If I were a rich man...

Jesus sat down near the collection box in the Temple and watched as the crowds dropped in their money. Many rich people put in large amounts. Then a poor widow came and dropped in two small coins.

Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has given more than all the others who are making contributions. For they gave a tiny part of their surplus, but she, poor as she is, has given everything she had to live on.” —Mark 12:41-44 (NLT)

No one has ever become poor by giving. —Anne Frank, Give, March 26, 1944

I once accompanied a friend to a little Mexican village hidden deep in the mountains. This happened decades ago, so my recall of the details is a bit fuzzy. We had traveled by a succession of vehicles to get there, forded a river, and finally hiked the rest of the way, arriving well after dark. The community grew coffee on the mountain slopes and spoke a language that had not been well-studied, until my friend, a linguist, had arrived.

On maybe the third night of our visit we were invited to eat in the home of a widow and her son. She lived in a crude adobe house with a metal roof and two rooms, one of which was the kitchen, where she cooked over a wood fire burning inside an adobe oven. The window openings had no glass, just closely-spaced slats to keep the animals out. Her floor was hard-packed earth.

We sat around a rough wood table on the only two chairs she owned. She served us sweet, hot coffee and a meal of black beans with chicken cooked in a spicy, red sauce. She had no silverware, but she provided delicious, handmade tortillas that we tore into triangles and used to scoop up the hot food from our plates.

The chicken, I later learned, had probably been killed to honor my friend, who had been a help to her—chickens were far more valuable for their eggs than their meat.

As she served us, my friend and the woman chatted quietly in that strange-sounding language while we ate. Her face was heavily-lined with creases, her hair was graying and tied back in a bun, her dress was dark and plain, she wore thin, leather thongs on her feet, and she was somewhere between 40 and 150 years old.

This woman, I’ll call her Anita, spent her days foraging for firewood, sewing, and hauling water from the river—the same river where she and her neighbors washed themselves and their laundry. And, she tended the coffee trees in the community groves, picking the beans and drying them in the sun when they ripened.

Perhaps she also talked to God during the long days hiking hillside trails as she worked to provide for her family. She believed in God but had never read the Bible, primarily because no translation existed in her language, apart from the few chapters of one of the Gospels that my friend and others in the village were translating each evening, after the day’s chores had been completed.

And, of course, there was the fact that Anita was uneducated and illiterate.

Yet, she lived in a very simple state of gratitude to God, as well as a very immediate and critical state of dependence on God’s provision. She was incredibly generous to us with what little she had. She smiled often, which led me to suspect that she knew something of the peace and presence of the God we both worshipped.

Stop reading and look around. Can you imagine the astonishment Anita would feel if she were standing beside you or me right now, in all the luxury we in the first world take for granted?

I’m not going to lay down a guilt trip about about our western affluence. We have no control over the cultures and eras we were born into. God calls each of us to submit ourselves to him and to kneel at the cross in repentance and faith, whether we’re rich or poor, man or woman, eastern or western. I do wonder, though, how these comfortable circumstances in which we live our faith might color what we hear—or are willing to hear—from God.

Afanasy Ivanovich had been particularly unstinting of money for her; he was then still counting on her love and thought he could seduce her mainly by comfort and luxury, knowing how easily the habits of luxury take root and how hard it is to give them up later, when luxury has gradually turned into necessity. —The Idiot, Fyodor Dostoevsky

I’m working through Dostoevsky’s great novel The Idiot (and, 175 pages in, I’m still not quite sure what it’s all about). Afanasy Ivanovich is a wealthy man who has adopted and raised a girl, Nastasya. As she grows up, he keeps her hidden from society, tries to win her affection by lavishing her with fine things, and ultimately takes her as his lover. He hopes to capture her heart through bribery; he believes the luxuries and finery he has surrounded her with will become chains that bind her to him.

You’ll be pleased to hear he has underestimated her.

He’s not wrong to believe in the captivating power of wealth, though. The “good things in life” do have a way of becoming the “necessities of life,” don’t they? We get used climate-controlled environments, secure and spacious housing, abundance at our grocery stores, the freedom to travel, entertainment to suit our every desire, and the convenience of carrying digital gateways to the world in our pockets.

It would be naive to think the affluence most of us take for granted does not influence how we think about and live out our faith. If we’re serious about following Jesus, I think we really must ask ourselves hard questions about how the all-in discipleship Jesus calls his followers to might be quite different from the Christianity practiced and preached in our modern western context.

Some things I’ve noticed about myself:

1. My affluence tempts me to credit myself rather than God with the good things I have and love, and to stake out claims on what’s mine vs. what’s God’s.

2. My affluence can make me adopt a play-it-safe mentality when God calls me into circumstances or situations that might put the things I want and need at risk; or worse, it can lead me to turn a deaf ear to God’s call because I’m comfortable right where I am.

3. My affluence sometimes leads me to hold tightly to what I have out of anxiety or fear that at the end of the day, I might not have enough.

As Dostoevsky observes, affluence and comfort have a way of becoming necessities. My observation is that they can become pre-conditions or bargaining chips to use in negotiating a more favorable deal with God. Yes, God, I’ll do X so long as I don’t have to give up Y.

What does Jesus require of us, if we’re to be his disciples?

If I’m following Jesus’ way, my affluence should become a blessed tool for giving comfort to people with needs that my resources and skills and time can help.

If I’m following Jesus’ way, my comforts must not lead me to resentfulness when suffering inevitably comes to me. Even the richest people on earth can’t cheat death.

Like the servant who was entrusted with ten talents by his master, following Jesus’ way means being a good steward of all that God has entrusted to me, and good stewardship, as the parable teaches, is not about burying and hoarding our treasures but putting them to work in God’s Kingdom for God’s purposes.

I can’t find any evidence in Scriptures that affluence is a sin. It certainly can become a chain that binds us to comfort rather than God’s Son. It certain has become something people worship instead of the gracious God who is the Giver of all good things.

Jesus ransomed us from death and hopelessness by giving his life for us. If the Spirit of Christ truly lives in us, we will be known by the way we express that same love through extravagant, selfless, and fearless generosity.