Susan P. Currie: What do you need to detach from so that you can attach to God?

“Detachment—dying to sin, and to temptations of the false-self—is hard work. It can be painful, and it can feel dangerous. The wilderness is not a safe place. But we don’t go there alone. Jesus, who himself was ministered to by angels during his wilderness encounters with the evil one, walks alongside us, his rod and his staff protecting and comforting us.

It’s helpful to remember the goal of detachment. This is not an eastern religious emptying for the sake of being empty. It is not a hair-shirt ascetic that values pain for pain’s sake. It is the path of life that Jesus modeled for us, a detaching from (sin and false-‐self) to make room for attaching to (God, and true-‐self fullness in him), a dying in order to live.”

Susan P. Currie, Director of Selah and Associate for Spiritual Formation, in Silencio, a resource of Leadership Transformations, Inc., March 2013.

“Giving and contentment are two sides of the same coin. Together they represent the positive alternative to greed. If contentment calls a halt to the grabbing dimension of greed, giving addresses the keeping aspect.”

Brian Rosner in Beyond Greed (Kingsford, Australia: Matthias Media, 2004) 117.

“Contentment does not mean grudgingly tolerating a second-best existence. It means being completely satisfied because we truly have enough. [In Phil 4:11-13 we find that] Paul has learned the secret of contentment, because he truly has everything he needs. His desire is satisfied, because he knows the surpassing worth of Christ, compared to which everything else is nothing…

Precisely because of the inestimable worth of knowing Christ and being known by him, Paul’s desire for earthly improvement has been relegated to the status of indifference. He can put up with poverty, and put up with abundance. Either way is fine by him, because he already has everything he needs.

The obvious question is: Why then are we Christians so often just as discontent as our pagan neighbors? …

The simple answer is that we forget the secret. Having sold everything to buy the most precious pearl in the world, we pop it in a drawer and forget about it. We take our eyes off Christ, and become preoccupied instead with our earthly circumstances…

Christ is the most important thing, and we shouldn’t be too worried about our earthly ups and downs. We know that. But keeping that knowledge clear in our minds and hearts, where there is so much to distract us from it—that’s the challenge.

Interestingly, and I think not accidentally, Paul’s closing exhortations to the Philippians 4…keep us strongly focused on what we possess in Christ and his heavenly kingdom, and thus more content in any an every circumstance…

Paul exhorts [us]: to rejoice in the Lord always (4:4); … to not be anxious but to pray (4:5-7); … to focus our thoughts on what is just, pure, and excellent (4:8); and … to put into practice the apostolic teaching they have seen in Paul’s life (4:9).

All these have the effect of focusing our hearts and minds on Christ Jesus, and increasing our knowledge of him. They lift our eyes to him, and to our citizenship in heaven, from where we await the Savior’s return. That, or rather he, is the secret of contentment.”

Tony Payne in “The Secret of Contentment” in Beyond Greed by Brian Rosner (Kingsford, Australia: Matthias Media, 2004) 101-106.

“I was extremely pleased to have come yesterday to visit your hospital for the destitute and dying people. I do not hide that I was deeply impressed and moved as the sight of so much misery but also of so much generosity on the part of your little band of religious ladies. Almighty God must look on them with love and pleasure. Great, exceedingly great will be the reward of the good nuns in heaven. Our Lord inspired you when asking for this hospital and your nuns have been inspired when accepting it so generously. Let us hope this is a standing lesson of charity for all to see. The lay people who help you are so admirable. God bless them abundantly! That’s all I can say, for no reward on earth will repay them.”

Archbishop Ferdinand Périer, S.J. Letter to Mother Teresa on October 1, 1952 in Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light ed. Brian Kolodiejchuk (New York: Doubleday, 2007) 145.

“Fasting helps us keep our balance in life. How easily we begin to allow nonessentials to take precedence in our lives. How quickly we crave things we do not need until we are enslaved by them.

Paul writes, “All things are lawful for me, but I will not be enslaved by anything” (1 Cor 6:12).

Our human cravings and desires are like rivers that tend to overflow their banks; fasting helps keep them in their proper channels.

“I pommel my body and subdue it,” says Paul. (1 Cor 9:27). Likewise, David writes, “I afflicted myself with fasting” (Ps 35:13).

This is not excessive asceticism; it is discipline and discipline brings freedom…In this, as in all matters, we can expect God to reward those who diligently seek him.”

Richard Foster in Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (New York: HarperCollins, 1988) 56.

“The Lord enjoins us to do good to all without exception, though the greater part, if estimated by the own merit, are most unworthy of it, but Scripture subjoins a most excellent reason, when it tells us that we are not to look to what men in themselves deserve, but to attend to the image of God, which exists in all, and to which we owe all honour and love. But in those who are of the household of faith, the same rule is to be more carefully observed, inasmuch as that image is renewed and restored in the by the Spirit of Christ. Therefore, whoever be the man that is presented to you as needing your assistance, you have no ground for declining to give it to him.”

John Calvin (1509-1564) in Institutes Book III 3.7.6.

“Our culture calls us consumers. To consume means to use up, devour, or spend wastefully. How’s that working for us?

Consumer is more than a word; it’s a worldview. If I am a consumer, I am the most important person in the world. Life is all about me–my pleasure, my comfort, my happiness. If I’m a consumer, happiness is found in money and stuff. And if I’m a consumer, life is about competition. I’m happiest when I have more than others have and more than I had before.

And yet, the Bible says these are the exact wrong priorities for anyone seeking a meaningful, purposeful life. From a financial perspective, the Bible describes us as stewards, or managers. God has entrusted us with His resources in order to fulfill His purposes.

When Jesus was asked directly what’s most important in life, He said to love God. He then said our second most important priority is to love others. And the Bible says we’ve all been given talents and passions in order to make a difference with our lives.

Since those are the three overarching purposes of our life, they are the three overarching purposes of money. We are to use money to love God, love others, and make our unique contribution to the world.

If you were to honestly evaluate your current use of money, how well does it line up with these three purposes?”

Matt Bell in “The Purpose of Money: Does our Consumption Reflect Christ?” from Disciple, Summer 2012, 4.

“Stewardship must must be reduced to a fund raising campaign on behalf of institutions, religious or otherwise. It is a way of life and not mere rhetoric for motivating charitable contributions. God has a prior claim on everything and not just that which we label as tithe.”

Ken Carder, United Methodist Bishop, quoted by Gary Moore in Look Up America! (Keller, TX: Austin Brothers, 2012) 172.

“It’s a queer feeling to be so utterly dependent on the help of others, but at least it teaches one to be grateful, a lesson I hope I shall never forget. In normal life we hardly realize how much more we receive than we give, and life cannot be rich without such gratitude. It is so easy to overestimate the importance of our own achievements compared with what we owe to the help of others.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945), Letters and Papers from Prison, from a letter dated “September 13, 1943” ed. Eberhard Bethge, trans. Reginald H. Fuller (Macmillan, 1953).

“The way stewardship is practiced in North America often has little to do with the Bible. It stems primarily from the most influential American “theologian”, Andrew Carnegie…

In an article published in 1889, Carnegie argued that it would not behoove the Christian faith to say anything about how money was made, since the process of producing wealth is determined by inexorable natural laws…

These laws [from his perspective] determine the determine the acquisition of wealth and fully justify the discrepancy in wealth between rich and poor…

The Christian religion, Carnegie maintained, becomes pertinent only after the production process has run its course and money has been made and reinvested. [In his thinking], only then should Christianity enter the scene to help successful producers and acquisitors know how to disperse their surplus money prudentially, that is, charitably.

Carnegie even provided the rules for distributing surplus money. It should be given only to the “deserving poor” and only to those who support the system under which the wealth was produced in the first place.

In other words, the Christian faith [according to Carnegie] has to do with charity, and charity does not extend to the basic questions of economics. Thus we have the basic understanding of stewardship in old-line and newer churches in North America: the voluntary giving of left-over money and time.”

Doug Meeks in God the Economist, (Augsburg Fortress, 1989) 20-21, as partially cited by Gary Moore in Look Up America! (Keller, TX: Austin Brothers, 2012) 139.