Give until it stops feeling good

We sometimes say that giving is not good because it can hurt them, but what if it hurts you?

There are things about us that God wants us to see. Important things. One of the best ways to do that is through giving. Three beginning principles:

— If we can live without what we give him, so can he.

— Giving that makes us feel good takes us deeper into the problem.

— No person was ever commended by God for being generous.

Nature taking back it's own. Barajul Drăgan (the Dragan dam), near Cluj, Romania

---

Mark 12.41-44

He sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury. Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

The well-known saying is that it’s not how much you give; it’s how much you have left over that counts. That’s true: those who give out of their abundance never truly know what giving is.

When you give you feel good. You have helped someone; it’s nice to be generous. Their anxiety is lifted and your spirits are lifted. It’s nice for both of you.

But when you give so much that you hurt yourself, the good feeling isn't there. It gnaws on you: thinking about what you could have had if you hadn’t given so much. You begin balancing how much you needed the money against how much they needed it, and if they misuse it—or especially if they put some of it into savings! It becomes outright anger if that person does something selfish or wrong with it. You discover things about giving you didn’t want to know until you gave too much.

(This, by the way, is one of the reasons I don't like modern missions. We give missionaries money for the express purpose of putting some of it into savings and retirement. We are able to do this because the church board determines how funds are distributed, and those funds were collected from people who sit in the pews. It is faceless money, but at one time it was personal. It would have bought food and paid rent and bought clothes. And now it is given to a missionary, to put into savings. If the missionary asked someone to give money to put it into savings, he would be told no. It's unthinkable. But by pooling the people's money it is depersonalized, and then we can do things with it that the people individually would never do. What would run through your mind, year after year, if you were going through financial problems and were reminded monthly that a missionary was putting your money into savings? That would sting a bit.)

Back to the point.

When you go past the point of hurting yourself and give to the point of desperation, new and unexpected emotions and thoughts some in. You have hurt yourself badly, you probably didn’t understand the implications of that, you wish there was a way out, and unless some miracle happens you are facing a crisis, because now you don’t have enough to pay your bills or maybe even buy food. This is not a good desperation. There’s nothing warm or joyful about it.

The widow gave her last two copper coins to the Temple. It was all she had to live on. Unless someone helped her, she would go hungry.

Jesus does not say God made sure she has something to eat that night. He did not call her back, praise her, return her two coins and add two more. Why not? Surely the Temple could survive without her measly gift. Were they waiting for these two coins so they could begin their next construction project? What possible good have come from her two little coins? What possible bad could have come from her two coins? They would give Judas 30 pieces of silver. Did her two mites help fund that?

The widow went away, penniless (literally) and in desperation. Jesus commended her above all the others, not because the Temple needed her two pennies, but because she did. They would use their money less wisely that she would, but she was commended for giving it to them. They would use their money for evil, but she was commended for giving it to them.

Giving that makes you feel good might help someone, but it doesn’t help you. You need to go past generosity, into courage. And then past courage, into pain. And then past pain, into fear. Giving that doesn’t hurt isn’t giving. It's just being nice.

God gave his only Son. To die. It’s impossible to know how much that hurt him, but it hurts him even more when we treat his gifts so selfishly. If you want to see what it feels like to be God, give all your money, including your savings and pension, to someone you know will not appreciate it, will waste it, and store whatever is left in savings, to make sure no good ever comes of it.

If you want to know what God feels like, do what he did. Give to people who deserve nothing. Give so much that it hurts you and the people you love most. Take from your own and give to strangers who care nothing about you. Give even though they misuse it, abuse it, hoard it, and then ask for more—and are upset if you don’t give it. Now you will know what Godly giving is. You will feel a lot worse, but God will feel a lot better.

Scripture does not tell us to do this. When Jesus pointed out she did he did not say we should do it, or even that she should have. He didn't say she was blessed. He didn’t say the others were bad people, or that they were selfish or miserly: only a simple objective fact: she had put in more than all of them. What was her reward? Desperation.

God is good. He gives lavish gifts and treats us kindly. It is how he is. And also Paul, even though he tells us that he has given up everything and regards it as rubbish, he doesn’t say we should do the same thing.

But, in Hebrews 11, in the fall of faith, no one is commended for being generous. Generosity does not get God’s attention. He, who sacrificed his own Son, cannot then point to someone with pride and say, “look, he gave 10%!” There is nothing noteworthy about giving 10% when you keep 90% for yourself.

If your giving makes you feel good, it’s just generosity. When you do that there’s no difference between you and anyone else who gives, Christian or otherwise. If you give until you stop feeling good, then you’re on the path. But if you want to please God, give until you’re desperate. Afraid.

Giving expresses what we think of God. It reveals who he is to us, and who we are to him. Our giving is usually only what we don't need. In the worst case, God gets only our leftovers. Reuse, reduce, recycle is fine for the environment, but it’s an insult to offer scraps to a king. If we can live without it, so can he.

A person who sees God as someone who exists for his welfare will give because it makes him feel good. A person who has a deep commitment to God will give until it hurts. A person who can’t survive without God will give until he can’t survive.

If Bill Gates gives a billion dollars it means nothing to God because there is an unimaginable amount left over. If Oprah builds houses for poor families it means nothing, because her house is bigger still. People who give because other people are suffering do a good thing but miss the point: It's not about their suffering; it's about yours!

Why is that? Because it is in giving that we are exposed for what we are. We want to be good people so we give and it makes us feel like good people. But feeling good does not get use closer to God. It, in fact, moves us farther away. We have a problem. We don't want to admit it, and we can hide it by giving. Giving lets us tell ourselves we are good people.

I’m not saying that people who give don’t do good. They do. Millions are helped by other people’s generosity. On the other hand, consider the billions held back. A billion is a thousand million. A trillion is a million million. Bill Gates could give a million dollars a day and never run out of money. So could the church.

Christians sit on vast fortunes of real estate, savings, trusts, and pension funds—money that will never see the light of day. It could relieve untold human misery. It is a shameful display of Christian hoarding and faithlessness. So yes, people do help other people with their giving, but well over 90% is held back and there’s nothing praiseworthy about that.

When Christians give the same and live the same as their non-christian neighbors, there’s something wrong. It’s not that Christians are better than anyone else; it’s that there is an expectation upon the Christian that the non-Christian doesn't have. All human beings are expected to care about one another, but the Christian is also expected to care about God: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” On these two commandments hang everything. If you don’t get them, you don’t get anything.

There is a fundamental flaw in the Christian’s understanding of who Christ is and what he did, who God is, who you are, and your reason for existing if you don’t love to the point of doing the difficult things. They are there to trouble us. Going to church isn’t enough. Not swearing or drinking or smoking isn’t enough. Taking care of your family isn’t enough. These are not the fundamental issues of the faith: they’re just good ways to live. The thing that should matter most to anyone who names Christ as Savior is that the word of God is your rule for living. Not a suggestion, not a daily devotion: a rule. The rule. We are not allowed to walk around all the steps God has placed in our path.

God has not demanded that you give your last penny. He has not demanded that you sell everything and give to the poor, nor has he demanded that you quit your job and move to Ghana to work in orphanages. But he does hold up the ideal, and he expects everyone who says they love him and trust him to take note of how far they are from the ideal, and to work to close the distance. Because there is a distance, and that distance is troubling. He takes note of those who pay put their foot on the step and of those who walk around. The sin of Sodom was not just that they did abominable things, but that they had an abundance and did not help the poor and needy.

We are not personally commanded to give away everything, but we are expected to take heed. Sitting down with our pay stub and calculating how much 10% is after deducting taxes and social security and medical and 401k is not taking heed: it’s calculating the least amount to give. There’s a lot of room between giving the least amount possible and giving everything, so as a starting point, to get closer to where we need to be if we name Christ as Lord, we need to feel pain. We cannot nest down in our prosperity and selfishness when God judged Sodom for doing that. The goal is total sacrifice. That may be too much for most of us, but most of us also live too close to Sodom, and that requires effort to extract ourselves from. We need to get some distance from prosperity in order to see things rightly. Sodom didn’t claim to be a God-fearing. The arrogance and lack of concern that God found so repugnant in them is many times more repugnant in us. We don't get a pass because God loves us.

Maybe it’s impossible to live on nothing. Maybe that’s the problem with the widow’s last penny: it’s so far beyond anything we can imagine that we don’t to know how to get there, so we don’t even try. Look at the commentaries. Not one expert on Scripture will say you should do what the widow did. Most will use her as a foil: a flicker of light that exposes the selfishness of the others who were there. But Christ didn’t say that. He didn’t condemn the others or say they were selfish. He said only that the widow put in more than all of them.

So let’s look at it correctly: Jesus talks about her, not them. If she hadn’t have been there he probably would have said nothing about them. We rob the widow of her rightful place when we use her only to shame the others. We turn her into a Sunday School story when we say the expectation is not upon us. No, Jesus did not say the expectation is upon us, but do we then walk around this huge lump in our way? The people standing there didn't hear Jesus. He did not say it to teach them. There is something important he wants us to know. We let ourselves off the hook by saying “thank goodness I’m not like them” when Jesus wants us to see we’re not like her!

We compare ourselves to them because we look better then. Comparing ourselves to her makes us look bad, but we say there is no expectation and continue on. We're a little bit better than them but miles behind the one God commends and we are okay with that?!

Here’s a goal you can set for yourself that is not impossible and will take you out of your comfort zone: give 20% instead of 10%. You probably won’t be able to have everything you want. That’s okay. You have to start somewhere. If every Christian did that there would be twice as much available for the work of God and 10% less available for personal waste: both good things we should work toward.

Back to the point: giving to others is not the same thing as taking from ourselves. Everyone should care that people are suffering and help those in distress. It’s part of being human. Not giving is inhuman. But for the child of God it is a different matter entirely. God is not in distress: he doesn't need our money. But he does want healthy, wide-eyed, mature, good people in his kingdom, and money—more than anything—keeps us from that. Money makes us sick, blind, childish, and self-centered. Money keeps us from feeling and seeing and hearing. Money makes us stupid. We will say the most idiotic things and go away feeling that we have won the argument.

Giving is for our sake: to lift us up. So we can see, and feel, and think.

Jesus said that the widow put in more than all the others because she put in everything: her dinner that night, her food the next day, her rent, her ability to buy a dress or get medical care or buy a burial plot. All the others were going home to eat. They still had enough left over to take care of any need or comfort. And so they actually gave nothing. They put in from their purse but nothing of themselves. Nothing hurt. Nothing got through the fat to prick a nerve to tell them something was wrong.

The excellent book by Dr. Paul Brand, The Gift of Pain, tells of the horrifying effects of leprosy when it interferes with a person's ability to feel pain. It is not easy to expose ourselves to pain, but insulating ourselves from it has terrifying consequences. The pain-free life is not pretty: it's ugly. Giving a little and telling ourselves we have done a good thing only makes the condition worse.

Wealth is leprosy. It makes us unable to feel. The price of being protected from pain is the loss of our eyes, feet, and hands. We have nothing God can use.

---

#Mark_12.41-44 the #widows_mite

#Ezek_16.49 the #sin_of_Sodom