I read a book about money that was written by a man who was at Reba in the beginning - he's still here and lives just a few doors down from us. He has lived the principles he teaches in this book.
It's called Treasures in Heaven.
What I liked most about this book, other than that I know the author lives what he teaches, is his fierce obedience to the challenging financial teachings of the sermon on the mount.
Especially relevant stuff includes his interpretations on the secular reliance upon insurance companies, which seems to fly in the face of Jesus' warnings against storing up treasures and putting our hope in storehouses.
Another relevant subject Virgil talks about is a Christian alternative to medical insurance. This was first published 1982.
His chapter on what Jesus calls us to renounce is pretty significant. Overall the author stands by the idea that money is not neutral, it is an idol and a false god. Jesus said you have to choose to serve either money or God, but you can't pursue both. This is to me a bright contrast from the dominant message of evangelical culture that Christians are to relate to money only very slightly differently than the rest of the world.
5 comments:
Wow. Without even having read this book, your post already has me thinking about some stuff I've never thought about before. With Dustin's first hospital stay, we'd have owed $800,000 if we hadn't had insurance. And we'd have owed a substantial amount with his second stay too. We actually prayed prayers of thanks to God that we had medical insurance! Now I'm wondering, was our attitude skewed? Would it have been more Biblical to go into debt with a mountain of medical bills?...Hmmm...Definitely an interesting subject to chew on.
Kate,
Thanks for your comment. I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not, though. I do not think it would be God's will for you to go into debt. (No debt and no capital is the paradox of Kingdom finances - all excess belonging to God.)
It's important to say that there are many more options than either going into debt or having insurance. Relationaltithe.org is a pretty neat revolution - based in California. People drop money into their purse from all over, and then there are needs submitted by the same group of contributors, and they tell me there is always more money left over than need. The Mennonite denomination has a debt-sharing program that people can commit to, and it works in a similar way. There are other parachurch organizations with alternatives to insurance.
The idea is that we ought to be trusting God, then our brothers and sisters, way more than the insurance companies. In Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove's book he brings up college loans, saying they could probably work through the Body better than through the banks, and everyone would win - except we would need to trust each other a lot more than we do right now. We have segregated religion and finance in that way.
I've got a copy of the Treasures in Heaven book if you'd like to read it!
Hey Josh,
I actually wasn't being sarcastic. Although I can see how it sounded that way! My apologies if I came across like that. It really was just my honest initial response to reading your post, which presented a viewpoint I'd never considered before. And with medical bills as huge as ours were, I was just kind of wondering out loud about whether or not medical insurance was a blessing or a way of not trusting God in our particular case. See what I mean?
Anywho, thanks for responding to my comment and going into more detail about what the Christian alternatives actually are. The idea of believers joining together and trusting each other that much is pretty cool. So, I now have a better understanding of what you meant in your post!
I might just have to read that book. ;) It's a definite struggle to figure out how God wants us to handle our finances in this world. Thanks for the recommendation and the explanation :)
I'm glad you had me think a little more about this. Just a few more thoughts based on Virgil's book:
All of the stuff Jesus said about money and property has more to do with the kind of God we have than about the type of stewards we are supposed to be! I love that point (again, not my own, but really important.)
We are supposed to be trusting God as our provider. Not the fellowship of believers, ultimately, nor the individual wage earner, or government assistance for that matter.
And with that in mind, we live in an individualistic culture that also values security. It seems to me that Jesus teaches communal reliance (or interdependence) and vulnerability rather than security. Those are big concepts that fly in the face of the American dream.
What a journey!
Yeah, those are all for sure very big and radical concepts! I looked at the Relationaltithe.org site, and it does seem like a really cool concept, in theory. Being the realist and the "Type A" personality that I am, I think we'll stick with medical insurance. ;) This doesn't mean that I don't think the idea of a debt-sharing program isn't cool. However, I also believe that God has given Dustin and I as parents a responsibility to take care of our children and each other - and that includes making sure we are responsible with our finances. Obviously God is the ultimate provider, but I think in our case, God may have used our medical insurance to provide for our financial needs when Dustin was in the hospital. It's nice to think that our massive bills might have been covered by a debt-sharing program, had we known about that or been involved in something like that at the time. But for now, I like the assurance that if something unforseen should happen again in the future and one of us is hospitalized again, at least we know that money won't be something we have to worry about!
I will shut up now. But thank for sharing about this book and giving me something to think about! One of the things I've always really admired about you is that you're not afraid to push back against "cultural norms" in an effort to pursue the life Christ would have for you. Keep on keepin' on!
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