TEN
Generosity
Babylon, like all empires, was ruled by wealth. Class systems built on race and nobility were the norm for ancient empires, as was the constant striving to acquire wealth for the empire and for personal gain. In America, the economy is king. Capitalism is built on supply and demand, buying and selling. Opportunity is available for anyone regardless of race, class, or gender, but the system favors the rich and the privileged. While many poor people pull themselves up and out of poverty, most can’t find a way out, and too many slip down the rungs of the economic ladder—and off the rungs altogether.
In our modern-day Babylon, the motto “Everyone for himself” fits the bill. The practice of generosity is antithetical to this capitalistic motto. Money is a powerful thing, and God has always known that money has the power to wrap itself around our hearts and choke the divine life of the Spirit right out of us.
This is why the Israelites were called to model life free from the fear of scarcity, trusting in a God who provides abundantly. God foresaw long ago that when his community of emancipated slaves entered into a land flowing with milk and honey, they would be susceptible to the type of self-made success that causes people to make an idol out of the things they accumulate and sets them up to be prideful and arrogant. God warned his people about the temptation surrounding life in a wealthy land:
For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land—a land with brooks, streams, and deep springs gushing out into the valleys and hills; a land with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, pomegranates, olive oil and honey; a land where bread will not be scarce and you will lack nothing; a land where the rocks are iron and you can dig copper out of the hills.
When you have eaten and are satisfied, praise the LORD your God for the good land he has given you. Be careful that you do not forget the LORD your God, failing to observe his commands, his laws and his decrees that I am giving you this day. Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. (Deut. 8:7–14)
Knowing that wealth can cause spiritual amnesia, God warned about the deceptive powers of nice things.
God often warned his people that wealth and prosperity could lead them to forget who they were and what God had done for them. Perhaps the harshest of God’s judgments against Israel as a nation was that their own self-interest and greed drove them to take advantage of lower-class people and as a result brought disorder to God’s dream of harmony among his chosen people. Instead of loving their neighbors, they began exploiting them. Not only did they lack generosity, but they also violently attacked the concept altogether through arrogant consumption. In short, they did anything to save a buck. When we are willing to take advantage of others to get a better deal, and we do so without regret, we have bought ourselves a ticket into exile.
People matter to God. The desire to accumulate wealth often leads to the exploitation of people who matter to God. When we forget our own poverty before God, we quickly forget the poor who live among us. What is worse, we may even exploit the poor and find ourselves at war with the God who is their protector. We see this warning throughout the Bible. Literally hundreds of verses show us that a lack of generosity sets us on a road to exploitive behavior. Here are just a few:
He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing. (Deut. 10:18 ESV)
For there will never cease to be poor in the land. Therefore I command you, “You shall open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in your land.” (Deut. 15:11 ESV)
You would shame the plans of the poor,
but the LORD is his refuge. (Ps. 14:6 ESV)
Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the LORD,
and he will repay him for his deed. (Prov. 19:17 ESV)
When the poor and needy seek water,
and there is none,
and their tongue is parched with thirst,
I the LORD will answer them;
I the God of Israel will not forsake them. (Isa. 41:17 ESV)
Behold, this was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. (Ezek. 16:49 ESV)
When we practice generosity in exile, we are doing a whole lot more than lending a helping hand. We are preserving our own souls and overthrowing the systemic mind-set that leads to exploitation of the poor. In small but significant ways, generosity is the powerful practice of breaking the vicious cycle of self-interest, freeing us to see ourselves in the faces of our neighbors. In practicing generosity, we remember our own poverty before God and his gracious and abundant provision of mercy, which we didn’t earn or work to obtain.
God has been generous with us, and when we practice generosity, we testify that the chains of greed and overconsumption have been broken by the power of Jesus. Generosity is a revolution of grace. Once we have truly experienced the generous grace of God, we will graciously extend generosity to others.
Have We Really Experienced Grace?
The sad reality is that God’s people in the United States are not very generous. Christianity Today interviewed several authors, inviting them to speak to the fact that Christians in 2011 gave just 2.43 percent of their income to charities. Ron Sider, author of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, had this to say:
For Christians in the richest nation in history to be giving only 2.43 percent of their income to their churches is not just stinginess, it is biblical disobedience—blatant sin. We have become so seduced by the pervasive consumerism and materialism of our culture that we hardly notice the ghastly disjunction between our incredible wealth and the agonizing poverty in the world. Over the last 40 years, American Christians (as we have grown progressively richer) have given a smaller and smaller percent of our growing income to the ministries of our churches. Such behavior flatly contradicts what the Bible teaches about God, justice, and wealth. We should be giving not 2.4 percent but 10 percent, 15 percent, even 25 to 35 percent or more to kingdom work. Most of us could give 20 percent and not be close to poverty.1
We seem to be suffering from the same amnesia about which God warned Israel. We are so taken with the abundance of things to spend our money on that we worry we will miss out on something if we give our money away. And though we tell ourselves we don’t approve of oppressive labor conditions, if we can get those products cheaper because someone somewhere worked like the Israelites in Egypt did to make it, we will more than likely buy those products to save a buck. You can see the fingerprints of Babylon smeared all over thinking like this.
When it comes to our money, we look a whole lot more like Babylon than we do the people of God. But it’s never too late to let God set us free from endless wanting and selfish accumulation. God’s dream for his people is that we would be an alternative community sustained by God even while we travel the aisles of a consumer culture that promises endless pleasure through endless products.
The transforming power of generosity ushers us into another story, a story in which as God’s chosen people we use things and love people instead of using people and loving things.
The Bible doesn’t recommend poverty in place of greed. Money is not the root of evil. The love of money is the problem. God calls us not to love money but to love God and others. Just as money can be used powerfully for evil, so it can also be used for good. When we taste the freedom that God gives us through the practice of generosity, we can become a powerful force displaying the generous kingdom of God. God’s kingdom of generosity is better than the oppressive kingdoms of greed and consumption, and every human heart knows this somewhere deep down.
We become a living demonstration of the generosity of Christ when we practice his generous ways. Embedded in a world of endless anxiety as people strive to get more and pay less is a people waiting to burst forth in power declaring a better story. These people are the faithful presence of Jesus on earth and a prophetic witness to a better story.
To Bless
Generosity reflects the divine vision as we care for each other using our means to ensure that everyone eats tonight. When we experience generosity from another person, it radically and powerfully impacts us, because this type of gracious action is alien to the ways of life in Babylon.
The practice of generosity frees us from anxiety over scarcity and creates space inside us for acts of love. Exiles have a better story to tell, and freely sharing with others blesses the receiver and sets the giver free.
If you showed up at our church on any given Sunday, you would see large silver buckets set up at the communion table. Each one has an odd bumper sticker that says “Change for a Dollar.” Change for a Dollar is an on-ramp to the practice of generosity. Every Sunday as a community, we each put a dollar in a bucket. The money is collected and set aside for anyone in the community who finds a need in our city that they sense God is calling them to meet. It is really a stretch to call this generosity because, honestly, a dollar is not a big sacrifice. We are not a rich congregation, but most of us can afford a buck.
The money is specifically designated for people outside our community. When God shows one of us a need, our entire community stand together to help meet it. A few times a month we hear stories of how people were able to demonstrate the generosity of God in the life of someone who found themselves in a place of need.
One woman told the story of a neighbor who was disabled and needed a wheelchair. For some reason, the system had failed to cover the cost, and the woman found herself housebound. Our church member was able to give her the money to cover the cost of the wheelchair in the name of Jesus.
Another story described a single mom who had been evicted from her apartment after her boyfriend had taken all of her resources and left her. A friend and coworker stepped in, and we were able to get her into an apartment with the first month’s payment and deposit.
Hundreds of these stories, of people who were up against the harsh realities of scarcity, have passed through our church over the years. God, in his care, spoke into the hearts of his people, and gifts of hundreds of dollars were given to meet the needs.
Even though the situations are very different, the one thing that is the same in every story is the response. Men and women who receive a gift are drawn to tears, finding it hard to believe that someone cared enough to help meet their needs. For some, the generosity sparks an interest in faith. Others are left with the imprint of generosity on their lives from a generous God. The message is simple: a community in this city believes they have been rescued from their own poverty before God, and they are learning to practice his generosity.
All that for a dollar? That is the power of money in Babylon, but it is also the power of community. If each person were to practice generosity individually, their single dollar wouldn’t make much of an impact, if any. But when we put our loaves and fish together, Jesus transforms them into a source of abundance that becomes a feast of joy for someone who is stuck in Babylon’s wilderness.
When we as the people of God practice generosity in Babylon as a community, we can powerfully change the story of the purpose of money, revealing the power of love, which is so much stronger and more life-giving than the power of greed.
We call Change for a Dollar an on-ramp to generosity because it doesn’t require much generosity to put a dollar in a bucket. After experiencing how much God can do with just a dollar, we begin to dream about what he might do if we were generous with our whole lives. What would happen, for example, if we collectively gave our time?
We have gotten a glimpse of this type of generosity as well. In Portland, a healthy partnership exists between churches and local schools. Over two hundred church and school partnerships exist.
Every summer before school starts, followers of Jesus from all over the city fill the school yards with rakes and shovels, truckloads of bark, thousands of backpacks and school supplies. During the month of August, almost every school in Portland experiences a makeover before the students return. We have served alongside principals and teachers who can’t believe we keep showing up year after year. We have been able to work with the superintendent of schools in every district and various mayors throughout the years. Even Senator Ron Wyden has shown up to shovel a little bark with us.
The first year we collectively served the schools as the broader faith community in Portland was 2008. Over twenty-five thousand volunteers showed up to serve public schools. Sam Adams, who was mayor of Portland at that time, called it the greatest volunteer effort in the history of Portland.
Portland is not the most religious city by a long shot. The civic leaders who first partnered with local churches drew lots of flak from the broader Portland community. Suspicious people wrote and called to warn that this was all a ploy to proselytize their children. But school was not in session, and we serve without an agenda. We serve because our God has served us in Christ and called us to extend his generosity to the world.
I remember asking a city commissioner why he keeps partnering with us, given all the negative reactions he receives. He told me, “You are the only group that keeps showing up year after year, and your volunteers save the district well over a million dollars. Honestly, we can’t afford not to partner with you.”
Whether through a dollar in a bucket or four hours on a Saturday pulling weeds and painting walls, when we practice generosity, we bless the world as the faithful presence of Christ in our communities.
To Resist
When we practice generosity, we also resist the false narrative that our money and our time are our gods. We get to announce that giving is better than receiving and that when we give our lives away, we create more life in the world.
Through the practice of generosity, we announce that people are sacred and are not to be used or exploited but loved and served. We announce that money is a gift that can be shared instead of a master to be served. Generosity is a prophetic practice in that it reverses the rules of Babylon and critiques its false curse upon those who have landed on hard times.
We are often overwhelmed when we realize that we have been assimilated into the attitudes and values of Babylon in regard to our money. Even if we are opposed to selfish consumption, we have to admit that wanting more is something we struggle with.
There is a way to freedom, however, and it is through the practice of generosity. We don’t have to figure out how to fix the systemic issues of an empire whose corporations are too big to fail. We are not called to fix Babylon; we are called to resist it and to be a prophetic witness in the midst of it.
The Three Parts of Generosity
The simple way forward is found in three words: remember, repent, and practice.
Remember
We remember that we all stand poor before God. Every bit of mercy, grace, and new life that we have experienced was unearned and undeserved. We were enslaved to sin and maybe enslaved to money, but we were not without hope, because God is a generous God. We are called to remember that Jesus took on our poverty in full. He gave up all his wealth to become what we are so that he could make us what he is. He became poor so that he could make many rich. We remember that we have received abundant generosity from Jesus and are still in need of it daily.
Repent
Repentance means to turn around. Jesus welcomes us to repent and admit that we have bought into Babylon’s ways. We admit that the story we have been shaped by has come to an end. We are closing the book on it, and we are opening up a new book with a better story. Repentance is confessing that we are God’s children, not citizens of Babylon, and that we are ready to put his generosity on display.
The best way to ensure that we have repented is to practice generosity. We don’t have to make a big demonstration, but we should feel some effect in our bank accounts and on our calendars. God wants us to be generous with both our time and our money. People who live congruently in all aspects of their lives experience true, whole-life transformation. Jesus didn’t save our souls to the exclusion of our checkbooks.
Practicing generosity opens up creative ways to give money that we have set aside as an act of worship toward our generous God. From tipping a waitress more to supporting a single mom with a small group of friends, we can find countless ways to practice generosity.
With each act, each dollar, each selfless expression of love, we bless those in Babylon and resist the Babylonian story in which we live. We bear witness that a generous God has a generous people living in exile. We declare that we are following our King, who saved us in our own poverty and set us free to enter into the poverty of others. Our God is not afraid of scarcity. He showers us with abundance, and together we put that abundance on display as we help the people in need whom we call neighbors and friends.
A revolution of generosity is breaking in through God’s people. We are finding freedom from being enslaved to money. We are recognizing that we have enough and that there is enough to share. We are telling a different story of human purpose and the human condition. We are living as exiles in a country not our own, but we are free exiles, no longer carrying the chains of greed that once held us down.
Jesus practiced generosity to set us free to be a generous people.