Following up from yesterday’s post – I promised the
little-anticipated part two of this month’s edition of The Pastor’s Library –
so here it is.
Once again here’s my little disclaimer - just because I
recommend a book does NOT mean
I fully endorse EVERYTHING the
author says, either in that book or elsewhere - but if I recommend a book it
does mean that I believe there is enough worthwhile material to make the
exercise in reading and pondering an edifying experience for the believer. So
here is a continuation what I’ve been reading lately:
Ben Witherington III is rapidly becoming one of my
favourite New Testament scholars. Both through his books and his amazing
commitment to blogging I have been blessed and informed by his knowledge and
insights on the word of God and his commentary on the state of the Church.
After the 2008 financial crisis hit the USA and then the rest of the world he
decided that the time was right to revisit just what exactly Jesus said about
money.
This past June I had the privilege of attending our biannual
District Conference where I was treated to a series of messages by Rev. SteveKerr on the issue of stewardship in the church – not stewardship in the sense
of filling your church’s coffers – but a holistic approach to stewardship that
didn’t focus solely on the “10%” that you expected people to tithe to your
general fund but instead was more concerned with discipling people how to
manage the other 90% in a way that was congruent with the teachings of Christ.
As a pastor I was completely convicted that this was a message that our people
needed desperately to hear – so I resolved that week that this fall I was going
to dive in where pastors fear to tread and I was going to talk to my people
about money.
Which brings me back to Ben Witherington’s book:
I knew enough to know that I didn’t know enough to preach
with authority on this topic – so this summer I started researching. I
downloaded and listened to sermons from any preacher that I recognised and even
moderately trusted on the topic of money and stewardship, I searched blogs and
online articles from well known pastors and scholars on the issue and in my
research I stumbled across a mention of this book. Seeing the topic of the work
and being familiar with the author it was one of the first purchases I made along
the downward spiral toward my new addiction to the kindle store. I found the
background information insightful and the commentary compelling and it would
not be an understatement to say that it has really challenged me to reframe how
I look at the issues of money and wealth primarily in my own life and finances –
but also as a pastor looking at leading a church.
Witherington begins the book with an appeal to creation:
The Earth is the LORD’s and everything in it. When we think that we actually
own anything we’re missing the point of the entire canon of Scripture – we own
NOTHING. In fact we were created to be caretakers of someone else’s stuff –
that is the first commission given to Adam and Eve – tend the garden. Before
sin, before the fall, before we went and screwed everything up we were created
to be stewards. The biggest problem the church faces today with regards to
money is that we’ve missed this foundational truth that trickles down to
everything else we believe. Creation needs to be the starting point for any
theology of wealth and money that the church explores and Witherington does a
good job directing the reader to it.
He then goes onto look at the perceptions and
understanding of wealth in the Old Testament – particularly in Wisdom
literature. Here it should be noted that Witherington is a New Testament
scholar not an Old Testament scholar and the focus of this book is on Jesus and
his teachings on money. I think Witherington did an admirable job here – and there
was nothing that I would find contentious or in conflict with what other people
I have been studying have said about money but I think that there is probably a
lot more gold to mine (pardon the metaphor) in these books than Witherington
takes the time to expose.
From the Old Testament we jump to world of Jesus where Witherington
shows of his chops as a NT scholar by explaining in great detail the financial
practices of the world Jesus walked in during the first century. Witherington
spends a lot of time making sure the reader is aware that Jesus did not live in
a world where money (in the strictest use of the word) was readily available or
in wide use. Jesus lived in a culture where transactions were still completed
by bartering of goods and the introduction of “money” in the sense of currency
was still gaining traction. Before jumping directly into Jesus actual teaching
on money Witherington makes five big observations that need to be understood to
properly understand what Jesus says in the Gospels.
1. The ancient economy was not a money economy
2. There was no free market capitalism in
Jesus world
3. Money had explicit religious connotations
in antiquity
4. Religious values affected how one viewed
property, money and prosperity (see
the discussion on creation)
5. By Jesus’ day there had been a long history
of Jews not ruling their own country (to
borrow a contemporary maxim: The Jews were the 99%)
Witherington then uses the following chapters that constitute
the bulk of the work to exegete and explain what Jesus says about money, what
Paul says about money, what James says about money and (most surprisingly to someone
still inundated with dispensational pre-millennial eschatology) what John of
Patmos says about money in the book of Revelation – that was a really
interesting chapter. I’m not going to recount all of his observations here
because that would a)take too long and b)spoil at least one of my sermons in
the upcoming series – but suffice it to say it was really enlightening.
After looking at the Biblical texts themselves
Witherington finishes the book with a couple of chapters of editorializing on
what he’s just taken the reader through; focusing on developing a truly
Christian theology of stewardship and giving and also allowing Christ to work
in us – to deprogram us from the lies perpetrated by a culture of conspicuous
consumption. The last two chapters are especially hard hitting but only because
Witherington relies so heavily on where he’s just finished taking the reader
through the Biblical texts – I was left feeling that even if I wanted to argue
with his conclusions I’d have to deny Scripture to do it.
As an added bonus in this book Witherington provides some
excellent appendices. The first one is a really quick-hit rebuttal of 10
Christian “myths” about money. All of them were things that I had heard at one
time or another in churches, but each of them unbiblical at the root. It’s a
great quick reference guide to some of the most common questions one might be
asked on the topic. And the second was a real blessing – a sermon (in full
text) by John Wesley on “The Use of Money”. Even if you don’t take my advice
and pick up this book I urge you to at least read this sermon – its public
domain and free on the internet and I doubt that I’ll ever preach a message on
this topic even approaching its profundity.
If you haven’t already figured out that I highly
recommend this book then you really haven’t been reading. Go and buy it – or at
the very least if you’re part of the EAC family reading this blog, make sure
you get to church beginning October 23 for our series “The Final Taboo:
Stewardship in the 21st Century”.
Until next time,
Chris
No comments:
Post a Comment