“Go and sell all your possessions and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me…and I assure you that everyone who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or property, for my sake and for the Good News, will receive now in return a hundred times as many houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and property–along with persecution. And in the world to come that person will have eternal life.” Mark 10:21b, 29-30
“Jesus was always talking about a reverse economy. He talked about how if you want to receive, you give. If you want to lead, you follow. That the poor are rich and you only really live for certain things if you are willing to die to them…following Jesus means doing the math differently…”
Bob Goff in Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012) 112.
I hope you have enjoyed the recent thoughts from the saints of old. For the near future, I am shifting the attention of my research and reading to the modern era.
Today’s meditation comes from Bob Goff via my daughter, Sophie Hoag, who shared it with me from her summer reading. Thankfully she said it reminded her of me and how we have taught her to live. Goff is spot on in this excerpt she shared with me. The teachings of Jesus require followers to do math differently!
In the economy of this world, which says “money solves all our problems,” many Christians (wrongly!) teach the opposite of Jesus. They say that good stewards accumulate money and store up treasures on earth. Don’t fall into that trap. If you have, get out now! Someday you will have to give an account for your stewardship.
Instead, we must do the opposite! We can function, no, we can flourish, in a “reverse economy” knowing that in Christ we have everything we need. In Christ, we are made to work in order to have something to return to God, to enjoy with our families, and to share with others.
Don’t live this way because Goff or I say so!
Do it because it’s what Jesus says all over the Gospels. In the NT Greek of the First Letter to Timothy it’s referred to as the oikonomian theou, the economy of God. The teachings of Jesus on money are not vague. They point to a reverse economy. For years I only selectively followed them.
What about you? Is it time to shift in reverse?