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Rick Downs, a pastor in Cambridge, Massachusetts offered a really interesting idea a few weeks ago. What if the collection was made during the worship service, taken out to the parking lot, doused with lighter fluid and burned? What would we do if they took our money, the thing we give the Church to have a comfortable building and the best and brightest staff, and they just burned those papers up?
Is it acceptable for money to be valueless? On one hand money is a gift, a resource to do something. On the other, its a narcotic, something Jesus talked about more than sexuality or politics. There is a parable Jesus offers where he talks about "talents", basically monies. The story follows three men who are trusted with their masters talents. Of the men are one who takes five and turns it to ten, one who takes two and turns it to four, and one who straight buries the loot, only to return it no better, no worse. Some basic interpretations of said parable imply the most latter of the fellows is in the wrong because he basically need not exist for the purpose of the talents or the master...both remain the same regardless of his existence. The parable is also used to support the idea of capitalist investment Biblically. The idea here makes it tricky to argue God is not interested in using money, some would argue it implies we are responsible to take money and make more of it for the purposes of God.
The proposition of profiteering for the purpose (insert Jesse Jackson voice) Gospel hinges on a few major contradictions.
1. If Jesus wanted the rich young ruler to sell everything and America is said to consume five times its proportion of world population to resources, then how can we argue we are responsible enough to use the talents for said purpose...in other words, are we taking the burying of talents further to simply spending it and going back to the master with nothing?
2. If God asked his people in multiple writings of the minor prophets to stop the burnt offerings because they were shallow and ultimately motivated by self-preservation and relief of guilt, then could we flip this concept and argue that by burning the tithe in a modern church, we would actually be rebuking our own self-preservation and alleviation of guilt because it would offer us nothing but a pile of ashes and a sentiment of a ruler other than money?
No conclusions, but some interesting propositions to ignite conversations.
4 comments:
those are some very interesting ideas. on the one hand i see rick's point; it could be argued that even with the church's use of tithes (as you mentioned having a comfortable building), we can at times still be slaves to money, reflecting our american culture's reliance on the benjamins on a larger scale.
it reminds me of something in shane claiborne's book, where he recounts a time he and his friends collected and simply dumped out thousands of dollars in the streets of times square to express a similar sentiment about not being controlled by our reliance on money (i know that's an oversimplification of the story). while once again i see his point, i have a hard time seeing Jesus being satisfied with this particular way of acting out his teaching.
if i was a homeless person that walked by a church that was having a bonfire with their money, i would be confused, and probably pretty angry, because of my empty stomach and the simultaneous waste of the church's resources.
I think you make the first apologetic necessary for this commentary. I think in a lot of ways our conversation explains why Jesus was so inquisitive in his teaching style, he leaves us with so many ways to discuss his teachings and leaves room for relevance across the spectrum of issues all humans experience. Not to chase a rabbit trail, but when you read things like the Tao-te-ching, they are so proverbial you are unable to recognize applications as broad as Jesus' parable, which is a reason I find the Bible so exciting.
For the sake of continued challenge, I think Philip is totally right in the full circle reality of actually burning money. On the same token, it brings us back to exercising a hypothetical in our own heart of whether we'd be comfortable with doing it. And Philip raises a case in reality to see how we'd truly respond, which is, if money is trivial enough to us as Christians that we would burn it in a parking lot, then certainly we would be the type of person to feed that homeless person, a most likely scenario we could all encounter. I for one, do not have a very loose grip on cash...I just talk about it a lot.
I appreciate the bluntness of his example, and believe it should be meant to spark good conversation. And since I don't know him or the full context of this example, I'll refrain from critiquing whether or not we should literally burn our money to prove a point. But I will say:
- the love of money is the problem
- I think burning it would force us to give up control
- too often folks don't give with no strings attached
- so, what could be another way that would force people to give up control of the money they give while not creating another "idol" (the burning pile) for us to celebrate how holy we are.
Recognizing how tightly we hold on to things (often tighter than we cling to Christ) is a great starting place for letting the Holy Spirit transform us. May it be with me.
Did Pastor ever say "Why So Serious"?
Money can be used for both good and bad. Burning money isn't nearly the worst thing you could do with it, it certainly isn't one of the better things you could do with it either.
If the Pastor at my church burned our offerings I'm not quite so sure it would go over all that well. Why not donate the money to starving children, or out of work families. Burning it seems like a silly idea.
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