Perspective: To Give, or Not to Give?

I share these thoughts hoping they are of help to someone else.

Comments are always welcomed.

To Give, or Not to Give?

Everyone should give whatever they have decided in their heart.  They shouldn't give with hesitation or because of pressure.  God loves a cheerful giver.

2 Corinthians 9:7 (CEB)

I wanna love because You loved

I wanna give because You gave

I wanna reach my hand out to the lost

'Cause I know Your hand will save

From "Only You Can Save" by Chris Sligh

During the time of the early Church, while St. Paul was traveling throughout the Roman Empire and sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Christians in the Jerusalem area were experiencing tremendous hardships due to a combination of famine, persecution, and excessive taxation.¹  Paul wrote to various communities of faith, asking them to take up an offering to help the Church in Jerusalem.  One of these communities was situated in the Greek city of Corinth.²  At first, the Corinthians seemed to be quite enthusiastic about pledging to contribute to the relief effort, but, later on, after some apparent drama between Paul and the Corinthians, Paul apparently has some concerns that they might not follow through with their pledge.

Paul travels to the region of Macedonia which was to the north of Corinth.  The Christians in Macedonia are dirt poor, so Paul doesn't even ask them to contribute to the fund to help the Jerusalem church.  Somehow, the Macedonians find out about the relief effort, and they actually beg Paul to allow them to contribute.  Despite their poverty, they are so generous that they donate more than Paul thinks they can afford.  Paul is so impressed with the generosity of the Macedonians that he writes about them in a letter to the Corinthians, hoping that he will inspire them to follow through with what they started to do.³

Paul then ups the ante by confessing to the Corinthians that he has been bragging about their enthusiasm and their generosity, to the other communities of faith.  He even goes so far to say that there is a possibility that someone from Macedonia will accompany him when he returns to Corinth.  If the Macedonians, who contributed to the relief effort despite their poverty, find out that the Corinthians, who are faring much better financially, haven't contributed anything to the fund, then both Paul and the Corinthians would be extremely embarrassed.⁴

Despite the pressure Paul is putting on the Corinthians to follow through with what they've pledged to do, he admits that he wants them to give from their hearts and not out of a sense of obligation.  He tells them that "God loves a cheerful giver."

Paul asked the Christians in Corinth to contribute to a fund to help the Church in the Jerusalem region.  At first, the Corinthians seemed enthusiastic to give, but, later on, Paul started to wonder if they still wanted to help the people in Jerusalem.  I wonder if maybe the Corinthians agreed to contribute to the fund and acted enthusiastic about it not because they actually wanted to give, but because they felt as though they were supposed to give.  I wonder if the Corinthians only agreed to give because "good people" donate to such causes and they wanted to think of themselves as "good people."  I think that, at some point, we've all agreed to do things for such reasons.

This brings me to a question I think we have all faced at some point in our lives: If you're asked to do something, should you agree to do it if your heart is not in it?  I don't know about you, but I have wrestled with this question many times in my life.  I cannot offer you a simple answer, but I can offer you some thoughts to ponder as you wrestle with this question for yourself.

First of all, we have to admit that sometimes stuff just needs to get done whether we want to do it or not.  Don't forget that God enlisted a number of reluctant leaders and prophets throughout the biblical narrative - Moses, Gideon, Jeremiah, and Jonah, just to name a few.  There will be times when life requires us to do things we don't want to do and when the only form of motivation we can muster is obligation.  Even so, I do not think that the obligation-driven life is a healthy one.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells His listeners not to swear an oath to people but to "let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no."⁵  In other words, we should not have to swear on a proverbial stack of Bibles to get people to believe what we say.  Instead, a simple yes or no should suffice.  We all need to be true to our word: if we say that we're going to do something, then we need to do it.  The Corinthians said that they would contribute to the relief effort, so they needed to contribute if for no other reason than to be true to their word.

That said, I wonder if Jesus' words address not only our honesty but our sincerity as well.  I wonder if maybe, when Jesus says, "Let your yes mean yes, and your no mean no," He is saying that we should only say yes to someone's request if we're actually sincere about it.⁶

Writer Frederick Buechner once wrote, "The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."⁷  If Paul is right that "God loves a cheerful giver," then maybe we should focus on giving the things that we can give joyously.  Instead of wearing ourselves out trying to meet everyone's expectations of us, maybe we should find the things that we simply cannot keep to ourselves and then give those things to the people who need them.  Perhaps it would be a good idea for us to take stock of the types of things we do willingly and wholeheartedly as well as the types of things we do reluctantly and halfheartedly.  With this knowledge, we could focus more of our energy on the former things and less on the latter things.  Not all people are suited for the same tasks.

Jesus once told a parable about a father who asks both of his sons to work in his vineyard.  The first son refuses to work in the vineyard and then changes his mind.  The second son enthusiastically agrees to work in the vineyard but doesn't do any work.⁸  Normally, I don't recommend surface-level readings of Jesus' parables, because there are always deeper meanings beneath the surface.  Still, I think that one thing we can glean from this parable – but certainly not the only thing – is that it is better for a person to say no and then change her mind than for a person to say yes and then not follow through with what she said she would do.  Sometimes one must travel through no to arrive at yes.

I realize that I just gave you a bunch of different conflicting ideas.  Again, my intention was not to give you an answer to the question at hand, but rather some food for thought as you wrestle with the question for yourself.  There is no "silver bullet" to make our decisions in life easy.  When it comes to life's difficult questions, I don't believe that there are any easy answers, only lazy answers.  Perhaps what we need most of all when facing a difficult decision is to pray and seek the wisdom from God to discern what is best.


Notes:

1. Rob Bell.  "The Rich Kind of Poor."  Mars Hill Bible Church Podcast, 12/05/2010.
2. 1 Corinthians 16:1-4
3. 2 Corinthians 8:1-11
4. 2 Corinthians 9:1-4
5. Matthew 5:33-37 (CEB)
6. Kent Dobson proposes such an interpretation of Jesus' words in a recent sermon.  Mars Hill Bible Church Podcast, 07/06/2014.
7. Frederick Buechner.  Wishful Thinking: A Seeker's ABC.  1993, HarperOne.  p. 118-119
8. Matthew 21:28-32

The photograph featured in this perspective was taken by Bill Nicholls and is used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.  The photographer is in no way affiliated with this blog.