24. How To Fund Missionary Work
Funding mission work is one of the most contentious issues amongst us. The reason is perhaps that we all personally struggle to accept basic Bible teaching about generosity, materialism and money. Think of what the Hebrew word “Cain” means- for he is alluded to by the Lord as the epitome of the “devil”, the “murderer from the beginning”, the archetypical sinner (Jn. 8:44- perhaps because Adam and Eve’s sin was forgiven, whereas Cain was the first impenitent sinner). “Cain is defined on the basis of a double Hebrew etymology, as ‘possession’ (from qana = acquire) and ‘envy’ (from qana = be envious)” (1). Personal possession is almost- almost- inextricably linked with envy, and led to the lies and murder for which Cain was noted by the Lord. To have a strong sense of our personal ‘possessions’ will lead us into the same sins. Indeed, it’s the epitome of ‘the devil’. The concept of ‘private property’ is indeed a myth. For we die, and leave it all behind. The Mosaic law sought to teach this- because “The land is mine”, what appeared to be a ‘sale’ of property wasn’t really a sale at all- quite simply because the land was God’s (Lev. 25:13,23). And likewise our ‘generosity’, as David observed, isn’t really that at all- for we only give God back what He has given us. In fact, when you think about it, the only ‘thing’ that Biblically a person can say is ‘theirs’ is their partner or family- even though these are also given of God. And so it’s sadly understandable that a materialistic, wealthy society always becomes one that has a low estimate of the family unit and the exclusive sanctity of marriage.
Having said that it is so hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom- as hard as for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle- the Lord comments that ‘what is impossible with man, is possible with God’ (Mk. 10:27). In first century Palestinian Judaism, this saying was a kind of figure of speech for describing a miracle. If any rich person gets into the Kingdom- it will be a miracle. That’s what the Lord is saying. And He says it to us today. Generosity alone, of course, won’t bring us into the Kingdom. It’s not as if we can buy our way in. But there are major implications that our attitude to wealth is in fact a crucial indicator of whether or not we will be there. God richly gives things to all of us, Paul says; and by our being “liberal and generous [we] thus lay up for [ourselves] a good foundation for the future, so that [we] may take hold of the life which is life indeed” (1 Tim. 6:17). “The life which is life indeed” is not the lower middle class striving-for-security life of slowly saving and occasionally splashing out on something, building, building up, watching the interest slowly grow, worrying about inflation and the possible need for a new boiler or roof… Much as those things are all part of our human experience in this age, they’re not “the life which is life indeed”. That life begins now, in a counter-instinctive going against the grain of being generous. Making friends of the unrighteous mammon results in the man who had otherwise been somewhat weak in his stewardship being accepted in the end by the Master: “I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends by means of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations” (Lk. 16:9). “Riches profit not in the day of wrath: but righteousness delivereth from death” (Prov. 11:4). Riches kept in hand will not help us through the day of judgment. But righteousness, which in the Hebraic parallel in this verse refers to the correct use of riches, will deliver us from eternal death. And perhaps Prov. 13:8 also speaks of how our attitude to wealth is a crucial factor in our eternal destiny: “The ransom of a man’s life are his riches”. Just prior to that we read in Prov. 13:7: “There is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great riches”. This verse is actually part quoted in 2 Cor. 8:9 and Phil. 2:7, about how on the cross, the Lord Jesus made himself poor, of no reputation, and now has been so highly exalted. Our living out of the Lord’s cross is shown in our making of ourselves poor. That is surely the unmistakable teaching of this allusion.
The high challenge of the Lord is also to be seen in how He asks us to exceed the “righteousness” of the Pharisees (Mt. 5:20). By “righteousness” he refers to their charity, for which they were well known. In addition to tithing ten percent of absolutely everything, they gave a fifth of their income to charity such as widows, orphans, newly-wedded couples etc. In addition they made anonymous gifts in a “quiet room” of the Temple. How does our giving compare to that? And the Lord challenges us that unless we exceed that, “ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven”. Radical, challenging words- that are hard to re-interpret or get around.
Wealth is increasing in this world. Even a number who were previously without doubt ‘poor’ do in fact have enough over these days to buy a few of those extra luxury things which the Western world is so obsessed with. And many in the West end up receiving legacies from relatives, when they’ve already got themselves nicely established in life. They’re strapped [in God’s eyes] with extra cash. So are we to just hope on the Father doing a miracle to save us? Do we realize the grave importance of what the Lord is warning us of here? It seems to me that the Father has given us a way of escape. The enormous explosion of the Gospel in these last days has brought forth a huge harvest of converts amongst the genuinely and desperately poor of this world. The blind and lame, as it were, have been desperately herded into the feast, after so many others have rejected the call. And thanks to the communication revolution, our world-wide family can relatively easily respond to those needs. Is this not a wonderful, Divine way of escape for the ‘richer’ segment of the brotherhood? An escape, no less, from condemnation…? “The liberal deviseth liberal things; and by liberal things shall he stand” (Is. 32:8) makes the same connection- the generous will “stand” in the last day because of their generous spirit. Indeed, being in covenant with God may even depend upon our recognition of the fact that all human wealth is from God: “Thou shalt remember… it is [God] that giveth thee power to get wealth, that he may establish his covenant” (Dt. 8:18). The great paradox is that by giving to others with love, this ‘profits me’ (1 Cor. 13:3)- we lose, we give, in order to gain spiritually. But that gain can only be known by experience. These words of mine in themselves can’t make you feel what it’s like. We each have to go do it. Realizing that what we appear to own in life is not actually ours but God’s brings with it a great sense of freedom. No longer is there the endless anxiety about what is ‘ours’, and the need to keep it for ourselves. Indeed, the Hebrew word translated “free” is also that translated “liberal” or “generous”. Hence in 2 Chron. 29:31 we find that “as many as were of a free heart [offered] burnt offerings”. Actually that Hebrew word is usually translated “prince”, the idea being that princes were wealthy enough to be ‘free’ and therefore generous if they wished. But any of us can have this noble / free heart, we can act like wealthy people whatever our poverty, in that we are free from the ties of materialism which bind so tightly.
The Holy Spirit appeared to the apostles as “cloven / parted tongues” (Acts 2:3), giving to each man what each needed (Eph. 4:8-13). In response to this, we read that the apostles sold their possessions and “parted them [s.w. “cloven”] to all men, as every man had need” (Acts 2:45). Likewise Paul speaks of how God gave the Spirit gifts to every member of Christ’s body, so that there was no part which “lacked” (1 Cor. 12:24). And he uses the same idea when telling the Corinthians to give their excess funds to provide grace / gifts for their brethren who “lacked” (2 Cor. 8:15). The simple picture, which even in different circumstances abides for us today, is that God’s thoughtful and specific generosity to us, His giving us of unique gifts as we ‘have need’, should lead us to materially assisting those likewise who ‘have need’.
But we’re not, of course, to give from fear of condemnation. The spontaneity of giving is of course exemplified by the ‘love communism’ of the very early church. They just counted all that they had as common. What they did was not organized, not compelled by a strict set of rules about giving [as e.g. in the contemporary Essene community, or as in the tithing churches of today]. It was a voluntary, sincere abandon of love and generosity and resignation of self. The early Christians “joyfully accepted the plundering of [their] property” by the state (Heb. 10:34). There was a joy felt amongst them because of their loss. This is a totally counter-instinctive feeling- to be joyful because you lost or gave away ‘possessions’. The Philippians likewise gave out of a deep joy at giving away; the abundance of their joy resulted in their liberality (2 Cor. 8:2). And let’s not think that the early church were necessarily all dirt poor. The Christians of Heb. 10:34 had property which was plundered- and still they gave support to the poor saints in Palestine (Heb. 6:20). A case could be made that Luke’s account in his Gospel and in the Acts actually emphasizes how wealthy and middle class people came to the Lord- e.g. Joanna wife of Chuza, Cornelius the Centurion; Dionysius; Sergius Paulus, governor of Cyprus. Perhaps a reason for this was that he dedicated his works to the “noble” [Gk. ‘well born’, ‘wealthy’] Theophilus (Acts 1:3). Luke, it seems to me, was writing to Theophilus because he wanted to convert him. And so he gives other examples of wealthy people who had also converted. He was urging the middle class to allow the radical call of Christ to reach to them.
Especially in our generation, we hold wealth- any wealth- in the full knowledge that our Lord could return at any moment. James 5:3 brings out the paradox- of hoarding up wealth for the last days! The Greek for ‘hoarding up’ means ‘to reserve’. And this is just what our flesh tells us to do- reserve ‘our’ wealth for a rainy day, for long term security. It’s as if James foresaw that in our last days, this would be a particular temptation. In the context of writing about the approaching end of the age, Paul commented that because “the form of this world is passing away”, therefore those who buy anything should “be as though they had no goods, and those who deal with this world as though they had no dealings with it” (1 Cor. 7:29). Of course, this was taught millennia ago by the Mosaic law of Jubilee- that whatever land you bought wasn’t really yours, because the land is God’s. And again, we are not to be “anxious”, because “the Lord is at hand” (Phil. 4:5). And there’s nothing like managing our “wealth”, however small it may be, to make us “anxious”. Paul’s not saying we shouldn’t buy, sell or ‘deal with this world’. He’s saying we should do so as if we’re not really doing so, as if this is all an act, a sleepwalk, something we do but our heart isn’t in it.
I have at various times studied why the early church went wrong. How did the high idealism of Acts fritter away into the apostasy and hollow emptiness of ‘mere Christianity’? One of the reasons seems to me to be associated with their attitude to wealth. The band of poor men who followed the Lord around Galilee were replaced by wealthy bishops and pontiffs. Even as early as AD 144, the Roman church gave Marcion 200,000 sesterces when he left the church. This was a huge sum, enough to buy ships with (2). Instead of meeting in homes, churches were built and lands acquired. Money and legacies were hoarded rather than spent. And even worse, the attitude of the church leaders became obsessed with money. The writings of their leaders came to focus upon it quite wrongly. The so-called “Acts of Peter” [written during the second century] keep stressing how converted people supposedly gave all their money to Peter or to the church, encouraging readers to do likewise. According to this uninspired book, when the wealthy woman Chryse was converted, she supposedly gave 10,000 gold denarii to Peter in gratitude. This nonsense is quite sickening; it reflects nothing more than a greedy desire by church leaders to build up large capital. Such obsession with money on an organizational level will lead us astray too. Generous we must be, but directly to the poor and those in need, rather than to any church body as an organization or institution. The writings of the early church fathers contain some interesting commentary upon the Lord’s radical teaching about money: “You cannot serve God and mammon… give to whoever asks you” (Mt. 6:24; 5:42). The radical import of these statements was watered down. Is there not amongst us a similar tendency to water down the radical demands of the Lord’s teaching here?
So, should we literally ‘sell all we have and give to the poor’, as the Lord bids us, finally breaking out of the mire of middle class mediocrity by real, radical, concrete action, in obedience to our Lord? Nobody could really criticize anyone who did. For His words- from the lips of a Man who at times had not where to lay His head- hardly sound like they were meant to be taken figuratively. In my opinion, no amount of gymnastics with the text or exegetical tricks can legitimately rob those words of their obvious meanings. For those of us who can’t fully rise up to them, I have to say [and I hope, desperately, this isn’t mere sophistry] that there is a teaching that we should have an attitude to wealth that says: ‘This doesn’t exist… I don’t really personally possess this’. In the early church, “no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own” (Acts 4:32). I wonder- and maybe I’m clutching at straws and justifying us all- if the emphasis is upon the word “said”. Their attitude was that they didn’t personally possess anything. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, to buy and sell and deal in this world, as if we didn’t really buy anything or gain a thing, as if it’s all somehow performed by us as in a disconnected dream. And this is surely what the Lord was teaching us in Lk. 14:33: “Whoever of you does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple”. Renouncing is something we do in our hearts and deepest feelings and attitudes. Have we truly renounced it all? Even if there are still bank balances and pension plans and property deeds and cars and treasured possessions… made out in our name. Have we in our hearts renounced them? That they aren’t really mine. I have no personal long term security from them, because they’re not mine. I’m just holding in stewardship what God gave me. And not D.H. but the Lord Himself drives the point home- if we have any other attitude to these wretched things, these almost-nooses around our necks, then we are not His disciples. It’s one of the scariest thoughts for 21st century Christianity. The fearless, gripped-by-Jesus approach to life which we see in the early church is the very opposite of the passivity of our post-modern world. We are called to a passionate, emotional life; a life where we each have someone to save, someone to die for, to live for, to sacrifice our self for. And this approach to life will naturally take care of how we use ‘our’ money. It is the passion-less life which results in a mean, careful approach to the spending of ‘our’ resources for others. Not only does all this imply we ought to be generous when faced head on with the needs of others. James 1:27 defines the essence of Christianity as ‘visiting’ the fatherless and widows. But the Greek word occurs also in Acts 6:3, translated ‘to look / search out’. We are to actually search out others’ needs, go to them, imagine what they might be in need of and supply it- rather than waiting to be confronted by those needs. It was of course exactly in this sense that God ‘visited’ us in the gift of His Son.
Job 31:24,25,28 speak in dire and chilling terms of trusting in wealth- and note that these words come from a rich believer who lost it all: “had I put my trust in gold, or called fine gold my security [cp. assurance and insurance policies, bank balances, portfolios of investments… banknotes stored under the carpet, jewellery hidden in a corner of some peasant home]… this would be a crime for condemnation; for I should have denied God above”. It’s noteworthy that Job claims that despite having been the wealthiest man in the Middle East, he never put his trust in it. But that shouldn’t lead us to think that we can so easily handle the possession of wealth. For to possess wealth leads most people to trust in it. And if we do this… this is a crime calling for our condemnation, it’s a denial of God, an effective atheism. Attitudes to wealth are that important. In 2 Cor. 8:4,5 Paul parallels giving to the poor believers with giving our own selves to the Lord. Every act of generosity to the Lord's people is a giving to Him personally. Paul had obviously grasped the huge implications of the Lord's teaching that whenever His people are cold, thirsty, in need... then He is in such need, and every ministration to them is a ministration to Him. 2 Cor. 8:9 teaches that our response to the Lord's sacrifice should be giving to others until we are poor, reflecting the Lord's making of Himself 'poor' to the extent of being left naked and dead, hanging upon a stake of wood. We must review all our generosity in this light. Is it a giving of our abundance, or is it a giving until we make ourselves poor...? The practical implications of this are huge.
Notes
(1) Martin Hengel, Property And Riches In The Early Church (London: S.C.M., 1974) p. 1.
(2) Adolf von Harnack, Marcion (Berlin, 1921) p. 24.
