We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

5402444194_75b286bde4_z

How Much Is Enough?

Richard Beck over at Experimental Theology wrote a reflection on insights he gained from the book How Much is Enough?: Money and the Good Life by Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky. He points out how the advent of money changed the way we view our needs and made it easier to hoard without noticing it. It’s a challenging conversation to begin having when the culture around us is bombarding us with messages that manufacture desire. What do we really need? And, more importantly, how can we use our material blessings in ways that glorify God and bring his kingdom to earth?

From the article:

With the rise of money we’ve lost the ability to ask “What do I really need?” That’s a good old-fashioned use-value question that we should spend more time contemplating. Unfortunately, our questions tend to be exchange-value questions, questions like “How much can I buy?”

And with those sorts of questions leading us forward the words of Paul seem particularly prophetic and apt:

1 Timothy 6.10
For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.

Image by Kevin Dooley. Sourced via Flickr.

Category:
Tags: ,

Related Reading

A Brief Theology of Faith

It is often argued that Hebrews 11:1 provides us with a clear definition of faith. The NIV translates it as, “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” Most of the times when we use different translations of the Bible, the differences between them are about…

How To Fix The Church: The Kingdom of God (Part 4)

God has leveraged everything on the Church loving like Jesus loved, as outlined in our previous posts in this series. “By this the world will know you are my disciples,” Jesus said, “by your love” (Jn 13:35). By God’s own design, Christ-like love is supposed to be the proof that Jesus is real. In John…

How should Christians respond to Near Death Experiences?

In a recent Q and A session about the book of Revelation, Greg Boyd and Paul Eddy answer a question on How Christians should respond to claims of Near Death Experiences. You can view the entire Q and A HERE.

Kingdom Centeredness

A Silent Center white knuckles cling against peace and cries for release into chaos flying, centrifugal to death in attempt to salvage human breath for breathing,   through peeling purge that burns away flesh to white bone singed and aching   for skin new to inhale holy fire once again, until the timely scourge of…

The Cost of Holding On

Given Greg’s recent Twitter comments on the question of how we view what we own, we thought this article in the New York Times was particularly timely. What is the cost of holding onto things? As we accumulate more and more possessions, do we pay a price beyond the actual price tag? Although this piece…

Revolting Against Classism

All fallen societies and religions have a tendency to rank people according to class. All have ways of separating the insiders from the outsiders, the holy from the unholy and the more important people from the less important people. Jesus revolted against classism by the way he lived, a way defined by the Kingdom. Now,…