Money Matters

Money Matters

For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows. 1 Timothy 6:10

Did you know that there are over 2,300 scriptures in the bible pertaining to money and possessions? In addition, 16 put of Jesus’ 38 parables also dealt with money issues. For the math majors in the room that’s 42%. So, 42% of what Jesus had to talk about had to do with money. And it wasn’t all about giving it to God.
I taught a class recently on learning to manage your money on purpose in a class at a church. I reviewed the four purposes of money, as written in my soon to be published book “Money On Purpose” (shameless plug). The purposes are: Investing, Giving, Saving and Spending. The feedback that I got from the class was that this subject is never discussed in churches. Well, except for the giving part. My question is, if there are over 2,300 scriptures pertaining to money in the bible and 42% of Jesus’ parables dealing with the issue, why does the church not have more conversation around this topic.
Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that they don’t know how to handle money. Church people sometimes feel guilty about having money. Then you have the other extremes of church folk who are always talking about money or “planting a seed” for their financial breakthrough. For them everything is about money. I think the church is confused. Is money good or not? If it’s not good, stop asking for it! If it is good, stop making people feel guilty for having it! We must make up our minds.
What we need is balance. We need to find the right balance between living your life trying to accumulate as much money as possible as if it is the only answer to your problems. And we also need to stop acting like we don’t need money in order to get along in this world. Cause one of these days, you are gong to have to come face to face with the truth of what you truly believe. And you might not believe what you think.
Why is it that the majority of people who inherit lump sums of money or win the lottery or get settlements are broke within 18 months? They never got their mind right around money. Why is it that celebrities like MC Hammer, Iyanla Vanzant, Mike Tyson, George Foreman and a host of others could make millions of dollars and still end up broke? They never got their minds right. And if you grow up in the church, it’s no wonder you can’t develop your own theology of money. When they got money, some of them spent it all on foolish purchases. Others spent their money by giving it away to everybody and never learning how to invest. Some got hit with tax burdens that they couldn’t handle.
So, I’m wondering why the church doesn’t spend more time talking about this area that Jesus seem to think was important and people have on obvious need to hear about it. Then we have to dig a little deeper ourselves and wonder what we actually believe about money. Do you think that it’s evil? Is it something God wants everybody to have? So this is a short post to just ask a basic question . . . What is your theology of money?