When Laurie and I were about to get married, we were finishing up grad school and we decided to pack up and move to Portland, Oregon. We drove from Chicago to Atlanta for our wedding. The day before the ceremony we went to the courthouse to make arrangements. The lady asked me where we lived. Being in transition we had no address to give her and I just told her so. She then asked me where we worked and I told her again we were in transition and we’d be getting jobs. She said, “I know how it is.” And looked at me wide eyed. I had no idea what she was getting at.
When we got our paperwork back it said that we were homeless and unemployed. We laughed at how silly that was. We were not worried about that, but it turned out to be something of a prophetic statement. After several weeks of searching for a job in Portland, I applied for a job to work the midnight shift at a convenience store in a bad part of town. I remember praying that God would give me that job and I remember Laurie begging me not to apply. It was a tough time.
I financed our honeymoon by allowing a large pharmaceutical company to lock me up in their facilities for two weeks, telling me when and what I could eat and testing antibiotics on me. On the second day one of the other participants broke out in a rash that covered his entire body. On the last day they drew blood from me every 30 minutes for 24 hours. Like I said it was a tough time.
Thankfully, the current economic crisis has not been as tough for us, but I know it has been for others. Religious ministers and people of faith have been quick, over the centuries, to talk negatively about money. But the simple fact exists that we need it. When we don’t happen, it’s, well…tough.
Genesis starts off with God working and calling Adam and Eve to work. We were created to work and money is like air; we need it to breathe. We need money to survive. This is most recognized by those who are unemployed. And unemployment has other problems which need to be offset which we will explore in a following post.
Comments
I am new to your work and in the middle of reading Our Souls at Work. I came on your site to comment on some other thoughts but stopped here first. May God bless you in the work that He has called you to do.
I would like to gently take issue with your comments about money. Money is not at all like air. I can live for a very long time without money, under some circumstances a full lifetimne, but only a few minutes without air. God supplied the nation of israel in the desert for 40 years without money. God is our source. In God's economy He has made the most needed elements of life the most avaiable. In order;air, water, food, shelter. Money is never the limiting factor in doing God's will. I will always have all I need to do all God wants. I know this to be true because I know that God is just and that He will judge my "works." I am His workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works which God prepared befoehand. If He were to judge me and not provide all I need to do all He asks He would not be just.
I would like to suggest that we start a new dialog about life in general, and work specifically, by reversing the paradigm and looking from the Bema seat of Christ backwards. What will be the criteria He will use to judge our "works"? What will burn and what will pass through the fire? How will the decisions that we make regarding what we do every day play out then? I am concerned that there are many shaky presuppositions influencing our life and work worldviews and that only a fresh and radical reversal of thought will challenge and correct them.
Many blessings,
Buck Jacobs
Thanks so much for your contact. I'm truly honored to have you reading my book and popping in on my blog. I would love to pursue a dialogue with you on these super important ideas and issues.
And I'm glad that you felt free to take issue with some of my thoughts. Undoubtedly, the issue of money is a sensitive one and requires some complex fleshing out. If you are interested in my thoughts in more detail, I discuss this in more length in my book, The Missional Entrepreneur.
But for the sake of conversation, let me expound a little bit more by what I mean with the "money is like air" analogy. I do think we need to consider the Bema seat of Christ and the biblical teachings on money quite seriously. After all, Paul wrote that the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil (1 Timothy 6:10). And God is our source as you point out.
However, I would like to suggest that 99.9% of of the time God provides for us through people and/or processes. There are notable biblical exceptions in which God directly provided for people without using natural transaction processes such as the feeding of the 5000, Elijah and the miraculous jar of oil, and the example you mentioned of the Israelites in the desert.
Nevertheless, we see the use of currency throughout the Bible as a means of exchanging goods and services. Therefore, I see money as something that offers a lot of temptation and can be used for great evil, but is also a normative part of the processes that God uses to sustain our world. As a result we can use money for good or evil. But the vast majority of the time the vast majority of us need access to money in order to do the things that God calls for us to do.
On occasion I have met someone who prided himself on how little money he needed, pointing out that he would stay at other people's houses (rather than hotels), hitch rides (rather than rent cars), but at the end of the day he was still utilizing other people's resources and their money instead of his own. So, he still needed to use the things that money helped buy. It's hard to avoid it really.
I agree that money never limits God's will but God frequently provides money as a way to do his will in many circumstances. I can testify to that in my own life.
So, my point with saying that money is like air is to counter the concept that we should live for money i.e. we don't live to breathe. Breathing is just a means to other worthwhile ends. Likewise, money is not the point of working or living. It is just a means to other worthwhile ends. But, on the other hand, we, with some notable exceptions, need money to utilize the goods and services we need to do the will of God. That's all I'm trying to say.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this or any other issue you come across in my books. Thanks for reading and interacting! Hope we can meet and discuss in person someday!
Onward and upward....
Mark