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Prosperity is how much of a blessing are you to someone else. That’s the way that God evaluates it. (The Unjust Steward, Andrew Wommack, 40:38 onwards)

When you get to where the priority on your finances isn’t for you, but rather it’s to bless someone else, then God will assume the liability of taking care of you. And when God takes care of you, he will take care of you better than you would ever take care of yourself. (The Unjust Steward, Andrew Wommack, 53:44 onwards)

Go back to Ephesians 4:28. It says let him that stole steal no more. But rather let him labor, working with his hands the thing that is good, that he may have to give to him that needs. The reason for your working should be to have to give to him that needs. (The Unjust Steward, Andrew Wommack, 41:39 onwards)

I recently finished Andrew Wommack’s series on Financial Stewardship. Wommack is from the Word of Faith (aka Health and Wealth, Prosperity Gospel) movement but his views on money are amazingly refreshing. This movement has been heavily criticized (and I’d have to say most of the time probably rightly so) for focusing excessively on money and material things, and thus promoting or encouraging greed in its adherents.

I do believe strongly in God wanting to prosper Christians. Of course, there are nuances that need to be made in regards to my previous statement. I haven’t got it all figured out yet and one day maybe I’ll get down to thinking and writing more about it. But for now, I’m unsatisfied with the view of those who say that there are no promises of prosperity for Christians. On the other hand, I’m cannot agree with the lifestyle of a lot of these prosperity preachers. There have been too many documented abuses and excesses in the movement. And yet, that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing we can learn from the message of these Christians.

I believe that if every Word of Faith preacher believed (and lived out) the same things regarding how money ought to be used (stewardship) as Andrew Wommack, the movement would have so much more credibility. As I’ve said a few times on this blog, I strongly believe in “Blessed to be a blessing” and “Prosperity with a purpose”. These are slogans thrown around in the Word of Faith movement. I think they are biblical slogans. It’s just that I think very few people in the movement truly live them out, eventhough they claim to believe in them. I feel that most of the time it’s just used as a justification for asking God to bless us materially.

If one day the movement is known for how much of a blessing they are to others, then I would truly salute them. Right now, I think it’s obvious that we hear a lot more about how God wants to bless us for our own sake, rather than to bless us so that we can bless others.

I had a short talk with my uncle last night. He just went into financial advising/planning. And so my dad asked me to talk to him regarding doing some investments with him. I have a bit of money from the insurance or whatever from my mother’s death 17 years ago. My dad’s been keeping it for me and last year when I was in Australia I asked him to put it into some investments. It was fortunate that he hadn’t invested it yet due to what happened recently in the economy. So today he asked me to talk to my uncle for a while regarding investing it now.

I’m not young and most people my age would already be well into investing and planning for their future life. Or at least they would have found out about all this stuff. For me, I don’t really care. I know a bit, but I’m not exactly keen to know more and get into all this financial thing. I asked my dad to invest the money last year because I didn’t know what to do with it. I hadn’t decided yet and so I thought I’ll get the money back from him and just invest it.

Inside me, I really hate all this focus on financial planning and making sure that one has enough money for their future and all. If non-Christians do that, then that’s understandable. It’s good to plan financially for your future. After all, for most non-Christians, the focus is on their life here and now. But when I see Christians into financially planning the same way that non-Christians are into it, I have to totally disagree.

One wise pastor I respect once asked what are the qualities that good leaders ought to have. Then he asked whether the qualities that good Christian leaders ought to have would be any different? His point was that the qualities of a good Christian leader ought to be different from what society expects of a leader in general. The same can be said of a good Christian businessman. Being a Christian ought to make a difference. Our faith ought to make a difference in the way we live and how we do things.

In the same way, I think how Christians use their money ought to be different from how non-Christians use their money. How Christians think about their future and the priorities they place on money ought to be different. Christians ought to have an eternal perspective. And to me that means not building your kingdom here on earth. Society in most countries (and especially in Singapore) expect us to think about our future and life in terms of mainly our career, family, children’s education, etc. Money is of utmost importance in the non-Christian’s life. It’s all about making sure that we have enough of it so that we can survive and even thrive. And sad to say, this has been the view of almost every Christian I’ve met.

And so my uncle started to explain to me why it’s important to save and be prepared for the future. I told him that I don’t believe it’s important to save and invest because God will provide for me and the money can be better used now to help other people who need it more than me. Yes, I told my father to invest my money because I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it. Inside me, I don’t believe in saving and investing money for the future - at least not in the way the whole world does it. But it’s also hard for me to live out this belief of mine because it’s so radical.

Why don’t I believe in saving and investing for the future the way the world does? I can think of at least two reasons now:

1) Life is not about building my kingdom. I think we can define “kingdom” in today’s terms as “me and my (future) family”. I’m a very simple person in that I want to live out what the Bible says. I don’t want to do it half-heartedly, because if I’m not hoping to do it fully, I may as well not do it at all. The Bible very clearly says that we’ve been forgiven in Christ so that we can love God and others. The love of Christ compels me to live for Him. To think about Him and His kingdom, not mine. There isn’t any greater meaning in this world than to live for the God who so loved me that He sent His Son to die for me. And so if I had money to spare, should I save it up for myself and my family in future or should I give it away to help people who need it so much more than I do - trusting that as I do the right thing, God will provide for me? I think the answer is obvious. It’s just whether I want to do the right thing or not.

2) I think often of the “Do not worry” passage (Matthew 6:25-34). I think often of how I hardly know any Christian who lives it out or even comes near to doing so. It’s simply too radical. Do not worry? Don’t worry about what we shall eat or drink or wear?? Just seek first God’s kingdom and everything will be OK? Wow, that’s faith in God’s providence.

Isn’t it the worry of what people would eat, drink and wear in future that motivates people to save and invest for the future? Isn’t it simply the lack of trust that God will provide in every way that makes us just focus on accumulating and investing money for ourselves and our future, rather than using it to help those who need it more than us right now?

I’ve got so many more things to say. But I’ll leave it at here. I do hope to read up more about what Christians think of investment. And I’m going to pray about what I should do with the money. As for why I’ve come to the above radical conclusion, read my Poverty and the Moral Responsibility of the Rich to the Poor and Encountering Peter Singer.

Al Mohler, in his book Sex and the Supremacy of Christ, mentions seven principles that he believes ought to guide a Christian’s response to the issue of homosexual marriage. One of them struck me:

We must be the people who love homosexuals more than homosexuals love homosexuality.

I think that’s spot on. Whatever your view of homosexuality, you can’t go wrong with the above.

Bible Society has released a Poverty and Justice Bible which highlights “more than 2,000 passages that reveal God’s sorrow over poverty and injustice, and His command to believers to act to eradicate them.” I think that’s awesome. I’d definitely want to get a copy soon.

Poverty and Justice are huge issues for me. When I became a Christian at around 16 years old or so, I started to devour Christian books. I read charismatic books. I read non-charismatic theological books. I read very widely. I went to many different churches and conferences. But somehow, I never felt much about poverty or injustice. The books I read and the churches and conferences I attended all didn’t talk about such issues. The stuff I read were mainly about one’s individual spiritual walk with God and so on. It was only about 5-6 years later that I started to read more about the world. And only then did I start to realize how much poverty and injustice there are in the world.

I think things have changed quite a bit in the past 5 years or so. Now people are much more aware about these issues. Talk about Climate Change and poverty in Africa is quite common nowadays - at least more so than before. And yet, we Christians in the developed world are still living extremely comfortable lives and not doing much to help the poor - at least not as much as we should be doing. In fact, over the years I’ve encountered so many more non-Christians than Christians who had a passion to help the poor and combat injustice. I think that’s extremely sad because the Bible definitely portrays the compassionate heart of God for the poor, marginalized and oppressed.

It’s interesting to note that Bible Society was inspired to develop this Bible after reading of how Rick Warren totally missed God’s heart for the poor in his study of the Bible. When I read Rick Warren sharing about how he only recently found God’s heart for the poor in the Christianity Today article Purpose Driven in Rwanda, I wasn’t one bit surprised that such a great church leader missed out on that for so long. It took a long time for me to realize that helping the poor is so central to God’s heart. And I know we all read the Bible with our own lenses and biases, no matter how much we claim to be objective.20th century Church history, as I explain here, has always had that bias against helping the poor and that has influenced the church till now.

I think what Rick shared in the above article is so telling. Rick realized God’s heart for the poor only after writing his famous Purpose Driven Life book. He had gone to two seminaries, had a doctorate in theology and had pastored for decades. And yet throughout all that time, it never occurred to him how important it was for Christians to love and bless the poor:

I found those 2,000 verses on the poor. How did I miss that? I went to Bible college, two seminaries, and I got a doctorate. How did I miss God’s compassion for the poor? I was not seeing all the purposes of God. The church is the body of Christ. The hands and feet have been amputated and we’re just a big mouth, known more for what we’re against.

I believe in the redemptive death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. I believe that that faith gives me a path to be cleansed of sin and have eternal life. But most importantly, I believe in the example that Jesus set by feeding the hungry and healing the sick and always prioritizing the least of these over the powerful. I didn’t ‘fall out in church’ as they say, but there was a very strong awakening in me of the importance of these issues in my life. I didn’t want to walk alone on this journey. Accepting Jesus Christ in my life has been a powerful guide for my conduct and my values and my ideals. (Barack Obama)

Obama has been my choice, of course. He’s still pretty much an underdog, but he’s definitely the candidate I can most identify with and support.

Jesus said whatever you do to the least of these my brothers you’ve done it to me. And this is what I’ve come to think. That if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, who I claim to be my savior and Lord, the best way that I can do that is to identify with the poor. This I know will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers. But they’re just wrong. They’re not bad, they’re just wrong. Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in a beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken. (Rich Mullins)

I don’t really follow Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) because I feel it promotes a very Westernized (read: affluent) view of Christianity. However, in the past month or so, I’ve got to know at least two radical Christians that can be said to be within CCM who actually challenged the compromised conventional wisdom of how Christians ought to live in this world. Rich Mullins is one of them. The other is Keith Green, whom I’ll blog about another time.

To find out more about Rich’s life, you can check out a documentary available on YouTube entitled Homeless Man (Part 1, 2, 3a, 3b, 4, 5 & 6)

Jesus Christ, the Lord of Creation, Redemption, and Fulfillment, calls the church the salt and light of the world. Jesus seems to have had in mind a community engaged in vigorous, self-sacrificing mission that goes to great lengths to enact costly love, that inconveniences itself regularly to seek justice for the oppressed, that creatively serves the forgotten, all to portray that the kingdom of God is at hand.

…We have to give up the small gospel that simply confirms what C. S. Lewis called “our congenital preference for safe investments and limited liabilities.” The freedom of grace grants us many gifts, including that there is “therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). This assurance of grace is meant to set us on the road of faithful discipleship, not just to assure us of grace at the finish line. Such freedom enables Christ’s disciples to love because we have first been loved (1 John 4:19). The grace that settles our account with God is meant to set us free from self-interest for the sake of loving others with abandon.

The apparent smallness of our gospel is directly related to the smallness of the church’s love. When prominent Christian voices call for protests and boycotts over things like our freedom to say “Merry Christmas,” the gospel seems very small indeed. If, by contrast, such voices called the church in America to give away its Christmas billions to the poor and needy around the world—as an act of incarnational love—that would leave a very different impression of the faith we profess, and offer a far greater hope for a love-hungry world.

It would be a new day for our testimony to the immensity and scope of the gospel if we lived out persevering, sacrificial love for people near and far, especially for those without power, without money, without education, without food, without sanitation, without safety, without faith. If this counterintuitive, servant love moved us out of our middle-class enclaves, drew the poor to be included in our family values, brought us to worry more about the need for consumption of those who have nothing than the consumptive fantasies of those who have too much, the gospel would be more nearly the life-enlarging gift it is.

(Mark Labberton, The Lima Bean Gospel)

As a church, in the name of the church, we don’t usually do that [i.e. get involved in the protests]…I have a high respect for those monks and I think in many ways it’s an embarrassment for many of us Christians - I wish we could just rise up as a church, but that’s just not how that situation’s worked out. Again, I would say that I’m in full support of [the monks and protesters]. And I think most evangelicals admire their courage, their willingness to sacrifice the favor that they get from the government, and their willingness to even sacrifice their lives. We would give them high respect for that. (Pastor David, a Burmese church planter)

I’m an evangelical with a capital E. I hesitate to make such a confession, for I am painfully aware of the baggage the label carries. Without wanting to blame Americans for all the problems of the world, it is, well, largely their fault.” (Joel Edwards, president of the Evangelical Alliance U.K.)

While there is nothing wrong with having material possessions, extravagance that comes at someone else’s expense is sin. Indeed, extravagance is no better than burglary when it exists in the face of need, for we commit robbery not only in what we take from others but also in what we keep for ourselves. The Bible condemns extravagant lifestyles, especially the book of Amos, which contrasts the complacency and opulence of the rich with the misfortune of the poor and oppressed:

Woe to you who are complacent in Zion, and to you who feel secure on Mount Samaria, you notable men of the foremost nation, to whom the people of Israel come! … You lie on beds inlaid with ivory and lounge on your couches. You dine on choice lambs and fattened calves. … You drink wine by the bowlful and use the finest lotions, but you do not grieve over the ruin of Joseph (Amos 6:1, 4, 6).

As J.A. Motyer points out in his commentary, The Day of the Lion, “It was a shrewd thrust for Amos to describe the nation as Joseph - the lad who wailed his heart out in a deep pit while his brothers sat down to eat (Genesis 37:23-25; 42:21).” Rather than mourning with those who mourn and weeping with those who weep (Romans 12:15), the affluent Israelites of Amos’ day engaged in brazen acts of extravagance which deprived the poor of their basic needs. Amos was intent on jarring his audience into an awareness of how their extravagant lifestyles affected the welfare of those around them.

(Taken from Extravagance at the Generous Giving website)