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Overview
On a personal level, this book opens up issues of scarcity and abundance, idolatry and freedom; on a societal level, it invites exploration of greater equity and sustainability. On both levels, it empowers individuals and groups to apply their faith’s values in practical ways while taking pastoral and prophetic stances. The author suggests we need to experience the nurturing companionship of a wise, compassionate pastor or spiritual guide in our relationship to money, while also needing to experience the power, strength, anger, and call to repentance of an Old Testament prophet.
People want to connect their values with everyday concerns, while discovering ways to make a positive difference. This book helps them do both.
Includes a comprehensive study guide within the book for groups and individuals.
Contributors include: Henri Nouwen, Dave Barry, Walter Brueggemann, David Boyle, Lynne Twist, Lewis Hyde, William Stringfellow,John Haughey, Ched Myers, Bill McKibben, Sallie McFague, William Greider, Leonardo Boff, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Maria Harris, Rich Lang, Wayne Muller, Sharon Parks, Rodney Clapp, Ted Nace, Lester Brown, Pete Barnes,Andy Loving, Edgar Cahn, Sarah Tarver-Wahlquist, Susan Wilkes, Jim Klobuchar
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819223272 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Church Publishing, Incorporated |
| Publication date: | 08/01/2008 |
| Pages: | 296 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Money & Faith
The Search for Enough
By Michael Schut
Church Publishing Incorporated
Copyright © 2008 Michael SchutAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2327-2
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Abundance and Scarcity —How Do You See?
All of creation is a symphony of joy and jubilation. —Hildegaard of Bingen (12th Century)
God's interest is transforming the world into a household in which all of God's creatures can find abundant life. —Douglas Meeks
Introduction— I
I am a gardener. The most important task I have as a gardener is to build healthy soil. Healthy soil is full of life, retains water, holds nutrients, helps minimize pests and plant disease and is the foundation for a delicious harvest. Unhealthy soil is bereft of life, sloughs off water and nutrients and does much less to protect plants from pests and disease.
Abundance and scarcity are two markedly different soils, producing very different harvests.
To paraphrase Mary Jo Leddy, living out of a framework of scarcity—there is not enough—nurtures seeds of fear, war, hoarding and injustice. Living out of a framework of abundance—there is enough—nurtures seeds of generosity, trust, peace and community.
My essay "Enough for All" serves as a kind of extended introduction to the next three pieces. The first is an exercise more than an essay: writing your money autobiography. Brueggemann and Twist then reflect on the themes of scarcity and abundance, themes which are foundational to our experience of life in general, and our experience of money specifically.
Writing Your Money Autobiography by Michael Schut and Ministry of Money
In this book's introduction (see page 15), I suggested that each of our lives is a sacred journey. We can look through any number of windows to guide or frame the process of reflecting on that journey. We could take our relationship with our parents through which we would learn not only about that specific relationship, but about ourselves and our views on life. Or we could reflect on life through the lens of a significant event, time period or belief system.
Writing a "money autobiography" often provides a revealing window through which we can access a great deal of insight into who we are and what we value.
Whether you are reading through this book on your own or as part of a study/support group, I strongly encourage you to give yourself the time to prepare your money autobiography. As described below, the idea is to write a three-page (or longer if you wish) autobiography dealing with the subject of your life as it relates to money. Doing so will undoubtedly enrich and deepen your engagement with the authors and ideas presented throughout this anthology. A money autobiography can invite light and a gentle breeze into the web of insecurity, passion, fear, pride, joy, and hope all tangled up in our relationship with money. Writing such a piece often provides greater understanding, healing and freedom in that relationship.
Below please find guidelines for writing. Try not to be concerned about whether you feel your words are eloquent or well organized. You don't need to be a "good writer," just be honest and open in relating how your relationship with money came to be, and how it continues to change and manifest in your life. Obviously, the reflection questions are a guide; work with those most meaningful to you. Some of you may find it helpful to integrate other creative avenues, such as poetry or drawing/painting in the process of writing and creating your money autobiography.
Guidelines for Writing Your Money Autobiography
Writing a money autobiography is a challenging and crucial step in understanding our behavior and the powerful feelings evoked by money. Even for those of us who find it difficult to write, reflection on money and our life's journey yields insights and deepened awareness.
Conversion is hearing and knowing God's love and call in our lives, becoming conscious of what has been previously unheard or unaccepted. Jesus repeatedly spoke about money and challenged the disciples, the scribes, and the crowds to become conscious of money and their relationship to it. We, too, need to examine our thoughts, feelings and behaviors which relate to money. As we discern the ways we earn, inherit, invest, spend, give or waste money, often without conscious choice or a deliberate faith stance, we will be enabled to respond more fully to God.
A money autobiography can be useful not only in personal growth, but also in the growth of the church. Whatever blocks our response to God as individuals also cripples the Body of Christ, the church. The Spirit cannot set us free to be communities of liberation if we are in bondage to an ancient idol. As we grieve over our entanglement with materialism, status and power and as we open ourselves to compassion, new vision and hope will flow through the church to the world.
We encourage you to set aside some quiet time, take up your pen, and discover for yourself the gifts of healing, insight and freedom which often come when we acknowledge feelings, attitudes and experiences evoked by money.
How to Prepare a Money Autobiography
Elizabeth O'Connor, in Letters to Scattered Pilgrims (Harper & Row), has given guidelines for writing a money autobiography. It is important to focus on feelings and relationships as well as reflecting on factual accounts. Use some or all of the following questions as appropriate and helpful. Write a three-page autobiography which deals only with the subject of your life as it is related to money.
Include the role of money in your childhood. What is your happiest memory in connection with money? What is your unhappiest memory? What attitude did your mother and/or father have about money? What was your attitude toward money as a child? Did you feel poor or rich? Did you worry about money?
What was your attitude about money as a teenager? What are your memories of this period?
How do you feel about your present financial status? What is your present financial status? What is your income? What are your other assets? What will your income be at age 65, 75, 80? Will you inherit money? Do you think about that?
Are you generous or stingy with your money? Do you spend money on yourself? If so, do you do it easily?
Do you gamble with your money? Do you worry about money?
When you eat with friends and there is a group check, are you the one to pick it up? Do you make sure that you pay your share and that it includes tax and tip?
Do you tend to be more on the giving end of things, or on the receiving end?
If you lacked money, how would you feel about others helping you pay your rent, or treating when you went out and were not in a position to reciprocate?
Do you tithe? If so, how do you really feel about it? Do you tithe because this is how you want your money used, or do you tithe because you want to belong and are willing to pay this cost of belonging?
Have you made a will? If not, why not? Did you include anyone in your will besides your family? The biblical faith says that we have a common life together—a common wealth. How do you feel about a private will?
Additional Questions to Consider
How do you deal with the fact that two-thirds of the world's people are poor? If you have personal relationships with people who are poor and/or work for social justice, how has that affected your attitude toward money?
In what ways is your relationship to money a training ground for your spiritual journey, or an expression of your deepest values?
Used by permission of Ministry of Money, an organization (www.ministryofmoney.org) providing "opportunities for women and men to explore their relationship to money from a faith perspective."
The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity by Walter Brueggemann
Dr. Walter Brueggemann is the William Marcellus McPheeters Professor of Old Testament at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. Particularly known for his studies and writings on Old Testament theology, he is ordained in the United Church of Christ and has published more than 58 books and hundreds of articles. His titles include The Prophetic Imagination, The Message of the Psalms, The Land and Hopeful Imagination.
* * *
The majority of the world's resources pour into the United States. And as we Americans grow more and more wealthy, money is becoming a kind of narcotic for us. We hardly notice our own prosperity or the poverty of so many others. The great contradiction is that we have more and more money and less and less generosity—less and less public money for the needy, less charity for the neighbor.
Robert Wuthnow, sociologist of religion at Princeton University, has studied stewardship in the church and discovered that preachers do a good job of promoting stewardship. They study it, think about it, explain it well. But folks don't get it. Though many of us are well-intentioned, we have invested our lives in consumerism. We have a love affair with "more"—and we will never have enough. Consumerism is not simply a marketing strategy. It has become a demonic spiritual force among us, and the theological question facing us is whether the gospel has the power to help us understand it.
The Bible starts out with a liturgy of abundance. Genesis 1 is a song of praise for God's generosity. It tells how well the world is ordered. It keeps saying, "It is good, it is good, it is good, it is very good." It declares that God blesses—that is, endows with vitality—the plants and the animals and the fish and the birds and humankind. And it pictures the creator as saying, "Be fruitful and multiply." In an orgy of fruitfulness, everything in its kind is to multiply the overflowing goodness that pours from God's creator spirit. And as you know, the creation ends in Sabbath. God is so overrun with fruitfulness that God says, "I've got to take a break from all this. I've got to get out of the office."
And Israel celebrates God's abundance. Psalm 104 ... surveys creation and names it all: the heavens and the earth, the waters and springs and streams and trees and birds and goats and wine and oil and bread and people and lions. This goes on for 23 verses.... The psalm ends by picturing God as a great respirator. It says, "If you give your breath the world will live; if you ever stop breathing, the world will die." But the psalm makes clear that we don't need to worry. God is utterly, utterly reliable. The fruitfulness of the world is guaranteed.
Psalm 150 is an exuberant expression of amazement at God's goodness. It just says, "Praise Yahweh, praise Yahweh with lute, praise Yahweh with trumpet, praise, praise, praise." Together, these three scriptures proclaim that God's force of life is loose in the world. Genesis 1 affirms generosity and denies scarcity. Psalm 104 celebrates the buoyancy of creation and rejects anxiety. Psalm 150 enacts abandoning oneself to God and letting go of the need to have anything under control.
Later in Genesis God blesses Abraham, Sarah and their family. God tells them to be a blessing, to bless the people of all nations. Blessing is the force of well-being active in the world, and faith is the awareness that creation is the gift that keeps on giving. That awareness dominates Genesis until its 47th chapter. In that chapter Pharaoh gets organized to administer, control and monopolize the food supply. Pharaoh introduces the principle of scarcity into the world economy. For the first time in the Bible, someone says, "There's not enough. Let's get everything."
... Because Pharaoh is afraid that there aren't enough good things to go around, he must try to have them all. Because he is fearful, he is ruthless. Pharaoh hires Joseph to manage the monopoly. When the crops fail and the peasants run out of food, they come to Joseph. And on behalf of Pharaoh, Joseph says, "What's your collateral?" They give up their land for food, and then, the next year, they give up their cattle. By the third year of famine they have no collateral but themselves. And that's how the children of Israel become slaves—through an economic transaction.
The text shows that the power of the future is not in the hands of those who believe in scarcity andmonopolize the world'sresources; it is in the hands of those who trust God's abundance.
By the end of Genesis 47 Pharaoh has all the land except that belonging to the priests, which he never touches because he needs somebody to bless him. The notion of scarcity has been introduced into biblical faith. The Book of Exodus records the contest between the liturgy of generosity and the myth of scarcity—a contest that still tears us apart today.
The promises of the creation story continue to operate in the lives of the children of Israel. Even in captivity, the people multiply....
By the end of Exodus, Pharaoh has been as mean, brutal and ugly as he knows how to be—and as the myth of scarcity tends to be. Finally, he becomes so exasperated by his inability to control the people of Israel that he calls Moses and Aaron to come to him. Pharaoh tells them, "Take your people and leave. Take your flocks and herds and just get out of here!" And then the great king of Egypt, who presides over a monopoly of the region's resources, asks Moses and Aaron to bless him. The powers of scarcity admit to this little community of abundance, "It is clear that you are the wave of the future, lay your powerful hands upon us and give us energy." The text shows that the power of the future is not in the hands of those who believe in scarcity and monopolize the world's resources; it is in the hands of those who trust God's abundance.
When the children of Israel are in the wilderness, beyond the reach of Egypt, they still look back and think, "Should we really go? All the world's glory is in Egypt and with Pharaoh." But when they finally turn around and look into the wilderness, where there are no monopolies, they see the glory of Yahweh.
In answer to the people's fears and complaints, something extraordinary happens. God's love comes trickling down in the form of bread. They say, "Manhue?"—Hebrew for "What is it?"—and the word 'manna' is born. They had never before received bread as a free gift that they couldn't control, predict, plan for or own. The meaning of this strange narrative is that the gifts of life are indeed given by a generous God. It's a wonder, it's a miracle, it's an embarrassment, it's irrational, but God's abundance transcends the market economy.
Three things happened to this bread in Exodus 16. First, everybody had enough. But because Israel had learned to believe in scarcity in Egypt, people started to hoard the bread. When they tried to bank it, invest it, it turned sour and rotted, because you cannot store up God's generosity. Finally, Moses said, "You know what we ought to do? We ought to do what God did in Genesis 1. We ought to have a Sabbath." Sabbath means that there's enough bread, that we don't have to hustle every day of our lives. There's no record that Pharaoh ever took a day off. People who think their lives consist of struggling to get more and more can never slow down because they won't ever have enough.
When the people of Israel cross the Jordan River into the Promised Land the manna stops coming. Now they will have to grow their own food. Very soon Israel suffers defeat in battle and Joshua conducts an investigation to find out who or what undermined the war effort. He finally traces their defeat to a man called A'chan, who stole some of the spoils of battle and withheld them from the community. Possessing land, property and wealth makes people covetous, the Bible warns.
We who are now the richest nation are today's main coveters. We never feel that we have enough; we have to have more and more, and this insatiable desire destroys us. Whether we are liberal or conservative Christians, we must confess that the central problem of our lives is that we are torn apart by the conflict between our attraction to the good news of God's abundance and the power of our belief in scarcity—a belief that makes us greedy, mean and unneighborly. We spend our lives trying to sort out that ambiguity.
The conflict between the narratives of abundance and scarcity is the defining problem confronting us.... The gospel story of abundance asserts that we originated in the magnificent, inexplicable love of a God who loved the world into generous being. The baptismal service declares that each of us has been miraculously loved into existence by God. And the story of abundance says that our lives will end in God, and that this well-being cannot be taken from us. In the words of St. Paul, "neither life nor death nor angels nor principalities nor things"—nothing can separate us from God.
What we know about our beginnings and our endings, then, creates a different kind of present tense for us. We can live according to an ethic whereby we are not driven, controlled, anxious, frantic or greedy, precisely because we are sufficiently at home and at peace to care about others as we have been cared for.
But if you are like me, while you read the Bible you keep looking over at the screen to see how the market is doing. If you are like me, you read the Bible on a good day, but you watch Nike ads every day. And the Nike story says that our beginnings are in our achievements, and that we must create ourselves. My wife and I have some young friends who have a four-year-old son. Recently, the mother told us that she was about to make a crucial decision. She had to get her son into the right kindergarten because if she didn't, then he wouldn't get into the right prep school. And that would mean not being able to get into Davidson College. And, if he didn't go to school there, he wouldn't be connected to the bankers in Charlotte and be able to get the kind of job where he would make a lot of money. Our friends' story is a kind of parable of our notion that we must position ourselves because we must achieve, and build our own lives.
According to the Nike story, whoever has the most shoes when he dies wins. The Nike story says there are no gifts to be given because there's no giver. We end up only with whatever we manage to get for ourselves. This story ends in despair. It gives us a present tense of anxiety, fear, greed and brutality. It produces child and wife abuse, indifference to the poor, the buildup of armaments, divisions between people and environmental racism. It tells us not to care about anyone but ourselves—and it is the prevailing creed of American society.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if liberal and conservative church people ... came to a common realization that the real issue confronting us is whether the news of God's abundance can be trusted in the face of the story of scarcity? What we know in the secret recesses of our hearts is that the story of scarcity is a tale of death. And the people of God counter this tale by witnessing to the manna. There is a more excellent bread than crass materialism. It is the bread of life and you don't have to bake it. We must decide where our trust is placed.
The great question now facing the church is whether our faith allows us to live in a new way. If we choose the story of death, we will lose the land—to excessive chemical fertilization, or by pumping out the water table for irrigation, perhaps. Or maybe we'll only lose it at night, as going out after dark becomes more and more dangerous.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Money & Faith by Michael Schut. Copyright © 2008 by Michael Schut. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Foreword, Bill McKibben
Introduction
I. Abundance and Scarcity—How Do You See?
II. Demystifying Money—What Is the Stuff Anyway?
III. What Is Compassion's Call?
IV. Is More (Money/Growth) Better?
V. Corporations Are People Too?
VI. Liberation—Whose Voices Are Rarely Heard?
VII. What Is the Jubilee?
VIII. Practicing Abundance—Sabbath and Tithing
IX. Moving toward Jubilee—Investments and Retirement
X. Moving toward Jubilee on a Grand Scale
XI. Epilogue
Study Guide by Michael Schut
Meeting
Appendix A: About Earth Ministry
Appendix B: Resources: Read, Study and Act
Bibliography