Prosperity

Fine dining typically means splurging a little for high-quality meat or fresh seafood. But what if money were truly no object?

Restaurant owners and chefs around the world create original dining experiences for those who want unique experiences. You know, like spending nearly $10,000 on a pizza or $1,000 on an ice cream sundae.

Here are a few of the world’s most expensive meals:

• Masa — New York. Dinner Omakase menu per person: $750 sushi-eating experience.

• SubliMotion —Dubai. Dinner per person: around $2,000. That’s more than the average family will spend for an entire month on food.

• De Daltons – The Netherlands. The Golden Boy Burger: $5,532.79. Chef Robbert Jan de Veen’s “The Golden Boy” is made with 100% Wagyu A5 meat, as well as Beluga caviar, king crab, Spanish Paleta Ibérico, white truffle, and English cheddar.

• Renato Viola — Salerno, Italy. Louis XIII Pizza: $9,184.32. Pizza toppings include: mozzarella di bufala, lobster, and caviar all flown in from all different parts of the world.

• The Fortress Resort and Spa — Sri Lanka. The Fortress Stilt Fisherman Indulgence Dessert: $14,500. The dessert features Italian cassata flavored with Irish cream with a pomegranate and mango compote. The base is adorned with an 80-carat aquamarine stone.

Possible Preaching Angles:

(1) Salvation and The Lord's Supper—They're both offered free of charge (although Jesus paid the price that we could never have paid), and the Lord's Supper is better than anything on this list. (2) Social Justice—While millions of people are malnourished, a few people can afford outrageously expensive, luxurious meals. (3) Simplicity; Provision—God promised to provide daily bread, not daily slice of "Louis XIII" pizza. (4) Hospitality—Hospitality is more about love and openness than about trying to offer a "world's best meal." Encourage people to keep it simple.

It would surprise many Americans, regardless of their race, to know that 2.5 million American Black men are in the financial upper class, according to an exhaustive report produced by the Institute for Family Studies (IFS):

Our new report, Black Men Making It in America, finds that despite the burdens they face—from residential segregation to workplace discrimination to over incarceration—more than one-half of Black men have made it into the middle or upper class as adults. This means that millions of Black men are flourishing financially in America. We find that slightly more than one-in-five (or about 2.5 million) Black men ages 18 to 64 have made it into the upper-third of the income distribution.

In fact, Black men have made marked progress over the last half-century in reaching the upper ranks of the income ladder. The share of Black men who are in the upper-income bracket rose from 13% in 1960 to 23% in 2016. Moreover, poverty among Black men has dropped dramatically over the same time, with the share of Black men in poverty falling from 41% to 18% since 1960. A majority of upper-income Black men in their fifties today were from low-income homes. Half grew up in one-parent families. How did they succeed?

We identified three major factors that are linked to the financial success of Black men in midlife today: education, work, and marriage. Black men who have a college degree, a full-time job, or a spouse are much more likely than their peers to end up in the upper-income bracket as fifty-something men. Included in this group are Black men who attended church regularly as young adults or served in the military. Having a sense of "personal agency" and believing they are responsible for their lives were also major indicators of success.

When the media only focuses on the negative, rather than revealing the facts and stories of accomplishments and prosperity, real harm is done. "First, it renders millions of successful Black men, and the paths they have taken to the American Dream, invisible. Second, it can lead to a sense of hopelessness for young Black men. With so much talk of 'Black failure' today, Black boys may start to feel 'why even bother when the odds are stacked against you?'”

Theft—or "shrinkage" as the retail industry calls it—is a big problem for stores that use self-checkout kiosks. The machines have created a new kind of "partial shrink" where someone pays for most of their stuff, but skips a few items.

One study revealed that about 6.7% of orders had some items that went unscanned (including accidentally)—far higher than the typical 0.3% shrink rate for a fully-staffed checkout. It might not surprise you that in a survey of 5,000 shoppers, the majority admitted to accidentally bagging an item that didn't scan at the kiosk.

But something the survey revealed that might be surprising? Wealthier people were most likely of all to intentionally steal, they told surveyors. Of people who admitted to stealing, the biggest group was among the 18% of people with household incomes of more than $100,000. (When considering people with household incomes under $35,000, 14% said they'd purposely taken an item without scanning it.)

Terrence Schulman a lawyer of the Schulman Center for Compulsive Theft, Shopping and Hoarding said, “I want to admit that I don't know what the truth is, but I'll give you a few theories”:

I think that a lot of people who are higher-income and more well-to-do probably aren't quite as delighted to have all this self-service kind of stuff, like checkout or having to pump your own gas. I'm generalizing, but maybe for wealthier people, it's just another hassle — or it's kind of beneath them. So that's one possibility: that it's kind of like a silent protest. Like, why do I have to do this?

Another thought is that scanning a $10 item for a wealthy person, that's like a penny to them. So, there's already a different kind of attitude about money.

There might be even a subconscious kind of thought of: “Hey, if I got caught, if I ever did get in trouble, I have the resources — I could hire an attorney, or I could call somebody. I know how to make something happen.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Having wealth often leads a person to an attitude of superiority, privilege, and a sense of being “above the law.” But all of us need to guard against making excuses for unlawful or immoral behavior as though we deserve it.

Susan Mettes, Associate Editor at CT magazine, writes:

I have a clear early memory of first learning to ride a bike. When I had finally found enough balance for a few seconds of forward movement, my beloved brother toddled into my path. There was plenty of room for both of us on the sidewalk, but I mowed the little guy down and we both fell onto the lawn, sobbing.

Now I know that the reason I couldn’t avoid him was something called “target fixation,” which means that we aim for what we’re focusing on—no matter how much we consciously try to avoid it.

Jesus keeps telling us to take our eyes off money. In many places—including in the church today—we see people falling into the trap of requiring more and more of it to feel good. But on the flip side, we too often think that the change we must make is from lusting after money to avoiding money. However, thrift can also become a target we fixate on, disorienting us, and leading us to crash right back into Mammon.

Jesus’ words to his followers showed his disapproval of hoarding money, making wealth the capstone of a life, and believing that money will make us safe. But we sometimes miss another aspect of Jesus’ teachings: the importance of where we focus our attention.

As Christians around the world live through a period of discomfort in their household budgets, even thrift can bring them dangerously close to the errors often attributed to greed. Thrift can make austerity seem like a virtue for all times.

One story of the early church says that a fourth-century monk, Macarius, got a bunch of grapes and sent them to another monk, who sent them to another, and so on. Each craved the grapes, but none ate them. They eventually returned to Macarius, who still didn’t eat them. The monks had proved their ability to deny themselves.

Such denial can be a response to a belief that possessions are hot potatoes, things to be divested of before they ruin us. But far from solving an obsession with money and possessions, this form of living on as little as possible can result in miserliness.

Author Lucinda Kinsinger says, “If you’re focusing on thrift for the sake of being thrifty, you’ll just end up being a tightwad. If our focus is being a good steward, then we’re in a good place.”

The American dream—the proposition that anyone who works hard can get ahead, regardless of their background—has slipped out of reach in the minds of many Americans.

Only 36% of voters in a recent survey said the American dream still holds true. This is substantially fewer than the 53% who said so in 2012 and 48% in 2016 in similar surveys. When a Wall Street Journal poll last year asked whether people who work hard were likely to get ahead in this country, some 68% said yes—nearly twice the share as in the new poll.

The survey offers the latest evidence that Americans across the political spectrum are feeling economically fragile and uncertain that the ladder to higher living standards remains sturdy, even amid many signs of economic and social progress.

In his article “How America Got Mean,” David Brooks laments what he calls “the de-moralization of American culture.” Brooks notes that “over the course of the 20th century, words relating to morality appeared less and less frequently in the nation’s books:

According to a 2012 paper, usage of a cluster of words related to being virtuous also declined significantly. Among them were bravery (which dropped by 65 percent), gratitude (58 percent), and humbleness (55 percent). For decades, researchers have asked incoming college students about their goals in life. In 1967, about 85 percent said they were strongly motivated to develop “a meaningful philosophy of life”; by 2000, only 42 percent said that. Being financially well off became the leading life goal; by 2015, 82 percent of students said wealth was their aim.

In his memoir, Everything Sad Is Untrue, Daniel Nayeri tells the gripping story of his mother’s conversion from a devout Muslim background to a saving faith in Jesus Christ. She gave up wealth and social status, eventually being forced to flee from Iran under a death threat. But she was willing to pay the price. Nayeri writes about one example of her costly faith:

One time she hung a little cross necklace from the rearview mirror of her car, which was probably a reckless thing to do. ... My mom was like that. One day after work, she went to her car, and there was a note stuck to the windshield. It said, “Madame Doctor, if we see this cross again, we will kill you.”

To my dad, [who is not a Christian], this is the kind of story that proves his point. That my mom was picking a fight. That she could’ve lived quietly and saved everyone the heartaches that would come. If she had kept her head down. If she stopped telling people. If she pretended just a few holidays a year, that nothing had changed. She could still have everything.

My mom took the cross down that day. Then she got a cross so big it blocked half the windshield, and she put it up. Why would anybody live with their head down? Besides, the only way to stop believing something is to deny it yourself. To hide it. To act as if it hasn’t changed your life.

Another way to say it is that everybody is dying and going to die of something. And if you’re not spending your life on the stuff you believe, then what are you even doing? What is the point of the whole thing? It’s a tough question, because most people haven’t picked anything worthwhile.

Benny Hinn’s nephew, Costi Hinn, was confident of his relationship with the Lord. He traveled the world in a private jet and enjoying all the luxuries that money could buy. He believed he was serving Jesus Christ and as a result was enjoying the abundant life he promised. The only problem--he wasn’t preaching the true Gospel.

Costi Hinn writes:

Growing up in the Hinn family our lifestyle was lavish and our version of the gospel was big business. God’s goal was not to set us free from sin but to make us rich. We lived in a 10,000-square-foot mansion, drove two Mercedes Benz vehicles, vacationed in exotic destinations, and shopped at the most expensive stores. We were abundantly blessed.

Doubts would surface. What about unsuccessful healing attempts? I learned that it was the sick person’s fault for doubting God. Why did many of our prophecies contradict the Bible? Despite the questions, I trusted my family because we were so successful. Millions packed stadiums annually to hear my uncle. We healed the sick, performed miracles, rubbed elbows with celebrities, and got incredibly wealthy. God must be on our side!

After graduating college, I met my wife, Christyne. I had no idea that God would use her in bringing about my salvation. In fact, my family and I were nervous because she didn’t speak in tongues. We set out to fix that problem by having her attend one of Benny’s crusades, but nothing happened.

Then one day she pointed to a verse I had never seen: 1 Corinthians 12:30 (“Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak in tongues?”). I was shaken to the core. There it was plain as day—not everybody has to speak in tongues. Soon, the domino e­ffect began. Other longstanding beliefs were failing the biblical test. No longer did I believe that God’s purpose was to make me happy, healthy, and wealthy. Instead, I saw that he wanted me to live for him regardless of what I could get from him.

While struggling to strike out into ministry, I received a call from a pastor friend, offering me a part-time youth pastor position. One of my first preaching assignments was John 5:1–17—the healing at Bethesda. The passage showed that Jesus healed (only) one man out of a multitude, the man didn’t know who Jesus was, and the man was healed instantly! This left three treasured beliefs in tatters.

I wept bitterly over my participation in greedy ministry manipulation and my life of false teaching and beliefs, and I thanked God for his mercy and grace through Jesus Christ. I am thankful that my wife was willing to question my insistence on speaking in tongues and that my pastor loved me enough to disciple me out of prosperity gospel confusion.

In 1977, Sandra Ilene West, a flamboyant Beverly Hills oil heiress, was buried with her baby-blue 1964 Ferrari. Her grave is next to her husband’s at Alamo Masonic Cemetery in San Antonio, and it has become a tourist attraction.

In 1984, Willie Stokes Jr. of Chicago was interred in a coffin styled like a Cadillac Seville with functioning head and tail lights, an event immortalized in song by Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Another Cadillac fan was Aurora Schuck, a native of Cuba who was buried in Aurora, Indiana, in 1989 with her red 1976 Cadillac Eldorado convertible. With the top down, the coffin was placed over the rear seats. Sixteen gravesites were required to fit the car, one of the largest Cadillacs made.

George Swanson of Pennsylvania had his ashes interred with his 1984 Corvette in 1994.

In 2009, Lonnie Holloway and his 1973 Pontiac Catalina went into the ground together in South Carolina. His sister said, “It’s something he always wanted to do, but I didn’t like it.”

Editor’s Note: Notice the title of the article —“You Can Take It With You, if the Grave Is Deep Enough.” Nice try. Of course, the following saying is far more biblical—“You can’t take it with you.”

New York Times tech writer Shira Ovide tried to describe the size, power, and wealth of the Big Tech companies. She writes, “Every few months, I concoct new ways to say that tech giants make a lot of money. Today, I give up. I’ll just say that Big Tech companies are really, really, really, really big and really, really, really, really, REALLY rich.”

America’s five technology superpowers—Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Facebook—are titanic, and still growing. They have nearly infinite resources to help them stay on top. She showed the following numbers:

Apple’s profit for the past year ($101 billion) was more than the combined yearly profits of—take a deep breath—Walmart, General Motors, Exxon, Pfizer, Verizon, Disney, Coke, and McDonald’s.

People watch 15 billion YouTube Shorts (bite-sized videos like TikTok’s) each day.

Facebook generates, on average, $214 for each user in the U.S. and Canada last year. Facebook is one of the best money-making machines in internet history.

Microsoft owns the (not popular) Bing search engine. And yet the company’s annual advertising sales of more than $10 billion are about 20 times the 2021 ad sales of The New York Times.

Amazon is so mammoth that just the current decreased value ($267 billion) is about the total value of Disney. Jeff Bezos’ new yacht is so big that a bridge in the Netherlands will be dismantled to accommodate the boat’s height. THAT is rich.

Possible Preaching Angles:

With this level of successful money-making, we need to ask how these companies are influencing and shaping our minds, hearts, and lives.

Want your kids to do better in school? Church might be the answer, according to a study conducted by the University of Notre Dame. An article titled, “God, Grades, and Graduation,” suggests that religion can play a critical role for success.

According to the study, abiders are youth who remain active in religious communities and who have adopted their family’s faith as their own. They “are likely to have an academic advantage because religion and schools are complementary institutions.” In particular, “adolescents who thrive in one institution are likely to thrive in the other.”

Among the survey’s participants, the probability of getting grades of all or mostly A’s was about 10% higher among "abiders" than among non-religious students in the same socioeconomic group. According to Professor Horwitz, at Tulane University, a religious foundation can actually overcome challenges associated with growing up in lower socioeconomic circumstances.

Possible Preaching Angle:

Our society treats faith as a game people choose to play, a tradition to be mindlessly followed. But a foundation of faith has far-reaching implications. When we lose faith, we lose our way.

Brazilian soccer star Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior is paid hundreds of thousands of euros every month if he avoids statements of “religious propaganda that could damage the image and unity” of the Paris Saint-Germain Football Club. Neymar, popularly known by his first name, is currently one of the highest-paid soccer players in the world and has been quite outspoken about his faith. He once told reporters, “Life only makes sense when our highest ideal is to serve Christ.”

His current contract, however, includes a clause that pays him more than €540,000 (roughly $630,000) per month to avoid declarations of faith.

Among Americans with evangelical beliefs who attend a Protestant church monthly or more:

75% agree that “God wants me to prosper financially.”

41% agree that their church “teaches that if I give more money to my church and charities, God will bless me in return.”

26% agree that “to receive material blessings from God, I have to do something for God.”

In a recent interview with GQ, George Clooney discusses his "charmed" life. GQ's "Icon of the Year" was married in 2014 at the age of 53. But in 2013, the celebrity had no children and no clue that this would ever change. He shared:

I thought, what I do have are these guys who've all, over a period of 35 years, helped me in one way or another. I've slept on their couches when I was broke. They loaned me money when I was broke. They helped me when I needed help over the years. And I've helped them over the years. We're all good friends. And I thought, you know, without them I don't have any of this.

In true Oceans 11 style, he located a bank in downtown Los Angeles that warehoused large sums of actual cash, borrowed a beat-up old van with the words "Florist" on the side, took the van to this undisclosed location, drove onto a freight elevator, and rode it down to a basement where pallets of cash were stored. He then loaded 14 (high-end) Tumi bags each with $1m. He called his friends to a meeting and gave each a bag of non-sequential unmarked bills.

GQ concludes:

This is a story about a charmed life. But it's also a story about a guy who is doing his best to keep it that way, to liven up the days, to give himself more stories to tell before his time is up." I'll simply paraphrase Clooney's final words, “You know, it's funny. I remember talking to one really rich [individual] who I ran into in a hotel in Vegas—certainly a lot richer than I am. And the story about the cash I gave away had come out, and he was like, “Why would you do that?” And I was like, “Why wouldn't you do that, you … (jerk)?”

Reese Osterberg, like a lot of 9-year-old girls, loves baseball. The love of her favorite sport drove her to collect baseball cards. But when the largest wildfire in California’s history forced her family to evacuate, her baseball cards were left behind. The fire devoured the cards along with the rest of their home.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (Cal Fire) was raising funds for fire survivors when they shared Osterberg’s story over the radio. Kevin Ashford of San Jose was listening that day, and when he heard about the young girl’s story, he was moved to act. Ashford called Cal Fire to donate his burgeoning baseball card collection--25,000 cards strong--to Osterberg and her family.

Ashford told CNN, "I had initially planned on selling my cards on eBay. But when I thought about the smile I could put on that little girl's face; it was an easy decision. I felt compelled to donate the cards to her."

Members of the Cal Fire team delivered the collection in person to the Osterbergs, which prompted young Reese to respond by giving some of them away to her friends and baseball teammates. Reese said, "When someone does something nice for you, it's important to do nice things for other people, too.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

When we open our hearts and our material possessions to those who are in need, we are not only acting as the hands of feet of Jesus to others, but we are also actively ministering to Jesus himself.

An article in Forbes reported the conclusion of Chuck Feeney’s journey to give away a fortune. The article was titled "The Billionaire Who Wanted To Die Broke … Is Now Officially Broke.”

Feeney, 89, cofounded airport retailer Duty Free Shoppers in 1960. He amassed billions while living a life of monk-like frugality. Over the last four decades, Feeney has donated more than $8 billion to charities, universities, and foundations worldwide through his foundation. And he did it all anonymously. Because of this clandestine, globe-trotting giving campaign, Forbes called him “the James Bond of philanthropy.” And his example ignited a fire storm of radical generosity by other plutocrats (more than 210 billionaires have signed the Giving Pledge to date).

In an article titled Zero Is the Hero, Feeney summarized his mission in a few sentences. “I see little reason to delay giving when so much good can be achieved through supporting worthwhile causes. Besides, it’s a lot more fun to give while you live than give while you're dead.” Now at the conclusion of his “journey to broke,” Feeney tells Forbes: “We learned a lot. We would do some things differently, but I am very satisfied. I feel very good about completing this on my watch. ... And to those wondering about Giving While Living: Try it, you'll like it.”

Editor’s Note: Chuck Feeney passed away on October 9, 2023 having achieved his goal of dying broke

Evidence suggests that the rich steal more than the poor. Although shoplifting transcends categories, the rich actually do steal more than the poor. The study cited most often, in the American Journal of Psychology, states that people with incomes of $70,000 shoplift 30% more than those earning $20,000 a year.

A federal lawyer proved that point when she was caught swiping $257.99 worth of cosmetics from a store in Virginia. Sgt. Eva Pena of the New York police department was suspended from her job after she was allegedly caught stealing clothing valued at $359 from a Macy’s store. This wasn’t a crime of poverty. Pena, whose salary was over $100,000 a year, drove to court in a white Mercedes to enter her not guilty plea.

Psychologist Stanton Samenow tells of a patient that he treated several years ago:

He had more than enough money to buy the item. He took it for the thrill of it, to outsmart the establishment. He enjoyed every aspect of shoplifting: scanning the aisles for the objects, looking for the exits, trying to outsmart the surveillance and store personnel, the theft and the getaway. This was all about excitement and building up one’s self-worth.

One theory suggests that low-income people are less likely to cheat and steal because they are more invested in their communities and fear being publicly humiliated. Conversely, the rich harbor feelings of entitlement and self-interest, which weakens their moral compass.

Possible Preaching Angle:

The story demonstrates that the emptiness of riches drives people to pursue of any kind of euphoria, even if it is illegal. There is no satisfaction in money and possessions (or any temptation of the flesh) only an endless desire for more. “Whoever loves money never has enough” (Eccl. 5:10)

The Atlantic ran an article that calls attention to the fact that American homes are a lot bigger than they used to be. In 1973, when the Census Bureau started tracking home sizes, the median size of a newly built house was just over 1,500 square feet; that figure reached nearly 2,500 square feet in 2015.

This rise, combined with a drop in the average number of people per household, has translated to a whole lot more room for homeowners and their families. By one estimate, each newly built house had an average of 507 square feet per resident in 1973, and nearly twice that—971 square feet—four decades later.

But Americans aren’t getting any happier with their ever-bigger homes. Clement Bellet, at a European business school, wrote “Despite a major upscaling of single-family houses since 1980 house satisfaction has remained steady in American suburbs.”

It’s a classic, keeping-up-with-the-Joneses type report about how we Americans are building bigger homes than ever—and yet our happiness tends to be inversely proportionate to the square footage of our new real estate. As usual, the dynamics of comparison, judgment, and self-justification are at play.

Bellet continues:

To be clear, having more space does generally lead to people saying they’re more pleased with their home. The problem is that the satisfaction often doesn’t last if even bigger homes pop up nearby. If I bought a house to feel like I’m “the king of my neighborhood,” but a new king arises, it makes me feel very bad about my house. It is an unfulfilling cycle of one-upmanship.

Psychologists tell us that our brains tend to miss-predict what will actually bring us happiness. We assume that if we achieve certain things in our life, we will find happiness.

“I’ll be happy if I get admitted into the right school.”

“I’ll be happy if I find the right partner.”

“I’ll be happy if I make vice president.”

“I’ll be happy if I have my dream house.”

As Harvard psychologist Shawn Achor observes, this “if-then” perspective cannot be supported by science, because each time our brain experiences a “success,” it moves the goalposts of what success looks like. If you got good grades, you have to get better grades. If you have a good job, you now have to get a better job. If you hit your sales target, now you have to raise your sales target. If you buy a home, now you want to have a larger home.