in life–food, clothing, and the like. Tells his disciples they should not be
anxious even about the necessities in life, not least because God knows we need
such things to survive. Instead of such
anxious worrying we are to seek first the kingdom, and these necessities will
be added to us. In context Jesus says
nothing about blessing us with wealth, or great prosperity or anything of the
kind. He refers only to food, drink, and
clothing, nor is anything said about lavish clothing or non-necessary food and
drink items.
In general God is not in the business of putting us into a condition wherein we begin to believe a further myth– namely the Stoic one about our being the master of our own fate and the captain of our own souls if only we reach a position of ‘financial independence’. The Bible is a book about finding our sufficiency in God, not about self-sufficiency or putting ourselves in a position of not having to depend on God day by day for the necessities of life. Think for instance about the Lord’s prayer— “give us today our daily bread”. Jesus does not encourage us to pray “make us wealthy beyond our wildest dreams so we don’t need to look to God each day for the basic necessities of life, don’t need to continue to work, don’t need to face the fact that we are not self-sufficient, independent beings”.
Even within the church, there are many problematic assumptions about money that need to be deprogrammed before we can even begin to build a more positive Biblical approach to money and other resources. So there will be some more deprogramming in order before we get to the positive axioms offered us by Jesus and the NT writers.
posted January 5, 2010 at 5:59 am
Hey Dr. Witherington,
I really enjoy reading your blog and books. I come from a third world country and I totally agree on what you say about Matthew 6, but could you also share some thoughts on why some people who truely worship God with all their heart and soul in third world countries (maybe even other countries) still have trouble with some basic necessities in life. I truely believe the Word of God but sometimes it seems as if especially this verse doesn’t always come out in reality.
Greetings Jair
posted January 5, 2010 at 8:22 am
Jair there are many reasons, but the most telling and sad one is that the body of Christ does not take care of its own. In fact the body of Christ is still trapped in nationalism and fails even to treat other members of its own religion as their neighbors, never mind as their brothers and sisters. And even worse, sometimes Christians treat fellow Christians as their enemies. If the 21rst century church worked like the 2nd century church— feeding, clothing and sheltering all its own people, and helping the poor in general, we would attract non-believers the same way the 2nd century church did— by compassion in action.
BW3
posted January 6, 2010 at 7:07 pm
New to your blog, and I like it. I love how you’re shedding light on verses like these that are often misinterpreted. I’m going to back a few thoughts from a few other posts I’ve read all into this one…haha.
While I don’t trust politicians or put my faith in them…I’m very interested in political theory and economic theory. I don’t think any economic/political system is perfect because it’s of the world, and I’m not going to say that since the early church in the middle east 2000 years ago had socialistic behaviors we need to vote democrat because we need a more socialistic government. I just don’t think Jesus was in the business of changing the world through governmental policies, and he was in the business of changing lives “by compassion in action.”
I personally subscribe to Austrian Free-Market Economics…not the Keynesianism you see today, but I think the church needs to be the ones stepping in to have compassion. And, economically speaking, I think they, being of the private sector, would do it more efficiently than the government. I suppose you could say “welp…at least the government is taking care of the poor if the church won’t.” I personally just don’t trust the efficiency of the government to allocate resources.
Anyway…I love everything you have to say…it’s great…I’m going to subscribe.
And on socialism,
posted January 6, 2010 at 7:11 pm
disregard “And on socialism,”…I meant to delete that. woops.