Green

Every once in a while you walk away from a situation and your heart is spinning. You’re not necessarily sure why, but your spirit is really wrestling with something and you feel like screaming.

I left a Habitat for Humanity meeting earlier this evening, and while leaving ECSU’s student center, I ran into a friend of mine that I had met last semester. He called me over to introduce a friend of his (which is something he tends to do quite often) and I ended up sitting down for quite some time. My friend tends to ask thought-provoking questions out of thin air. Tonight he asked, “Nate, what is your dream?”.

I thought about all the various things that I had been doing lately and threw this out there:”My immediate dream is to mobilize the student body of ECSU into direct service that will hopefully develop into political shifting and involvement. I will go where God wants me to go and after these next three years I don’t really have a set dream other than to just go where God wants.”

I’m not ashamed of my faith in God and love talking about my relationship with Christ. The issue is when you run into other Christians…sometimes things get a little hairy…

We ended up talking about my friend’s dream to bring Haiti and the DR out of their impoverishment. He had a good plan. The friend he introduced me to happened to be his business partner, so of course we ended up talking about money.

I had been doing a little “googling” lately on the “New Monasticism“. So our discussion provoked an observation of min. I see that there are those who want to make money and use it to its fullest potential, and then those whose emphasis is more on deepening their walk and developing relationships (New Monasticism). Now I know that the New Monasticism is not just a bunch of people who disregard finances and talk about Jesus, I’m only using them on the other end of the spectrum to demonstrate a community whose emphasis is more on interdependence and deepening their walk. I notice an issue with the people who just want to make money and then use it… it becomes their goal. Making money becomes their purpose for existing. We all know that intentions are useless…

Money is something that has always confused me. It is not evil, but sometimes it seems more tempting to people than alcohol is to a recovering alcoholic. I see people who dedicate their entire lives to making extra money, and they get so caught up in squeezing out that extra dollar that they lose track of everything else that matters. Their words and dreams become empty. Their faith becomes a means to multiplying their profit. They begin to milk God for all he’s got. It becomes less about the surrender of something that isn’t ours and more about giving in order to receive.

That is what bothered me tonight. It is entirely possible that these gentlemen were genuinely interested in making money in order to have it be used by God however he directs. But as I walked away, something really irked me about the whole situation. My soul was getting itchy as they invited me to come to a business meeting Tuesday night to see if I would be interested in making some extra money on the side.

The emphasis from this meeting seemed to be that if we tithe and donate, then God will bless us and give us more money back then we know what to do with.

That is not something I want.

I do not want my primary goal to be making money. God will provide me with money as I walk where he wants me to walk. As I follow him through college, career, serving, and anything else, HE will provide for me. I will be wise with materials I am blessed with. I will invest. I will tithe and donate. But NOT for the means of my own gain. If God sees fit to bless me with sufficient and comfortable finances and luxuries then that is his choice for which I will be very appreciative.

Perhaps I’m wrong; these are only my first reactions. My desire certainly leads me to a place where I would rather pour my effort into deepening my faith and trust BEFORE worrying about monetary gain. Money is in God’s hands to and certainly we need it to be under the influence of people with integrity- but I grow cautious when it seems to be such a primary goal for young Christians…

What do you think? My thoughts are pretty jumbled, but my spirit was pretty hung up on this…