Other Than Money

Have you ever thought, ‘There just must, must be a better way, a better system for living other than the pursuit of money to pay bills and meet needs’?

Money, it turns out, is likely the greatest test, trial and temptation we encounter...whether and how we pursue it; how we use it; and how we think about it.

Earth is man’s very brief testing and proving grounds where eternal rewards are being determined. God directly orchestrates or allows testing situations designed to expose to the world what we, knowingly or unknowingly, have hidden in the deepest recesses of our heart/spirit. The entire earth realm is designed to receive and crack open seed or seed equivalent, expose the hidden DNA (physical, spiritual or conceptual) therein, and facilitate its growth, development and eventual replication. Look around, read the news, consider your own life and community. As you do, you are witnessing the fruit of collective seeds, planted long ago, whose DNA material has successfully found their sources of growth and development.

How we think about money is likely the primary source for growing and developing our inner spiritual DNA. And the real issue isn’t money at all. Rather, it is what money represents, the ability to acquire goods and services. If money did not exist, there would be alternate systems for doing this, such as barter, raiding parties (as David did before becoming king of ancient Israel), pirating, and attempts at enclosed, self-sustaining communities.  As a result of sin, God’s original need-meeting system on earth collapsed. He was to be our source, literally and comprehensively. In exchange, we were created to love, adore, praise, worship and fellowship with Him to a degree angels could not. We caved; He withdrew. Thus, we needed an alternate god-supplying system. We developed ‘markets’, and money to serve as the ‘oil’ of markets.  Interestingly, money is not only the oil of markets. It also shapes and distorts markets. Consider the unimaginable number of decisions we make daily, solely in response to money, decisions that would be totally different, or not made at all if money was not the issue.

How would you structure your life if money was not an issue? Imagine how this might impact the entire world! How many products and services would be deleted or new ones created because of decisions to restructure our lives around something .... ‘other than money!’ Imagine the new world that would be created if money was not the ‘whip that daily cracked across our backs.’ There might still be markets, based not on money, but on our purest interests and desires as to where and how to spend our days, pursuing our perceived purposes.

We are all blessed with natural talents and interest areas, but these are distorted or altogether ignored in the pursuit of money to pay for goods and services. Our raison d’être or incentive structures have been totally warped by the pursuit of money, rather than the pursuit of our individual God-given purposes. Imagine a world in which we pursue, identify, develop, and then walk in our God-given purposes, undistorted by money. Imagine how things would so easily flow and fit together. Does this sound like a planned economy? You bet, but not one planned and controlled by man, but by God. Selfish pride blocks our potential to desire or even imagine such! Adam’s sin gave birth to iterative ‘me, myself, and I’ generations on planet earth, and God has determined to allow them to run their course, until..... 

Hollywood has conjured up the concept of alternative worlds or universes. Well imagine an alternative economy, one undistorted by money, where the incentive framework for being, doing and consuming is totally different from the one produced by a moneyed economy. What might such an incentive be? The answer lies in discovering the original incentive framework created for Adam and Eve in The Garden of Eden. What if God intended that garden to grow and fill the entire earth, and possibly beyond? Moreover, what if it were possible to restructure your personal life as a quasi-enclave of this garden, a microcosm within our existing, distorted system incentivized by money?

This is possible, and desired by God, just as He established the nation of Israel to be a microcosm in Canaan, specifically, and ‘within context of’ the larger world, more generally; just as He established earth as a unique microcosm to sustain human life ‘within context of’ a vast, inhospitable universe; and just as an eye ball has at its center, a pupil, a hole, ‘within context of’ its mass’, into which a tiny bit of light can escape the outside world, strike a nerve in the back of the eyeball, and send lightning fast signals to the brain for interpretation! wOw!! 

This reveals a clear the Truth -- God IS NOT bothered by the broader contexts. Rather, He focuses precisely on His unique objectives ‘within the contexts’, which He then uses to change the context, slowly over time. Thus, He triggers the contexts to feed His objectives. This is the seed principle. To Him, the circumstantial or situational contexts are like soil, dirt, the supporting structure and resources to incubate, develop and grow His purpose, encapsulated in seeds. His seeds may be tangible or intangible. They are most often words, spoken in an inhospitable context (e.g., an unbelieving community or society), grasped and believed by a human spirit, and then incubated to produce their eventual, good fruit.

Since He has determined to allow our alternative, Godless, moneyed system to run its course until He ushers in His new system, God has established an interim approach that will give us a foothold into His coming need-meeting system. It is tithing a tithe of our income ‘to Him’. In effect, the tithe (10% of our gross money and non-money income) is the equivalent of ancient Israel in Canaan, or the pupil in the eyeball, or earth in the universe! It is a ‘seed planted in the contextual soils of our life’, by which He works His interim system. How?

Any seed does two things, chemically. First, it yields to the soil’s attacks to crack it open and return its components (inside and out) to their basic elements...dirt. But mystically, the seed then changes the immediately surrounding soil chemically, making the dirt work to enable the seed to ‘express’ (push out) the seed’s DNA. Once expressed, this DNA literally takes on a commanding role, forcing dirt to serve it… throughout its life!

As you submit your tithe (seed) to God, and send it into the world (dirt equivalent), you lose control of how it is used (dirt cracking open your seed), but your God-empowered faith (spiritual DNA in your seed) overtakes and ensures God-shaped outcomes, some of which you will know in this life, and many others you will only know in the hereafter!

Receive this typology as a ‘rudder’ to turn around your naturally distorted thinking about our moneyed market system. Changing how you think about money opens avenues for God to create ‘The Garden of Eden’ in your life. As the discipline of living on 90% of your income kicks in, your priorities will be influenced and shaped by His priorities. Your faith in His filling presence to meet your needs and your desires that correspond to His purposes, will then dispel fears about going without. With fears dispersed, you are then increasingly free to help others meet their needs, and most important, encourage and disciple them to ‘see the light’.  Not only is it important to cultivate the image of you as a seed sower, but also as a reaper of bountiful harvests, and not only for your own needs and desires, but also for those of others!

Embrace, apply and share this Truth in your life, and don’t be fooled into judging it by the degree to which your natural mind may assess whether it is ‘working or not working’. Truth is and remains Truth, and is not subject to your or my mere carnal assessments.

Finally, recall that God’s system starts, not with sharing your substance as a tithe, but with repentance of sins, and receiving His Grace-based salvation in Jesus Christ. Simply mimicking His system apart from this is ...futile.