Reflections on God and Money

Friday, 8 March 2013

Giving & Funding (3)

Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them, for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven. Thus, when you give to the needy, sound no trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may be praised by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.

If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Matthew 6:1-4 & 1 Corinthians 13:3-7

I finished last weekend by saying that when we examine what the Bible says about giving, we uncover economic principles that effect not just Christians and churches but nations and global economics. I will try to explain why as briefly as possible.

During the Advent Reflections last year, we looked at how capitalism is not synonymous with free trade. To recap briefly what I posted on Day 16, people have always traded for profit but, although there have always been greedy people, on the whole most people were satisfied to earn enough for their families to live in a degree of comfort. From time to time, a businessman would devote himself to commerce with the intention of maximising his own profit, and his competitors had to respond in kind in order to stay in business, but when the greedy businessman died business gradually returned to its normal pace. That is, until Benjamin Franklin: although people deplored his approach as ‘gaining wealth, forgetting all but self’, gradually Franklin’s way became the only way to do business. We call it capitalism.

I concluded the Day 18 Reflection by asking whether the growing practice of social responsibility by businesses – charitable giving to relieve poverty and to support education and the arts – is creating a form of ‘compassionate capitalism’ for the 21st Century. To put it another way, is it a return to a form of pre-capitalism business with goals other than profit?

I think the answer is to be found in the passages at the start of today’s Reflection, where Jesus tells his followers to do good works discretely and St Paul explains that if we do good works without love, they do not work for our good and we gain nothing

Without losing sight of the fact that many businesses make valuable and useful contributions to charities and other good causes, we should see that they rarely do it unselfishly or discretely. I will conclude this point tomorrow.

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Saturday, 2 March 2013

Giving & Funding (2)

And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, neither shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God… You shall do no injustice in court. You shall not be partial to the poor or defer to the great, but in righteousness shall you judge your neighbour… And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its edge, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God.

Leviticus 19: 10, 19:15 & 23:22

The above passage is from the Pentateuch, the Torah or ‘Old Testament law’, and the passage at the start of yesterday’s Reflection from one of the Old Testament’s ‘Wisdom’ books: both are important to Jews and Christians. In Islam, generosity is seen as a means to please God, and in Buddhism it is one of the ‘ten perfections’ leading to enlightenment. But there are many good reasons for giving to charity and other good causes that having nothing to do with religion.

Humans are wired for community. This means that we are incomplete as people if we do not interact with others, not just with the people we count as friends but others in our community. If we can provide for not only our essentials, what I call our ‘survival costs’, but also for some of the other things we want, our ‘lifestyle choices’, we should offer to help people who cannot afford their own survival costs or a few modest lifestyle choices rather than indulge our own wants.

Without humanitarian aid, given to and distributed through charities, a great many more people would be homeless, starving and vulnerable to disease following natural disasters and human wars. In addition, we all share responsibility for our planet: preserving the environment and protecting wildlife are causes worth spending our money on. As is scientific research that contributes to people’s general health and well-being.

And the arts are also worth supporting. Many years ago, I came across a saying that I think may have originated in Italy during the 1960s: ‘When you give to the poor, give tuppence (two pence) for bread and tuppence for art. I think there is merit in this, because we can cause suffering if we ignore people’s mental and emotional needs as we focus exclusively on their physical needs.

Such giving, however, is not necessarily, not entirely selfless: helping others to fulfil their potential helps us to fulfil our own. But once we get beyond these motivations, it is difficult to write meaningfully about generosity without reference to religion. Over the coming weekends I will be taking my cue from the Bible because there can discover financial principles that effect not just Christians and churches but also nations and the global village in which we all live. This is what I hope to explain next weekend.

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Friday, 1 March 2013

Giving & Funding (1)

Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker, but he who is generous to the needy honours him… Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed… Whoever closes his ear to the cry of the poor will himself call out and not be answered… Whoever has a bountiful eye will be blessed, for he shares his bread with the poor…

Proverbs 14:31, 19:17, 21:13 & 22:9

When I began teaching financial capability skills in schools, I wanted what I taught to be consistent with what I believe as a Christian, even though I was not there to teach about religion. I therefore explained that giving to charity and other worthwhile causes is as much of an important element of financial capability as budgeting and saving. I did this not because most people consider such generosity to be desirable but because I see it as essential to the way the world operates, whether or not people believe there even is a God.

For most of the time I have been a Christian, I have believed that Christians should do ‘good works’ and make positive contributions to society without any sort of ulterior motive. In this, we follow the example of Jesus of Nazareth. It seems to me, that as Jesus travelled around First Century Israel and the neighbouring areas teaching people about God, he never restricted his help to people who would respond to his teaching. He never said to anyone, ‘I will heal you if you promise to follow me’. He never said, ‘I will turn water into wine and multiply a few loaves and fishes to feed hundreds if you promise to worship God’.

Jesus did, of course, want people to see God for who he really is and to commit to living as disciples, and he did invite people to follow him, but I cannot think of any occasion where this was a pre-condition for his help. So I trust that, whether or not anyone became a Christian because I taught personal finance skills in schools, many teenagers went on to successfully handle their money – at least, better than they would have done had they not listened to me or ready the literature I gave them – and in due course established a habit of giving to charity.

Most societies consider giving to charity, to provide for the needs of the poor and for other good causes, is a desirable characteristic in people. Most of the world’s major religions (if not all of them) promote charitable giving. But there are good reasons for generous giving that have nothing to do with religion and that is why I hope this series of Reflections on giving to good causes and how they should be funded, will interest people even if they have no religious conviction.

I will continue this thought tomorrow.

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