Reflections on God and Money: May 2013

Friday 31 May 2013

Babylon and the Beast (1)

Then one of the seven angels who had the seven bowls came and said to me, ‘Come, I will show you the judgment of the great prostitute who is seated on many waters, with whom the kings of the earth have committed sexual immorality, and with the wine of whose sexual immorality the dwellers on earth have become drunk’. And he carried me away in the Spirit into a wilderness, and I saw a woman sitting on a scarlet beast that was full of blasphemous names, and it had seven heads and ten horns. The woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet, and adorned with gold and jewels and pearls, holding in her hand a golden cup full of abominations and the impurities of her sexual immorality. And on her forehead was written a name of mystery: ‘Babylon the great, mother of prostitutes and of earth's abominations’. And I saw the woman, drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus… And the woman that you saw is the great city that has dominion over the kings of the earth

Revelation 17

It is not my usual intention to comment on current events in these Reflections but as the Eurozone Crisis unfolds and various national governments vacillate on how to regulate banks and other financial organisations, and especially watching events in Cyprus as few weeks ago, events seem to me to reflect what we see symbolised in Revelation 17:1-19:10.

Revelation is the final book in the Bible that draws back a curtain on world events to reveal what goes on ‘behind the scenes’ and to show how they will ultimately pan out. I touched on some of this during the Advent Reflections (Days 22-23) and will try to avoid duplicating what I wrote then.

Babylon is mentioned a few times in Revelation but at the start of chapter 17 an angel takes the author, John, to have a closer look at it. He is taken into the wilderness where he sees a glamorous, disease-ridden, woman riding a hideous Beast. The name ‘Babylon’ is on the woman’s forehead, by which I assume she is wearing some sort of crown or tiara. Later, this same Babylon is described as a city but that is the way that images and symbols fluctuate in dreams and visions.

We can draw conclusions about this Babylon from what is described in Revelation 18 and from the real Babylon that existed in ancient history: a place of wealth, splendour, trade, culture, pride, vanity, greed, conspicuous extravagance, sexual indulgence and decadence.

We can know the identity of the Beast from earlier chapters in Revelation (particularly chapter 13:1-10) and similar visions in the Old Testament book of Daniel (particularly chapter 7): it represents governments.

Babylon is riding the Beast but the relationship between them is not harmonious but like a horse trying to throw off its rider! Is this a graphic illustration of the way that international financial organisations are ‘riding’ national governments?

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Sunday 26 May 2013

Giving & Funding (30)

But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you… But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.

Only, they [they Apostles in Jerusalem] asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.

Do not be deceived: God is not mocked, for whatever one sows, that will he also reap… And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.

Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world's goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God's love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him…

Luke 6: 27-35, Galatians 2:10, Galatians 6:7-10, James 1:27 & 1 John 3:16-24

To pick up from yesterday, if Abraham did tithe more than once, did he return to Melchizedek? When Jacob fulfilled his promise to tithe, was Melchizedek still in Salem? The Bible is silent and I can only speculate but I suspect that their tithes were subsumed into generous lifestyles. Today, if Christians live as Jesus’ disciples, then issues about giving and funding become redundant.

In October 1830, a few weeks after marrying, George Müller gave up his regular minister’s salary because it came from pew rents and he thought it wrong for people to pay for seats in church. Instead, and for the rest of his life, he relied on voluntary donations and did not tell anyone except God of his needs. Even more remarkable, he later founded and ran orphanages in Bristol without asking people for money or allowing his staff to make public the facts and figures about their needs. I close this series on giving and funding with this passage from Müller’s journal, written six months after he gave up his salary.

‘Confidence in the Lord, to whom alone I look for the supply of my temporal wants, keeps me, at least whilst faith is in exercise, when a case of distress comes before me, or when the Lord's work calls for my pecuniary aid, from anxious reckoning like this. Will my salary last out? Shall I have enough myself the next month? In this my freedom, I am, by the grace of God, generally at least, able to say to myself something like this. My Lord is not limited; He can again supply; He knows that this present case has been sent to me; and thus, this way of living, so far from leading to anxiety, as it regards possible future want, is rather the means of keeping from it…’

I expect George Müller’s testimony represents a significant challenge to most if not all of us.

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Saturday 25 May 2013

Giving & Funding (29)

… Therefore God has highly exalted [Christ] and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Philippians 2:9-14

The principles of giving and funding that have emerged from this series can be summarised as follows.

Sowing and reaping. This is not a means to wealth creation but the way wealth should move through society for everyone’s benefit. It is the way that God created the world to work.

It is more blessed to give than to receive. Although the quotation is found in Acts and not in the Gospels, the principle is implied in everything that Jesus taught about money and wealth. It is ultimately self-defeating to forget it.

Christian ministry to be supported in the same way as Temple ministry. The baseline for giving is 10% of income but it is not meant to prevent people from looking after themselves and their families properly or to excuse others who spend the remaining 90% selfishly. Moreover, I am sure that God is more understanding of those who could give a tenth but fear for the families’ welfare than Christians who live well in prosperity but do not give more when they could easily afford it!

Giving should be systematic, proportionate to our income and theological. It should not be impromptu, random or in response to peer pressure or emotional blackmail.

Partnership! When we give, we partner with the workers; when we ask people to support our work, we are inviting them into partnership. We should therefore be careful who we chose to partner with!

The extent to which we can adapt and apply these principles today is not bound by what we can do without slipping into sin but what best glorifies God and demonstrates to society that he really does care for us.

I close today with these questions. Did Abraham tithe only when he met Melchizedek, King of Salem and priest of God Most High? Did Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, make good on his promise to tithe the wealth he accumulated in a foreign country? If they did, who did they give it to?

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