“Givers are like the ocean; they never empty because they are always being filled from within.” Rumi (1207-1273)
I’ve spent the past few weeks speaking about giving. Preachers have hit giving from every angle. We’ve criticized materialism. We’ve dug through the Old Testament like archaeologists in search of prooftexts about firstfruits and tithing. We’ve elevated communal practices from Acts of the Apostles, hoping that a church trying to restore the New Testament might start with their spending. It’s unclear if any of this has made much difference.
Americans give less than 3% away. For many households, the cable+streaming bundle eclipses the amount given to charity. Even our politicians are reluctant to disclose their personal giving (which is often embarrassingly low).
But before we throw stones from our glass houses at those in nicer glass houses, we need to be honest with ourselves. Christians in America can be a bit stingy. We give less than we did during the Great Depression. Regular churchgoers give about 6% of their annual income, and those who attend less give considerably less. And let’s not even talk about the servers we’ve stiffed after our Sunday lunches.
When it comes to generosity, we’ve spent more time staring at the floor than imagining life near the ceiling. We believe that our life of spending is the actual path to happiness, so we limit our giving to the bare minimum, rather than dreaming about what it would look like to flourish as a giver. In doing this, we spend our energy avoiding the sin of greed rather than bearing the fruit of hospitality and generosity.
Is there a better way to think about generosity?
- We need to acknowledge that we are comparatively rich. It’s easy to think of ourselves as middle class, but many of us aren’t in the middle at all. America is rich and that fact is hard to get around. A Memphis couple earning $132,000 a year makes more than 80% of their neighbors. That might sound like a lot of money, but a Memphis public school teacher can get to that level pretty easily; they just need to marry another public school teacher. Nobody would argue that school teachers are among the overcompensated. Sure, we all hate paying inflated prices for groceries and insurance, but that still doesn’t change the fact that we are wealthy on a global scale. Most of us wouldn’t trade our current standard of living to be average in another country. Studies have shown that a person is better off in Mississippi than in Great Britain.
- We need to change our mindset. Some people operate from a Pride mindset, which believes: I deserve what I have. Others have a Poverty mindset, which assumes: I deserve what you have. Neither of those are very evident in Scripture, and God is noticeably absent in both. A healthier mindset is that God has given us money for a reason and that reason is to be generous.
- We need to pay more attention to the most generous among us. White Station, like many churches, has generous people at all income levels. These are the people we should admire and imitate. The people behind the ten most-followed Instagram accounts in the United States have an average worth of $400 million dollars. We call them Influencers for a reason. But among the thirty most generous people at White Station you will find school teachers, nurses, and mechanics. We need to imitate people we respect rather than those we envy. Can you imagine how much more joy we would experience if we imitated the generous rather than comparing ourselves to the prosperous?
This all might lead to the happiness we desire. Researchers at the Cleveland Clinic report that, “Giving can stimulate your brain’s mesolimbic pathway…boost self-esteem, elevate happiness and combat feelings of depression.” The Beatles said you can’t buy love. And some say money can’t buy happiness—but maybe we’ve simply been using the wrong currency. Maybe we can pay with generosity. No matter what we make, we all can be generous. And that generosity will always pay a dividend of joy.
Our wage or occupation doesn’t have to limit our offering. Our day job doesn’t have to define our life’s work. Winston Churchill said “we make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.”
True statement.
And Churchill could’ve had even more if he had chosen to live in Mississippi.
