REFLECTIONS FROM THE EDITOR KRISTYN KOMARNICKI
Living in the Red Money. Most of us have a love/hate relationship with it. We love to spend it, stockpile it, or, less frequently, share it. We hate the hold that our undeniable need for it has over us.We long to have a healthy relationship with it, but so many of us seem caught in cycles of shame and blame, striving and struggling — regardless of our income. As two 18thcentury wise men have so poignantly articulated, both poverty and wealth bring challenges: “Debt is the worst poverty,” wrote the physician Thomas Fuller, while preacher John Wesley claimed, “When I have money, I get rid of it quickly, lest it find a way into my heart.” Some years ago my husband and I found ourselves unable to pay a very hefty bill that hit us by surprise.We were already wondering how we were going to make it through a spell of unemployment when it arrived. I felt as if all the air had been sucked out of me, and I reeled in an attempt to understand how this had happened. Did God fail to provide? (I confess, I wondered this.) Was this country’s economy just too tough to survive in? (My husband, a European, will always suspect this.) What had we done wrong? Because I know deep down that our Heavenly Father never fails, I felt ashamed and disoriented. Then my earthly father stepped forward, meeting my panicked self-flagellation with steady reassurance. He didn’t blame or criticize or even question. My dad, who had always been such a great provider for his family, actually identified with us and our predicament. Quietly, without a fuss, and in spite of the fact that his own retirement finances were not at all what he had long planned them to be, he wrote out a check to cover the entire debt. A few weeks later he wrote a letter
saying it was a gift and that he expected no repayment. He loved us, and wanted to share this gift of grace with us. What an example of the redemptive love of Christ, who, while we were yet sinners, paid the price for our sins with this blood. I’m pretty sure that one thing I was supposed to learn through that painful and miraculous experience is that I still have so much more to learn about grace. I too often operate under the assumption that if I give enough of myself, then God will provide: If I pour out myself for others, if I seek and serve and trust and love God enough — then he will provide. But it’s not an “if A then B” equation. God doesn’t provide because of anything I do. God provides because of who he is. There is nothing I can do to make God love me more than he already does, and there is nothing I can do that would cause him to love me any less.
God isn’t in the bailout business. He’s in the redemption business. He is. He loves. He provides. It’s up to me to accept that and stop trying to earn it. It’s that simple, and yet it’s an extremely difficult thing to grasp hold of — let alone to live in. Like God, my dad responded to us in love and grace, not because we deserved it but because of who he is. He personified the grace of God in a truly amazing way — without conditions or condemnation. The moral of this story is not that God does financial bailouts (although he does pour out grace by the truckload). Unlike the government, which likes to play god but tends to bail out poor people with a thimble and rich (did I mention criminal?) financial institutions with a twofisted Super-Size-Me cup, God isn’t in the bailout business. He’s in the redemption business. He buys us at a great price, not so that we can slink back to our bad PRISM 2010
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habits but so that we can become new creations — people with hearts like his, people who are willing to lay down their lives for others and make investments that neither mold nor rust will destroy. No, the moral of this story is that God will use anything — yes, even filthy lucre — to teach us more about himself. In this issue’s cover story we look at finances on both the micro individual level and the macro corporate level. They go hand in hand. We do need to make a concerted effort to live within our means. Likewise, we need to hold our (God’s) money with open hands so he can share it with people who need it more than we do. We do need to fight structural injustices that ensnare and enslave people with convoluted contracts, slippery sales tactics, and usurious interest rates. The Bible addresses both of these levels as well.We are warned not to borrow without repaying, but also not to charge interest. There are warnings to those who live wasteful lives and also to those who extract repayments from the poor. In Habakkuk 2:7 God asks, “Will not your debtors suddenly arise? Will they not wake up and make you tremble? Then you will become their victim.” That should send a chill down more than a few banker spines. Whether we are president of a credit card company or facing foreclosure on our home, God wants us to be free—free to serve him, free to look our brothers and sisters in the face with neither arrogance nor shame, free to enjoy the abundance of his creation.True freedom comes from being a child of the King who paid dearly for us, with his own red blood. The next time I’m in a challenging financial season — and there will undoubtedly be a next time — I’m committed to taking a different perspective on being in the red. I’m committed to focusing on the privilege and joy and freedom of living in the only red that really counts — in the scarlet tide of Christ’s saving blood. Q