The point is this: whoever
sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also
reap bountifully. Each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not
reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is
able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all
things at all times, you may abound in every good work. As it is written, ‘He
has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures
forever’.
2 Corinthians 9:6-10 (quoting
Psalm 112:9)
During the 2012 Olympics, strict rules protected the
commercial advantages given to official sponsors. This was, of course,
understandable: the sponsors wanted to protect their investments. This,
however, illustrates the point I made yesterday: the sponsorship was not magnanimous
gifts but investments made in the pursuit of profit. There is nothing wrong
with that, of course, but to give is too often a commercial decision, not a noble,
altruistic one it is often pretended to be.
Our society has, for the most part, lost a sense of
generosity, of what it really means to be generous and to express selfless love
though meaningful action. And with this loss, we sow the seeds of economic
dilemma.
I invite you to spend some time this coming week
considering the following paradox.
·
We live in a world that
has never been so free to create wealth. As we considered on Day 8 of Advent,
although money has great objective power in the world, it is a system of trust.
Wealth is no longer founded on gold, silver or any amount of material
possessions: today, money need have no more substance than flickering figures
on a touch screen. It is estimated that about 97% of the money in circulation
today has no physical existence but exists only within sophisticated banking
systems. Money is the most complete and comprehensive network of trust ever
devised by humankind. Crucially, it is necessary to make our debt economy
possible; the only way that most money can exist as a minus figure.
·
As a society, as a global
economy, we never have enough money. Gradually, national economies are coming
to see that they cannot spend their way out of our problems and promoting ‘austerity’
instead, because we cannot spend money that does not exist!
In the passage at the start of today’s Reflection, St
Paul is writing about the collection being taken up in various churches for
famine relief and he cites a timeless principle: ‘whoever sows sparingly will
also reap sparingly, and whoever sows bountifully will also reap bountifully’. Could
it be that our efforts to get, store and invest money is ultimately self-defeating?
That our greed for, control of and sparing use of money is essentially barren? So
that our economic problems are the result of our having forgotten what it is to
‘sow bountifully’ – to be selflessly generous?
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Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans
2013.
Scripture
quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright
© 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by
permission. All rights reserved.
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