Stinginess

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.”

Ever wonder how to spend a $1 billion on a wedding? Hint: include Jennifer Lopez. A couple in Moscow took [the] notion of a lavish wedding ceremony to a whole new level—and to add to the sticker shock, both the newly-married husband and wife are in their twenties.

Khadija Uzhakhova is a 20-year-old college student, and Said Gutseriev is a 28-year-old Russian elite and son of oil and media tycoon Mikhail Gutseriev, who is worth $6.2 billion. The wedding was held at Safisa, a luxury restaurant and banqueting venue that the couple transformed into a fairy-tale setting with walls of freshly-cut flowers and furniture sourced from Paris.

And forget buffet food. The 600 guests at this wedding were served sushi and feasted on a full European meal, which ended with the presentation of a cake taller than the couple. Elie Saab designed the bride's 28-pound custom gown, which is estimated to cost nearly $25,000. And as for entertainment at the ceremony, the couple enlisted Sting and Enrique Iglesias to warm up the stage for none other than Jennifer Lopez (yes, J. Lo!)—who put on a full show for the bride, groom and other lucky attendees.

Still not impressed? The wedding party traveled in a fleet of Rolls Royces, and guests of the ceremony left with their own elaborate jewelry boxes. An official price tag for the wedding isn't available, but Harper's Bazaar estimates it falls within the $1 billion range. We just hope there's a thank you letter to Dad in the mail.

Possible Preaching Angles: 1) This earthly wedding is extravagant, but it is nothing compared the wedding feast of Jesus and his bride the church. 2) The bride of Christ will share in the inheritance of Christ because of his great love for her. 3) The wealthy live in temporary extravagance but one day it will all quickly pass away if they are not rich toward God.

Theologian Heiko Oberman tells the following story about the radical generosity of a poor rural church in China:

A few years ago I was with a group in Nanjing, China. On Sunday we visited various churches in the city. An older Chinese woman now living in Los Angeles chose to visit a church across the river from Nanjing, a poor church composed of farmers. The 900 who were present for the service wanted to hear a word from their sister from the states, so Mrs. Chang brought greetings from her church in Los Angeles. She told how the Lord had added many to their church and how they were currently building a large new addition. Then after a word of blessing for this church, she took her seat.

At the close of the worship time, Mrs. Chang was called back to the front. The pastor said her words had thrilled their hearts. They wanted her to have the morning offering to help with the new building in Los Angeles — about $140. When their overflowing joy welled up in generosity, they gave beyond their ability.

The Salvation Army receives some strange items in its red kettles during the Christmas season. Lieutenant Michael Harper, commander of the Cambridge Salvation Army in Boston said, "In addition to money, I've seen watch batteries, paper clips, safety pins, all sorts of strange things, but this one takes the cake." The gift was a diamond engagement ring given by a widow in honor of her late husband. The charity says the anonymous benefactor placed the diamond ring—valued at $1,850—and her wedding band in one of the kettles placed outside Boston's North Station.

The rings were donated along with a note honoring the benefactor's late husband: "I've dropped my wedding ring in your Red Kettle knowing that the money from its sale will buy toys for needy children," the woman wrote. "In all seasons, my husband was a giver. I especially remember his joy in giving at Christmastime, especially to those in need. To honor his memory, I donate this ring." The rings sold a few days later for an astonishing $21,000, eleven times their appraised value.

The anonymous donor did give some clue to part of her motivation, writing a short proverb at the bottom of her note: "To find out what a man is worth, take away his money and his possessions."

In 2012, Robert Kraft, the owner of the New England Patriots football team, revealed to the world that Russian president Vladimir Putin stole one of Kraft's $25,000 Super Bowl rings. Don't feel too bad for Kraft—he has three more where that came from! But it's true: back in 2005, when Kraft was visiting Putin at the Kremlin, he made the mistake of showing the Russian leader one of his Super Bowl rings. Kraft took it out and handed it to the Russian leader, who put it on his finger and said, "I could kill someone with this ring"—because it was so massive. Then, according to Kraft, Putin put in in his pocket, his KGB guys surrounded him, and they walked out—with Kraft's ring! It even had Bob Kraft's name engraved on it!

Kraft talked to the State Department, and they encouraged him, in the interest of U.S.-Russian relations to lie and say that he gave it to Putin as a gift. But Kraft finally broke his silence in 2012.

But the point is this: Kraft did give Putin his ring—temporarily, to borrow for a few moments. He intended for Putin to use it for a few moments, put it on his finger, admire it. But he did not intend for Putin, once he took possession of it, to act as if this ring belonged to him!

Possible Preaching Angles: Isn't that what we're tempted to do—what we too often do—when it comes to stewardship. A "steward" is someone who manages finances, possessions, property, or real estate on behalf of someone else. Stewardship describes a Christian's relationship to all the good things that God has given us.

I once heard Warren Buffet say in an interview (I paraphrase here) about his $26 billion gift to the Gates Foundation: "My gift has not changed my lifestyle one bit. I still go to the movies I want to go to and eat at the restaurants I want to dine at. But what about the person who gives a gift that requires they can't go to the movies or eat out. They are the true givers—the true heroes [of generosity]."

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Giving, Generosity, Sacrifice; (2) God's love—In contrast to Buffet, God did change his "lifestyle" when he gave his only Son. Christ did change his lifestyle when he died for us.

In September 2013, a man in Brazil developed what doctors called "pathological generosity." In an article published in the journal Neuroscience, doctors described the strange case of a 49-year-old man identified as "Mr. A" who had a remarkable personality change after suffering a stroke. His physicians said that after the stroke affected the subcortical regions of the man's brain he suddenly had an "excessive and persistent" urge to help others. He wouldn't stop giving money and gifts to people he barely knew. According to his wife, he would buy candy, soda, and food for kids he met on the street. He was also quit his job as a manager of a large corporation. Dr. Larry Goldstein, a neurologist at Duke University said, "Although the observation of personality change is not that unusual, this particular one is apparently novel."

When asked by researchers if he wanted to return to his job, Mr. A. claimed that he "saw death from close up" and he wanted to "be in high spirits" for the rest of his life. Mr. A. was put on medication for depression, which he said cured his depression but his "pathological generosity" remained unchanged.

Possible Preaching Angles: (1) Conversion; New Man—Apparently Mr. A. couldn't help his "pathological generosity" (although we can't be sure of that), but isn't there something akin to conversion in this story? We become different people from a power outside ourselves and we are forever marked by "pathological" goodness and love. (2) Generosity; Money—The same can be said for what happens to Christians who are called to give cheerfully.

John Ortberg writes:

When our kids were little, we put them on the envelope system. When we gave them an allowance, they would put it in envelopes labeled "Give," "Save," "Gifts," "Spend," and so on.

I thought it was working until one day I had a Band-Aid on my arm, and my daughter, who at that time was about six, asked, "Why?" I explained I had gotten a medical exam that day to get life insurance. She asked, "What's that?" I explained, "Well, Daddy loves you so much and loves the family so much, so if anything were to happen to Daddy (which of course it won't, but if it would), it would provide for $250,000." Her eyes got really wide. She has a tender heart, and I knew she'd be worried. She looked up at me and said, "Apiece?" I thought, I'm not sure the right lesson is getting communicated.

Christian leader Gordon MacDonald shared the following story about how God transformed him from "giving as merely an institutional obligation" to a cheerful giver.

The process began when my wife, Gail, and I made a missions trip to West Africa. On the first Sunday of our visit, we joined a large crowd of desperately poor Christians for worship. As we neared the church, I noticed that almost every person was carrying something. Some hoisted cages of noisy chickens, others carried baskets of yams, and still others toted bags of eggs or bowls of cassava paste.

"Why are they bringing all that stuff?" I asked one of our hosts. "Watch!" she said. Almost every person in that African congregation brought something: a chicken, a basket of yams, a bowl of cassava paste. I saw that giving, whether yams or dollars, is not optional for Christ followers.

Soon after the worship began, the moment came when everyone stood and poured into the aisles, singing, clapping, even shouting. The people began moving forward, each in turn bringing whatever he had brought to a space in the front. Then I got it. This was West African offering time. The chickens would help others get a tiny farm business started. The yams and the eggs given could be sold in the marketplace to help the needy. The cassava paste would guarantee that someone who was hungry could eat.

I was captivated. I'd never seen a joyful offering before. Obviously, my keep-money-under-the-radar policy would not have worked in that West African church. Those African believers, although they never knew it, had moved me. I began to understand that giving—whether yams or dollars—was not an option for Christ-followers. Rather it was an indication of the direction and the tenor of one's whole life.

Does money really buy happiness? Studies by a generation of behavioral scientists show that material goods usually don't deliver lasting happiness. But there is one way that money can buy happiness—when you spend money with and for others. Researchers call this phenomenon a "buying experience." Think of treating someone to a special meal, a sports game, or a concert. Dozens of studies show that these buying experiences bring us closer to other people and bring us more happiness than spending money on ourselves.

Elizabeth Dunn and Michael Norton, a pair of researchers who authored the book Happy Money, reported on the following experiment:

We handed out Starbucks gift cards on a university campus …. [and] told some people to head to Starbucks and buy something for themselves. We told others to pass their gift card along to someone else. And we told a third group of people to use the gift card to buy something for someone else—with the additional requirement that they actually hang out with that person at Starbucks.

Dunn and Norton concluded, "Who was happiest? Those who treated someone else and shared in that experience with them. So the cost of increasing your happiness may be as cheap as two cups of coffee."

A Harvard Business Review blog calls it Warren Buffet's "jerk doctrine." Buffett, one of the wealthiest people in the world, once said, "Of the billionaires I have known, money just brings out the basic traits in them. If they were jerks before they had money, they are simply jerks with a billion dollars."

Preaching Angles: Wealth, Riches, Stewardship—Buffett may be right, but followers of Christ should be different. Increased wealth should make us more generous and better stewards of our money.

It was an all-you-can-eat buffet at the bank. An army of termites munched through 10 million rupees ($222,000) in currency notes stored in a steel chest at a bank in Barabanki, a town 20 miles southwest of Lucknow, the Uttar Pradesh state capital, said police in northern India. The bank manager discovered the damage when he opened the reinforced room in an old bank building.

Police officer Navneet Rana told The Associated Press, "It's a matter of investigation how termites attacked bundles of currency notes stacked in a steel chest." In the past, termites had damaged bank furniture and documents. The police have registered a case of negligence against the bank officials.

Tim Keller writes:

Some years ago I was doing a seven-part series of talks on the Seven Deadly Sins at a men's breakfast. My wife, Kathy, told me, "I'll bet that the week you deal with greed will be the lowest attendance." She was right. People packed it out for "Lust" and "Wrath" and even for "Pride." But nobody thinks they are greedy.

As a pastor I've had people come to me and confess that they struggle with almost every kind of sin. Almost. I cannot recall anyone ever coming to me and saying, "I spend too much money on myself. I think my greedy lust for money is harming my family, my soul, and people around me." Greed hides itself from the victim. The money god's modus operandi includes blindness to your own heart.

Many use Facebook as a way to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances, but others use it to play games that involve virtual farms, virtual pets, and virtual mob wars. What's fascinating is that in some of these games, a person can buy virtual goods—fertilizer or additional pets or guns. But these items don't actually exist, of course. They are just little computer pictures from little pixilated stores. Nonetheless, if a person wants to have these virtual guns or virtual tools for their virtual farms or virtual pets, they actually pay real money!

Newsweek magazine's Daniel Lyons wrote about this bizarre phenomenon in a column titled, "Money for Nothing." When researching virtual games, he discovered that the total U.S. market for virtual goods was:

500 million in 2008

$1 billion in 2009

[Following updated as of 2/2024]

$19.61 billion as of 2022

$20 billion as of 2023

Kristian Segerstrale, a Finnish economist who has studied this phenomenon, says, “You can learn a lot about human behavior and how people inter-operate in an economic environment. There are a lot of valuable lessons.” One of those lessons, of course, is that people will spend real money for something that isn't really there at all.

Author Ed Dobson wrote a book titled The Year of Living Like Jesus, in which he tells the story in diary form of how he tried to live as Jesus lived and as Jesus taught for a year. On day thirteen of month one, he records this story:

My wife and I drove to Key West. I decided to take a day off from reading. As we walked past a restaurant on Duvall Street, a man, who'd obviously been drinking, called from the steps: "Hey, could spare some change so I can get something to eat?"

I've heard that line a lot, and I know a number of responses. First, you can simply ignore such people. After all, he will most likely use whatever money you give him to buy more alcohol, and, therefore, you'd be enabling his habit. Second, you can offer to take him to a restaurant to buy him something to eat. In most cases the person will not go because he mainly wants the money to buy alcohol. Third, you can point him to an organization that provides meals for the homeless. Many such organizations exist in most cities.

What did my wife and I do? We walked past the man without doing anything, as we have done with so many other people over the years. After all, it's not our fault that he is where he is.

But after we'd walked on a little farther, he called after us, "Can you help a Vietnam vet?" My youngest son is a veteran, and I deeply respect those who have served their country in that way. So I stopped, walked back to him, and gave him a dollar. At that moment I remembered the words of Jesus: "Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you." It's as simple as that—give to the one who asks. He asked. I had an obligation to give.

As I walked down the street, a wonderful peace came over me because I felt I'd actually obeyed one of Jesus' teachings. I knew he'd probably use it to buy more alcohol and that I probably hadn't made the wisest choice. And I also knew that a dollar wasn't really going to help him. But I had no other choice. He asked and I was obligated.

Still, what caused me to give him the money was not really my responsibility to follow Jesus, but the fact that he was a veteran. So after my initial euphoria, I realized I had done the Jesus thing for the wrong reasons.

While waiting at a traffic light with her parents in Atlanta, Georgia, Kevin and Joan Salwen's 14-year-old daughter, Hannah, saw a black Mercedes coupe on one side and a homeless man begging for food on the other. Hannah turned to her father and said, "Dad, if that man had a less nice car, that man there could have a meal."

Even as they pulled away, Hannah insisted she wanted to do something about the inequity. "What do you want to do?" her mother asked.

"Sell our house," Hannah replied.

Eventually, that's what the Salwen's did. They sold their luxurious home, donated half the proceeds to charity, and bought a modest replacement home. Though the sacrifice was great, the benefits have been greater still. A smaller house has meant a more family-friendly house. "We essentially traded stuff for togetherness and connectedness," Kevin says. "I can't figure out why everybody wouldn't want that deal."

The entire project is chronicled in an upcoming book by Kevin and his daughter, entitled The Power of Half. The aim of the book isn't to get people to sell their houses, but simply to encourage them to step off the "treadmill of accumulation"—to define themselves by what they give, and not just by what they possess. Hannah says, "For us, the house was just something we could live without. It was too big for us. Everyone has too much of something, whether it's time, talent, or treasure. Everyone does have their own half; you just have to find it."

Jesus warned against piling up money on earth, because money comes and goes. A sad reminder of the vulnerability of money came with the June 2009 news story of an elderly woman in Israel who had hidden her life savings of one million dollars in her bed mattress. Every night she slept on one million in American dollars and Israeli shekels. She must have felt very secure with her fortune literally inches away, holding her up each night—especially since 2008 and 2009 had been disastrous years for banks and financial institutions as the world economy suffered its worst recession in decades. What's more, she had had a bad experience with a bank and had lost trust in them. Whom could she trust? No one! In fact, she did not tell even her own daughter where all that fortune was hidden.

And that was the wealthy woman's big mistake. One day her daughter decided that the mother needed a new mattress. Who knows, maybe she sat on the bed, and it felt a bit lumpy—one of those ten thousand dollar lumps perhaps—and she thought, What a cheap bed this is! She decided to replace the mattress. She wanted to present the new mattress as a surprise gift, so the new mattress was delivered without her mother's knowledge, and the old, lumpy mattress went into the garbage.

How pleased the daughter must have felt as she watched the delivery men put the new mattress in place and haul the old mattress out to the truck. Imagine the smile on her face when she brought her mother into the bedroom and presented her surprise gift. Somehow her elderly mother did not put two and two together right away. After a night of sleep on her new mattress, however, she woke up and suddenly realized what had happened to her life savings. She literally screamed.

A video news report of this story showed the daughter walking through a garbage dump hunting for the lost mattress. News reports showed workers combing through the trash as bulldozers moved piles of garbage attempting to uncover the lost treasure.

Truly there is no sure way to safeguard our worldly treasures.