I recently heard John Eldredge, author of the popular book Wild at Heart, address a major conference audience. It was a riveting talk punctuated from the Gospel of John with movie clips from the likes of "Gladiator" and "Last of the Mohicans."

The major theme of the talk was that we as Christians are naive as to the reality and severity of the daily battle between good and evil that is taking place all around us.

As I listened I couldn't help but think that one of the major arenas (dare I even say, THE major arena?) where that battle is taking place for many of us is in our financial lives.

We live in a very materialistic environment. Webster's definition of materialism is, "The belief that everything can be explained by physical matter." That is a theological statement. It denies the existence of the spiritual or transcendental. That makes materialism more than just another 'ism' that happens to lure people into consumer debt and fill their marriages with conflict, and so on. It is nothing less than a competing theology with a god called money.

The battle with this competing theology is played out in several ways. One is in the practical, day-to-day arena of our lives. The battle there is manifested by such negative consequences as consumer debt, relational stress and conflict, guilt and shame, and embarrassment.

A second venue of the battle is in our spiritual lives. There we come face-to-face with the realities that we cannot serve both God and money, that our hearts will be with our treasure and that the deceitfulness of riches can choke out God's word in our lives and make it unfruitful. Sometimes in this phase of the battle, Scripture tells us we wander from the faith and pierce ourselves with all kinds of grief.

The third arena is one not often talked about. For lack of a better term, let's call it the global arena. Here, our concern as Christians for the environment, the poor, and for world peace cause us, or should cause us, to again confront the enemy of materialism.

Is financial stewardship education and training important? It is if you care about the day-to-day issues facing people in our congregations, their spiritual growth and well-being, and the major global issues we face!

Julia Shore in her book Church on Sunday, Work on Monday, claims that the greatest act of self-marginalization by today's church is our failure to connect faith and finances in a meaningful way. I hope and pray that the day will come when that will no longer be true of any church that bears the name of Christ.

Dick Towner is executive director of the Good $ense stewardship movement at the Willow Creek Association (www.goodsenseministry.com). He has also served as director of Finance and director of the Good $ense ministry at Willow Creek Community Church, Minister of Administration at College Hill Presbyterian, and Associate Dean of Students at the University of Cincinnati.

Copyright © 2006 Promiseland.

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