True Currency Valuation ...

Where do you keep your funds?  For folks at the top of the middle-class strata, a financial portfolio is warranted.  You never want to keep too much cash just sitting idle in your average checking account.  But for folks a way down from “upper” the question has less meaning … we keep our funds in our rent, in our utilities, and in the food we put on the table.  For folks even farther down, it is not as much an issue of managing cash, but rather, managing credit and debt.  But no matter where you sit, the question is still relevant from a different perspective … what do you use your funds on, or plan to use them on?  From this angle, each of us might have more in common than we think.  We ALL use whatever funds we have, to maintain us, to maintain our families, and to try to put our children (if we have any) more ahead of where we started out.

So for nearly all American Christians, we value our funds, our currency, in what it is able to do for us, and for our families.  Money then, becomes a tool.  It is a mechanism we exchange for the basic needs of life.  On occasion, we have more than we need of it, and so we use it on something we “want” rather than something we “need”.  Even the poorest of us have spent credit dollars on something we wanted instead of something we needed, knowing that may not have been the wisest of decisions.  But the mechanics remain the same, and so our valuation remains the same. 

But then, what happens when heaven becomes our home?  All of the sudden, currency has zero valuation.  It no longer exists, even as a mechanism for exchanging goods or services.  We have everything we need without effort, and what we create finds its highest meaning in being given to someone else to bring happiness to another.  It would be harder to define the exact opposite of where we are now, than to simply picture what life in heaven will be like.  So how do we bridge the divide?  How do we find a practical way of transitioning our current currency valuation to our future state currency valuation without becoming destitute or going without the basic needs we have on a day-to-day basis?  Most Christians rarely attack this question.  Fear keeps them from thinking about it.  But as it happens Jesus lays out for us an excellent transition plan in His Sermon on the Mount.  Matthew continues recording it in chapter six of his gospel.

Picking up in verse 19, Jesus says … “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:”  To transition how we think about currency valuation, we must begin by recognizing that wealth itself is transient.  Beyond the addiction of always wanting “more” no matter how much we have now, there comes with it, an intense fear that we will lose even what we have.  Banks are built upon this fear.  We secure our currency in banks, because to keep it all at home, is to invite a burglar to a field day when they learn of this.  Keeping our money in a bank, insured by the FDIC, our funds are supposed to be largely safe from theft.  Until the theft comes in a three-piece-suit costing more than your home; packaged in the form of securities that not even the best accountants can easily decipher, with interdependencies so entangled it makes a plate of spaghetti look linear.  When the theft happens this way, the FDIC is no match for it.  Banks can easily collapse.  Your funds can easily disappear.  And your wealth, your savings, your insurance for your future, becomes a footnote in history about the next great depression as something too big to fail, does.

So the first counsel Jesus offers, is to change the strategy about where we place the currency we value.  He continues in verse 20 saying … “But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:”  As it turns out there is a better place to put treasures, it is the eternal city of heaven, where not a single thief makes his home.  Where no bacteria exist to destroy, rot, or age whatever you place there.  Now this sounds wonderful, except that the mechanics are clearly a bit fuzzy.  How does one place funds we will need access to, into the heaven first national bank, given the light years of interdimensional separation that exist between us and our God.  Could our angels become our currency couriers?  Or is there a more instantaneous method of making deposits and withdrawals?

Jesus continues in verse 21 saying … “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”  This winds up being a very profound statement.  Jesus reverse engineers our mechanics of deposits and withdrawals.  Currency, no matter what format we currently value, coin, cash, certificates, stocks, bonds, etc.. should not be where our “hearts” are.  We use that currency on ourselves and our families today.  It is the object of our spending that winds up being closer to where our hearts are.  We love our families.  And sadly, as our spending patterns reveal, we love ourselves quite a bit too.  But there is a fix for this.  If we begin to examine our funds as a tool, a continuation of what we already do.  But instead of using the tool on ourselves, we begin to use the tool, on the people we love, the people we hate, and the people we hardly know … we start making deposits of our currency into the city of heaven.  In point of fact, we are exchanging our currency from disposable formats to permanent ones.

Money does not make it to heaven.  But your wife does.  Your son does.  Your daughter does.  The co-worker who edged you out of that promotion does.  The boss who makes your life miserable does.  The homeless man you are sure spends all your donations on liquor and drugs does.  Some guy in Africa you never met, and at the moment, could care less about, winds up in heaven, because the tool you employed here was translated into a tangible demonstration of love, meeting the needs of that person you never met, showing him Jesus in a real way, and making him curious about the love of this God he hardly ever knew until a random missionary introduced him.  You yourself, have never been to Africa, or Asia, or downtown L.A. on skid row.  You yourself, may not have ever moved much off of the pew you sit on at church week-to-week.  But your current funds can travel very quickly, and be translated into permanent impacts in the lives of people you may hardly know, or care about, or frankly dislike.

Imagine what your co-worker thinks when you take the time to shop for their child to buy them something they wanted at a holiday.  Or to meet a need they may be struggling with when life presents the challenges it does.  Translating currency into real world impacts, into tangible offerings of love, has a heaven bound deposit on the transaction.  And when you submit yourself to your Lord, the passion He puts inside of you for other people is so intense, you may wind up going through your earthly currency very fast, in favor of heavenly currency.  What you value changes.  And it must.  For the American currency system is headed for the fires that will purify the earth.  But your co-worker does not have to be.  The guy who calls himself your sworn enemy, can still be the guy you spend eternity with.  Not begrudgingly trying to find the far side of heaven where he will not be.  But the guy you want to live right next door to.  The guy you keep trying to give your mansion to, but he won’t take it, insisting you take his instead.  The kind of real love you will have for each other in heaven will be so intense, you will think he is family.  And he is.  Not because of birth, but because of choice.  Ultimately because the currency you had here was nothing more than a tool, to help get him there.  Otherwise it was worthless.

This comes because what you value changes.  What you focus on changes.  It is a post-transformation realization such as nothing like it before.  Jesus continues talking about that change resuming in verse 22 saying … “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.”  If we focus on the real value of finding ourselves, and the community we touch and encounter in heaven, the light we will reflect will be enormous.  Jesus continues in verse 23 saying …” But if thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of darkness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness!”  First, this second portion of this text is not about your particular salvation.  You may be saved because of the grace and mercy of God, no matter what or how you spent your funds on in this world.  But if your focus with your funding is centered upon yourself.  It will be spent upon yourself.  And the opportunity you had to use it as a tool for the salvation of others is squandered and wasted, and will never return again.  You cannot get that time back or the impacts you might have made.  You cannot back up time and do it right a second time.  You have only one shot to get it right, and the community you encounter has only that single shot from you as well.

How great the darkness!  To be in heaven and have the Schindler’s List moment; realizing there could be so many more people here if you had been willing to part with your funds and your love more generously here on earth.  If you could have seen what your currency was truly valued at, and used it to bring others to Christ.  You would not retain a penny.  But the Monday Morning Quarterback realization does nothing to change the game that has already been played.  If your co-worker is lost to heaven, he is lost forever.  And YOU above all others will feel that loss, because in your heart of hearts, you know you could have done more, but instead you held on to your funds and your love, fearing a reduction in either.

Jesus then summarizes the problem with money we refuse to value in the light of heaven in verse 24 as He says … “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”  You cannot serve God and the acquisition of funds.  Spending your life making money.  Spending your life making just a little more of it.  Winds up exhausting the time clock of the life you have been granted.  The abundance of your life’s work is not spent moving souls to the Kingdom of Heaven by introducing them to Jesus.  It is instead spent in meetings, in office politics, in debating financial strategies with the spouse, in trying to recover from the challenges life throws your way.  The abundance of your life is spent battling the effects of stress, because currency acquisition is a cruel mistress, unforgiving, and fickle.  While you give your life and time to it, it gives you back nothing but a hunger for more.  An aching hole of more and more and more.

When at last you look back upon your life, how many meetings will you remember, and how important will they be?  Would you not trade the accumulation of whatever wealth you have, for just more time to insure the love you could have expressed is expressed?  If I am always working to sustain myself.  I am always working.  Period.  The scraps of what is left, are scraps, not the bulk of what we had to offer, but the left overs.  It is the left overs we offer to our families.  The left overs we offer to our church.  Nothing to the co-workers, the folks we don’t know, and the folks we don’t care about … because to prioritize, I must reserve what left overs I have for the folks closest to me.  And so we live our lives content to share only our left overs with those we love most, and we call this “normal”.  And it truly is.  It is the normal Satan has convinced us all, is the only way we can survive.

But Jesus continues to offer us another way.  And the sermon was far from over …

Investing In Perfection ...

You cannot out give God.  You can try.  He enjoys that I think.  It’s like a Parent watching a toddler try to out-love them; a toddler just does not understand love enough to do it more than a parent, but they know enough to be extremely cute at trying.  God does not give us things, because of our tithes and offerings.  He gives us things, even when we hate Him.  Our behavior does not determine His love.  It is His love that has the power to alter what we do, by changing who we are.  So His gifts to us are coming, to some degree, whether we like them or not.  A toddler can say “no” all they like to a parent, but a loving Parent is going to feed them in spite of what they say.  A loving parent is going to cloth them, and house them, no matter what the toddler thinks about these things.  Many of us toddlers would prefer to run naked, eat bugs, and sleep in the mud – but I think our heavenly parent has higher aspirations for us than that (even if He allows us to realize that kind of eat-bugs-thinking is not all it is cracked up to be).

Sometimes we don’t treat our gifts as something we value.  Sometimes we do things with them, that are downright destructive.  God gives us health, and we take up a practice of smoking, or skydiving.  Now, you can survive skydiving, although the risk is plainly apparent.  But no-one survives the practice of smoking while maintaining excellent health.  It kills you slowly, accumulating over time.  It is less perceptible, but its long-term effects can hardly be hidden.  The gift of God was given, regardless of what we did with it.  God may know what we will do, but He offers us our gifts anyway, hoping we will allow Him to influence what we do, but never controlling our reaction.  His love for us remains, and He does not starve us from His love, only because we make bad choices. 

Wealth can be either a gift, or a curse.  What we do with that can either destroy us, or enable us to bless the world around us.  Whether we consider ourselves wealthy is only a matter of perception.  Comparatively, we will always find those in the world with less than us, some far less.  By the same token, there will always be those in the world with far more than us.  So whether you consider yourself wealthy is how you think about yourself.  Whether others think of you as wealthy depends on whether they have far less, or far more.  The only question that remains is a reflection of “who” you love.  When your resources are spent upon yourself, what most people consider, “taking care of yourself” – it is plain that you are high on the list of things you love.  Those with families spend their resources there as well.  And even though this only seems like the responsible thing to do, and the sensible thing, it is not the only thing our hearts should be so focused upon.

Case in point … the Word of God calls out a practice known as Tithing.  Giving 10 percent of your income back to God (in most cases through a church), is one of our first opportunities to become toddlers showing that our love of God is greater than our love of wealth or means.  It is rarely convenient to part with money.  It is rarely “sensible or responsible” when measured against the “needs” our families have.  But to give it anyway, in spite of these “realities” begins to put a crack in our adult armor, and return us to place of child-like trust that our Parent will not see us destitute because of what we give.  The Bible actually also mentions giving offerings beyond the tithe.  For those already parting with 10 percent of their income, offerings by definition, raises the percentage given.  The Bible does not specify what more we would offer, only that the practice is like icing on a cake, and good for us to do.

Most believers are content to stop here.  I give my tithe.  I give my offerings, and now I am done.  Whew!  That was rough.  (silly toddler, you have no idea how many gifts and blessings are coming your way, open your eyes and watch).  But most believers are content that having engaged faithfully in these 2 practices our obligations for giving have been met.  Nice try.  But there is one more, that was designed with a far more specific purpose in mind.  The last one perhaps is more meaningful, because it directly impacts the giver in a way the others do not, and it impacts the receiver in a way the others could not.  And before you think I am just trying to guilt you into giving more, it was not my idea, it came from Jewish tradition, but was called out and ratified by Jesus Himself.

Matthew records the guidance in his gospel in chapter six, continuing with His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus takes up the practice of one-on-one charity.  He begins in verse 1 saying … “Take heed that ye do not your alms before men, to be seen of them: otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.”  The practice of giving alms is not the same as tithes or offerings.  Tithes and offerings are given to the priesthood, or in our day to the church, for the preservation and expansion of the church.  Giving alms was something you offered the poor, the homeless, the destitute that called for help from the street corners, and shelters, and impoverished places where they were forced to reside.  Those who asked help because they had need. 

In the time of Christ many of these were crippled unable to earn a wage.  Some had horrific diseases like leprosy, or possession, and were social outcasts.  In our day, the diseases are no less real, addiction (whether to drugs or alcohol or sexual misconduct).  In our day, our veterans suffer from PTSD, and find extremely hard times trying to transition from killing or being killed every second to “normal” society.  There are those in our world who only fake it, and use panhandling as a way to earn enough money to avoid other types of harder work.  But this perception is so easily accepted by those with means, who are looking hard for an excuse not to give.  I challenge anyone so inclined to stand on a busy street corner for 10 hours a day in the heat or cold, and call that “easier” than working a real job.  Those who ask means of us, present us with an opportunity to give alms.

But the further counsel of Christ is profoundly deep.  To give to the poor, only to be seen of our peers, denies us the rewards our Father would otherwise like to see us claim.  Giving for the credit, or the notoriety of giving, feeds our pride.  It is meant to make us appear better to our peers.  It fosters the notion of comparative salvation.  And it denies us the privilege of humility.  Giving to another, one on one, where you offer what you have, to meet the need of the poor who asks, can truly change how YOU think.  If it is done in secret, away from credit and pride, it becomes something only you, God, and receiver will ever know.  That kind of giving changes your heart.  It puts another crack in the adult armor that believes we must be sensible and trust in ourselves to provide for ourselves.  That kind of giving, opens up the possibility that God could actually take care of you, just as you are taking care of the needs of the poor who stand right in front of you.  This is the reward you miss, when you give for other motives.

Jesus continues in verse 2 saying … “Therefore when thou doest thine alms, do not sound a trumpet before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.”  In the time of Christ those who desperately craved to be seen as righteous, sounded trumpets to call the attention of the crowds and passersby to the alms they handed out to the poor.  This was not a call of assembly for more efficient distribution, this was a call to show everyone else, that they were generous.  When in truth, they were not.  This was an exchange of services; money, for a better reputation.  Jesus notes, they received what they had purchased.  And the lack of impact within them, was the opportunity they lost.

Jesus continues in verse 3 saying … “But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth:”  Instead of attention, Jesus asks us to not even we think about what we are doing.  We just do it.  We do not measure to ourselves the size of our donation, or the rationale for it, or whether we think the person might not use our gift the way we think they should.  Ignore all that.  Decide not to think about all of that, and give anyway.  As our Parent gives to us, knowing that we often misuse and abuse what He gives to us, but He gives it anyway.  Not as a means of control, but because He cares about us, and loves us.  There is something personal about giving directly to someone who asks.  There is no middle-man, it you and them and God.  Our gifts are not meant to occupy a continued place in our thinking.  They are meant to happen, and be forgotten.  We are not meant to keep inventory of them to use in a false analysis of our comparative holiness with our peers (even if only in our heads).  We are meant to discard the memory, and only maintain the practice.

When our giving is so common place that we could not possibly remember all the times we did it, or to who, we are finding a reward only the Father understands.  Jesus echoes these sentiments as He concludes this section of His sermon in verse 4 saying … “That thine alms may be in secret: and thy Father which seeth in secret himself shall reward thee openly.”  Here we go again.  Our selfish minds immediately begin to think of this promise in financial terms.  We give the homeless ten dollars in secret, and we expect God will give us back 20 dollars more openly.  A business transaction.  But that is not the reward our God who is obsessed with our salvation is making.  The giving we offer in secret, in humility, and without remembering it constantly, has the power to help change how we think inside, and who we love outside.  It has the ability to act as a tool to focus the values we hold in our hearts away from ourselves and towards others, as it is in heaven.

The financial investment we are making is in the perfection of our hearts, not in the doubling of our wealth.  Our gifts and our giving may well cause us to lose what we have, to become poor as well.  We could find ourselves having some of the same needs as the people we once gave to.  Jesus is not making us a promise to shower us with wealth, that may very well destroy us because we are still not ready for it.  Jesus is making a promise that the more important results and rewards that our personal giving to others makes is within our hearts and minds.  And then there is something else, something even more, that money cannot buy, but humble giving can sure contribute to … the life of the receiver.

Imagine being the poor, or destitute, or even someone who fakes it.  Imagine seeing Christians give to meet your needs every time you encounter one of them.  Not just folks who roll down the window and hand you a dollar from their cars, on their way to somewhere else.  But folks who pull the car over, get out, and ask you how they can help.  Who stop to buy food, clothes, and take you to a shelter and pay any fees associated to get you in it.  Some of them who would even take you home with them.  Imagine being on the receiving end of so much love from SO many total strangers, who have nothing in common but a passionate love from Jesus Christ for someone so dirty, stinky, and likely diseased as yourself the poor and destitute.  Even the heart of the faker will be broken in tears over watching what the true love of Jesus Christ looks like, not just in one of His followers, but in all of His followers.  That kind of simple humble giving has the potential to truly change the world, finding poor who are searching for this kind of love, and discovering you who becomes so passionate about making sure they find it in you.

That is the reward of the Father.  That is how the gospel is spread throughout the world.  And just for the record, this is exactly the method Jesus used.  He met the needs first, there was no sermon, before the starving were fed, the naked were clothed, and the funds or needs asked for, were granted.  Only after the needs were met, the love was demonstrated, could the words find a listening ear.  Our church growth is stunted, because we go out with words to those in need, and expect our prayers to get them what they want; instead of our hearts so steeped in His love, that our passion gets them their need.  We must become toddlers once again.  Toddlers share as they love, without a thought about it.  We cannot out-give our God.  But we can surely try.  And in the trying, find something we could hardly have imagined.

For those who find Tithe, and offerings, and now the practice of giving alms to poor, just one more drain upon already meager resources – I would advise prayer, to see things and feel things, with the passion of Christ.  Through submission, over time, what you value is going to change.  What looks like burden today, will begin to become blessing tomorrow.  And the best part is, our Parent was always in charge anyway.  He was already meeting our needs before we thought to ask.  This is only His chance to bring us into the system of giving to share with Him, what it is like to give, only because you love.

And the sermon was far from over …