Ground Rules for Generosity : Scripture

I came across this article, which gives a good overview of the principles and practical application of generosity in the churches of the New Testament.

It somehow seems appropriate, as we start looking at the theme of generosity, not to go to church-historical sources but with scripture. There are good reasons for this, and not least that among evangelical Christians today, few look beyond tithing (giving 10 percent of your income) as a guide for financial giving.

What follows are my own ponderings and interpretations, but they tally very well with those of the article linked to above.

God loves a cheerful giver is still the guiding principle [2 Corinthians9:7]. Human beings are creatures of habit. Drift easily sets in and we lose the freshness of sacrificial giving and the joy of generosity. Many Christians then find convenient ways of justifying personal wealth by giving a bit here and there.

In the gospels, there are examples of 'giving to charity' in today's sense, e.g. John13:29. Yet chiefly we are urged to show justice to the poor by identifying with them and sharing what we have with them in the new, classless society that is the Church. That's why the first Church in Jerusalem shared meals in homes with glad and generous hearts, and met each other's financial needs by sacrificial giving [Acts 2:45-46]. It was the Holy-Spirit-inspired pattern for all ages.

Everyone must give, and the New Testament way is "the apostles' feet": you give to your church for God's work. How much to give? Tithing is an Old Testament practice which is not laid on Christians. It can be a start, but Jesus, the pioneer of a new covenant, shows a new way:

give everything you can - which is usually more than you think you can.

The Apostle Paul gives some helpful guidelines:

* Give as much as you can [2 Corinthians 8:3];
* Give freely, without pressure [ibid, v.3,8];
* Give cheerfully, not grudgingly [chap.9:5-8];
* Give as an expression of care and unity in the kingdom of God [chap.8:4];
* Give, trusting God to bless and reward the lavish heart [chap.8:4].
* Give as an act of worship and thanksgiving, and be blessed in blessing others [chap.9:14-15].

Love Means Distribution

Given Basil of Caesarea's stance on simplicity and sustainability (see last three posts), it will come as no surprise that he pushed hard for sharing and justice. For Basil, distribution of one's surplus to those in need is an imperative, not an option .

If you have been blessed with more money and goods than others, it is so you can meet the needs of those others, he argues. 'It takes wealth to care for the needy; a little paid out for the needs of each person, and all at once there is sharing. Whoever loves his neighbour as himself [as Christ taught], will not hold on to more than his neighbour has.' (Sermon To the Rich)

This post and this article show that Basil's contemporary, John Chrysostom, bishop of Antioch, echoed these sentiments and expressed them even more forcefully.

"Wealth is like a snake; it will twist around the hand and bite unless one knows how to use it properly." The huge injustices that wealth creates are intolerable to him. But Chrysostom is no proto-Marxist. "Should we require soldiers to come and seize the rich person’s gold and distribute it among his destitute neighbors? Should we beg the emperor to impose a tax on the rich so great that it reduces them to the level of the poor and then to share the proceeds of that tax among everyone?"

"Equality imposed by force would achieve nothing, and do much harm. The rich whose gold was taken away would feel bitter and resentful; while the poor who received the gold form the hands of soldiers would feel no gratitude, because no generosity would have prompted the gift. Far from bringing moral benefit to society, it would actually do moral harm. Material justice cannot be accomplished by compulsion, a change of heart will not follow. The only way to achieve true justice is to change people’s hearts first — and then they will joyfully share their wealth." (Sermon On Living Simply)

Disciplines Of Simplicity

This post from GodFirst Blog seemed to chime in harmony with my last two posts on simplicity and sustainability.

It is a summary of key practical disciplines for a simpler life, drawn from Richard Foster's seminal work, Celebration of Discipline, which first appeared in 1978. I reproduce a few below, with echoes from Basil of Caesarea sixteen centuries earlier.

* Buy things for their usefulness rather than for status. Basil: 'When I enter a house and see it shimmering with every kind of crass trinket, I realise that the owner may have given what was soulless a facelift, but he has an unbeautified soul'.

* Develop a habit of giving things away. Basil attacks the 'strange madness' whereby, 'when wealth overflows, it gets buried in the ground in secret places, "in case they need it one day".' And this, while the poor and hungry clamour at their gate.

* Reject anything that will breed oppression of others. Basil castigates the rich: 'How many people could one of your gold-encrusted fingers release from debt? How many broken-down homes could be rebuilt? You say you are doing no-one an injustice, yet you plunder so much for yourselves!'

* Learn to enjoy things without owning them. Basil: 'The world was created for the common benefit of all. The animals use in common the plants that grow naturally from the earth, and all living creatures permit each other to satisfy their need for food. But we hoard that which is common, and keep for ourselves what belongs to many others.'

Back To Sustainability

Continuing the theme from the last post, that 'the pendulum is swinging back to community', I have been considering the evidence. There aren't many indications, from what I can see, of people saying "let's move in together and share everything". But there are definite signs of thinking Christians reaching out for particular strands of what make up community.

One of these is sustainability: the belief that there are enough resources on earth to provide for its population, if only these resources could be used wisely and equally. The Breathe Network (see last post) is "a Christian network for simpler living, connecting people who want to live a less consumerist, more generous, more sustainable life". Their clip "Enough" will give you a flavour (read the comments too).

So, is sustainability in the New Testament mandate? It is certainly the thought behind 2 Corinthians 9:8. God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work.

But there is a much stronger tie-up with the monastic community vision. Basil, bishop of Caesarea (c.330-379), wrote at some length on this issue. In his sermon "To the Rich", he writes:

"But how do you make use of money? By dressing in expensive clothing? Won’t two yards of tunic suffice you, and the covering of one coat satisfy all your need of clothes? Is it for food’s sake that you have such a demand for wealth? One loaf is enough to fill a belly."

Basil inveighs against those "who leave grain to rot but will not feed the starving", who choose ivory sofas and silver tables when ordinary wood is just as suitable. This is more than cheap swipes at material wealth. For Basil, a man steeped in the Christian community vision of the Desert Fathers, the inherent sin of such behaviour is its refusal to accept simplicity for the sake of sustainability. It is as much a sin against the earth as it is against the poor.

This is the context in which Basil in his day, and concerned Christians like the Breathe Network today, saw the devious lie of consumerism and turned against it. To this we shall return.

Looking For Community

The latest issue of Jesus Life Magazine has just reached me from the Jesus Fellowship/Jesus Army. Always a challenging read, but one particular line jumped out at me:

"The pendulum is swinging back towards community"

The speaker is Mark Powley, co-founder of the Breathe Network, who represents a new generation of thinking, activist Christians - concerned about the environment, concerned about consumerism gone mad, keen to recycle, to live simply, and to explore community. He has recently published Consumer Detox, in which he explores how the tyranny of consumerism can be decoded, subverted, and outlived. The upbeat tone is well expressed in the final section, "adventures in generosity".

Powley isn't the only voice wondering whether Christian community (even community of goods) might be coming "in" again. Pastor and academic Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, a leader in the 'New Monasticism' movement, who himself lives in Christian community, has recently published <em>God's Economy , in which he critiques the 'prosperity gospel' so prevalent in Western (especially North American) churches, and offers a more just model.

The Jesus Army is finding this too, as churches and groups in many parts of the world make contact, having searched for an alternative to personal health and wealth preaching, which they instinctively mistrust and which simply does not work in their culture. The Jesus Army's relational model, with community living, offers a new direction which many are keen to explore.

So thank you, Mark, for the watchman's cry from the battlements: "the pendulum is swinging back towards community". I hope over the next few posts to explore elements of this subject.

The In-Breaking Kingdom Of God

I always appreciate the arrival of the new edition of The Plough, published by Church Communities International. There aren't too many publications emanating from an Anabaptist, "all things in common", communitarian stream, but this is one.

The latest issue heralds a bold and very welcome move: to publish, for the first time in English, the works of two remarkable men: Johann Christoph Blumhardt (1805-1880) and his son, Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt (1842-1919).

"What do such wildly diverse movements as religious socialism, neo-orthodoxy, Pentecostalism, and such Christian thinkers like Karl Barth, Eberhard Arnold, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Jacques Ellul and Jürgen Moltmann, have in common?", writes one of the series' editors. "They all trace their Christian understanding of the world and God’s kingdom to Johann Christoph Blumhardt, a humble pastor in Germany who lived in the 19th century."

Johann Christoph was pastor in Möttlingen, a village in South-West Germany as unremarkable as Blumhardt himself. Until 1842, that is, when circumstances plunged him into the realm of 'deliverance ministry', exorcism and healing prayer. A young woman exhibiting the classic symptoms of demonisation, as shown in the Gospels, was released after an intensive season of prayer, spiritual battle and exorcism.


"Möttlingen was swept up in an unprecedented movement of repentance and renewal. Stolen property was returned, broken marriages restored, enemies reconciled, alcoholics freed, and more amazingly still, an entire village experienced what life could be like when God ruled." People started arriving from miles around, drawn by the manifest power of God and the possible hope of freedom in their own lives. Such 'success' was, in fact, embarrassing for Blumhardt, who was a solid and unflamboyant character and freely admitted that he was no expert in these matters.

Even so, "Blumhardt’s parsonage eventually could not accommodate the numbers of people streaming to it. He thus began to look for a place with more room and greater freedom. He moved his family to Bad Boll, a complex of large buildings which had been developed as a spa around a sulfur water spring. His biographer [in German] recounts in vivid detail one story after another of how through the small circle at Bad Boll, desperate individuals of all stripes— burdened with mental, emotional, physical and spiritual maladies—found healing and renewed faith."

What made this a radical movement in the scope of this blog is that Blumhardt had the courage to work through the ideological issues (and plenty of opposition) and to conclude emphatically that the Kingdom of God was perennially able to break into everyday life, with whatever manifestation of the divine or miraculous that the Holy Spirit might choose.

Blumhardt was not a theologian and did not attempt a reasoned theology of his stance. He was a practical man, full of compassion, who was wise enough to realise that the damaged, the sick and the demonised need compassion and hope in their damaged souls every bit as much as healing or exorcism. His sermons pleaded, cared, pointed to a God who is love and who wants us to know it.

But Blumhardt also offers hope to Christians who long for the transcendental, for God's power to be seen in today's world. He was convinced that the Old Testament prophecy of Joel, quoted by Peter when the Holy Spirit was first outpoured (Acts 2:17) had only been partly fulfilled; that the generous and saving God in whom he believed had so much more for the Church to discover and to use for God's glory and the blessing of multitudes.