On Getting and Giving (Part One)
As suggested in an earlier blog, the current exodus from work opens a door for churches. How? Churches have an opportunity to answer the current question: “Why work?” In that blog I briefly noted seven Kingdom-of-God reasons for working. This will expand on the seventh reason: Paid work lets us support ourselves and help others.
At first glance, this seventh reason seems ‘way too obvious. After all, people everywhere—including Christians—earn money by working. Why, then, spend this two-part article on the topic of working for pay?
The Money Issue
Here’s the problem: for many of us, getting paid for our work connects only loosely (if at all) with God’s Kingdom agenda. We struggle to identify our paycheck with God’s will being done on earth as in heaven. At best, money crosses over into something spiritual when we give it to the church or missions. At worst, having cash can seem like a necessary evil—filthy lucre, as the King James version puts it five times.
“For many Christians, money is a taboo topic,” says Art Rainer, in a Lifeway Research article. “You shouldn’t talk about it. And you really shouldn’t talk about making money—that topic is super taboo. But why? Why, when the Bible says so much about money, do we say so little?”
Good question. So let’s take on this sensitive topic and explore how making money fits into God’s will for life on his earth.
Celebration of Self-Support
My wife and I will always remember that day our first baby arrived. She left the hospital in the arms of two proud parents. In the months that followed, we carried her to church meetings, toted her on grocery-shopping trips, and lifted her in and out of the car on visits to her grandparents. Then came a day when—all on her own—she walked across the carpet, as we clapped and cheered with joy.
Why such celebration? Because she could now stand up and walk without our support. Happy as we were to carry her when she could not walk by herself, we did not want her to remain dependent upon us for getting around. In a similar way, God did not create us to remain financially dependent on others. He designed us to be self-supporting. According to one dictionary, that means “having the resources to be able to survive without outside assistance.”
Does that quality of self-support relate to our being made in the image and likeness of God? He himself is self-supporting. He leans on no one else to go on living. Of course, we cannot be absolutely independent as God is. For example, just coming into the world requires us to rely on parents. But to the degree possible to human beings, the glory of bearing God’s image involves shouldering the responsibility of self-support.
All this is to say: no shame or guilt attaches to making and using money to support yourself. As a unique creature of his, you have God-ordained needs. To be clothed. To be sheltered. To be fed. If you are able, God intends that you yourself be fruitful, raising the resources for meeting those needs.
What happens if you choose not to support yourself? Then you must depend on others to carry you—just as our baby daughter counted on us to carry her before she could walk on her own. We did so gladly. At first, she weighed very little. But even those few pounds were an additional burden.
Paul as Self-Support Model
Paul repeatedly used the “burden” word to explain his own financial self-support. He reminded the Thessalonians, “we worked night and day in order not to be a burden to anyone while we preached the gospel of God to you” (I Thess. 2:9).
Paul used an even more vivid word In his second letter to the Corinthians, when he reminded them that he never had been and never would be a “burden” to them (II Cor. 12:13-14). The word here for burden is katanarcao, related to our word “narcotic.” The idea behind this word: "to be idle to the detriment of another person” and “like a useless limb” (from Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words). What was Paul’s reason for paying his own way? To avoid becoming a weight his fellow Christ-followers would have to carry. Supporting himself, then, was for Paul an act of love for others.
In his second letter to the Thessalonian Christians, he adds a second reason: “we worked night and day, laboring and toiling . . . . to offer ourselves as a model for you to imitate” (II Thess. 3:7-10).
From Paul, then, we learn two Kingdom-of-God reasons for financial self-support. First, earning our own way stops us from shifting the weight of our support onto other shoulders. And second, working for pay sets an example of self-support for other, perhaps less mature, Christians. This means working to earn plays a part in making disciples.
For these reasons, Paul issued some pointed instructions to the Thessalonian believers: “Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you, so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody” (I Thess. 4:11-12).
Beyond Self-Support
Supporting ourselves, then, is a vital part of seeking first God’s kingdom—which makes it one more reason to get up and go to work. But the point of earning goes even beyond self-support.
If you’ve traveled by air, you probably have seen and heard flight attendants demonstrate using the oxygen mask. They advise passengers to put their own masks on first so that they will be able to help others, such as children, with their masks. In a similar way, earning our own way puts us into a position from which we can help others who legitimately need our support.
More on that in Part Two.
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God’s Kingdom Reasons for Working
Three chapters focus on working Christians and the money they make—its pitfalls and possibilities.
