I urge you, as I did when I was on my way to Macedonia, to remain in Ephesus so that you may instruct certain people not to teach different teachings and not to occupy themselves with myths and endless genealogies that promote speculations rather than the divine training [literally, οἰκονομίαν θεοῦ or the economy of God} that is known by faith. But the aim of such instruction is love that comes from a pure heart, a good conscience, and sincere faith. 1 Timothy 1:3-5
“Responsible materiality depends upon glad generosity that is grounded in deep gratitude for the gift of life in all its abundance. In a society of competition among individuals for scarce goods, the pressure to get ahead is without restraint.
But responsible materiality does not inhabit a world of scarce goods. Rather it resides in a creation of God’s good abundance. Thus, responsible materiality is exactly a contradiction to the impulse for competitive accumulation. The ground for generosity is the awareness that the world is funded by a generous, active God who has made creation as a gift that keeps on giving, and that we are on the receiving end of that endless gift-giving!
Thus we need not and cannot imagine that we are self-made or self-sufficient. Nor does it follow that “I made my money and it belongs to me.” Responsible materiality recognizes that we are each and all embedded in a life-giving network, and we are permitted the glorious chance to be full participants in and contributors to that life-giving network.”
Walter Brueggemann in Materiality As Resistance: Five Elements for Moral Action in the Real World (Louisville: WJKP, 2020), 24-25.
Competition to accumulate puts people on a path that causes them to miss out on life. And the operating system of this way of living is fueled by scarcity thinking. People step on each other to get ahead and they never have enough.
Because responsible materiality functions in God’s abundant economy and represents a life-giving network, we get the opposite. It’s a contradiction that puts us in a place where we realize only by living obediently do we always have enough.
Hear that again. I will put it plain and simple. Competition and scarcity lead to death and never having enough. Contradiction and abundance lead to life and we always have enough. The right path is only “known by faith.”
I stumbled on this idea of life-giving network or abundant economy of all things in my doctoral work related to Ephesus, 1 Timothy, and Ephesians. The idea of God’s economy appears in today’s Scripture.
And in Ephesians 1:7-10 it says that the One that brings this life-giving economy together is Christ. And in Ephesians 3:8-12 it tells us that the church is God’s channel for making known his economy or this life-giving network.
Furthermore, 1 Timothy 6:17-19 teaches us that the enjoyment and sharing of resources is the pathway to grasping this life. We only figure it out as we live it out. Again, the life-giving path, the only right way is “known by faith.”
All that said, responsible materiality and rich Christian generosity simply cannot happen in a world of competitive accumulation. No wonder Jesus is so explicit about where he wants us to store treasure. We only find life in obedience.
We can do this. God’s got us.