{"id":949,"date":"2010-01-04T20:31:44","date_gmt":"2010-01-04T20:31:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/bibleandculture\/2010\/01\/new-years-resolve-jesus-and-money-part-two.html"},"modified":"2010-01-04T20:31:44","modified_gmt":"2010-01-04T20:31:44","slug":"new-years-resolve-jesus-and-money-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/2010\/01\/new-years-resolve-jesus-and-money-part-two.html","title":{"rendered":"New Year’s Resolve: Jesus and Money Part Two"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Thumbnail<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/isbn=1587432749\/bakerbookhouseA<\/a><\/span><\/font>
http:\/\/www.brazospress.com\/Book.asp?isbn=978-1-58743-274-3<\/a><\/span><\/font><\/p>\n

Money is one of those rare subjects that almost everyone has opinions on, including most Christians.  And of course there are so many cliches about money—‘money can’t buy you love’ being a familiar one thanks to the Beatles. In fact there are also many myths about money as well.  In this post I want to talk about a few of the myths that arise in Christian contexts.   This post will be devoted to two of these myths. As we shall see, most of these Christian myths arise out of sound-byting small portions of Scripture and taking them out of context. <\/p>\n

Myth One:  <\/span>If you just
\ntrust God, he will give you ‘all the desires of your heart’  <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

What the Scripture in question actually says is  <\/span>“Delight yourself in the LORD, and He shall
\ngive you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the LORD, trust also in
\nHim, and He shall bring it to pass”.<\/i> ~ Psalm 37:4,5.     <\/span>This has nothing necessarily to do with
\neconomic prosperity at all.  <\/span>The desire
\nof the heart referred to here is God!  <\/span>If
\nyou delight in God he will bless you with more of the divine presence is all
\nthe psalmist has in view.  The problem here is with the phrase desires of the heart.  Materialistic persons often just assume that the desires of their heart are perfectly fine and legitimate and that God is in the business of fulfilling such desires.  <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This unreflective approach never stops to ask whether there might not be sinful as well as good desires in the human heart.  Just because they are genuine desires of a human heart doesn’t mean they are good. Jesus however is unequivocal about the desires of the heart often being enormously problematic— “For from within, out of your hearts come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, greed, <\/i> malice, deceit, lewdness, envy, slander, arrogance, and folly” (Mk. 7.21).  This verse makes perfectly clear that one has to examine, process, and critique the desires of one’s hearts, for it is equally or even more probable that one has selfish and sinful desires than good and godly ones.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Myth Two:  <\/span>If you
\n‘seek first the kingdom’ then God will give you all the things you long
\nfor.  <\/span>It’s just a matter of getting one’s
\npriorities straight. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Again, this is a profound misreading of what the Biblical
\ntext says.  <\/span>Jesus in Mt. 6.25-34 has been
\ntalking about the basic necessities in life–food, clothing, and the like.  <\/span>Tells his disciples they should not be
\nanxious even about the necessities in life, not least because God knows we need
\nsuch things to survive.  <\/span>Instead of such
\nanxious worrying we are to seek first the kingdom, and these necessities will
\nbe added to us.  <\/span>In context Jesus says
\nnothing about blessing us with wealth, or great prosperity or anything of the
\nkind.  <\/span>He refers only to food, drink, and
\nclothing, nor is anything said about lavish clothing or non-necessary food and
\ndrink items. <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In general God is not in the business of putting us into a condition wherein we begin to believe a further myth– namely the Stoic one about our being the master of our own fate and the captain of our own souls if only we reach a position of ‘financial independence’.  The Bible is a book about finding our sufficiency in God, not about self-sufficiency or putting ourselves in a position of not having to depend on God day by day for the necessities of life.  Think for instance about the Lord’s prayer— “give us today our daily bread”.  Jesus does not encourage us to pray “make us wealthy beyond our wildest dreams so we don’t need to look to God each day for the basic necessities of life, don’t need to continue to work, don’t need to face the fact that we are not self-sufficient, independent beings”.    <\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Even within the church, there are many problematic assumptions about money that need to be deprogrammed before we can even begin to build a more positive Biblical approach to money and other resources.  So there will be some more deprogramming in order before we get to the positive axioms offered us by Jesus and the NT writers. <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

  <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt. Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website. Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/author\/bwitherington"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/199"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/bibleandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}