The Christian’S Dollars And Sense
Everyone is concerned about making ends meet, and hopes to have a little left over. For the Christian, this involves the entire area of financial stewardship. Although we have been reluctant to talk about such things, books on this subject do appear, with four good ones recently arriving: You and Your Money—A Guide from God’s Word (Baker), by Ron Hembree; How You Can Manage Your Money: A Christian’s Guide to Personal and Family Decision Making (Augsburg), by John Warren Johnson; Money: How to Spend Less and Have More (Revell), by David J. Juroe; and Your Money/Their Ministry: A Guide to Responsible Christian Living (Eerdmans), by Edward J. Hales and J. Alan Youngren.
Hembree, a Canadian pastor, deals with the matter of prosperity at any level, and zeros in pragmatically on life in the 1980s. Spiritual principles form the foundation of each chapter and serve as a guide to thought, raising such questions as “What is the biggest barrier to financial success?” and “Why is giving not the answer?” Subjects like “Why God Wants You to Prosper” and “The Cause of Seeming Income Deflation,” along with some guidelines to investment, make this a valuable book for Christians and their economic survival.
Hembree neither attempts to give pat answers nor provide slick formulas for financial success. He has instead produced a well-balanced mixture of absolutes for Christians, and he spells out how to make these work in practice. He engages the mind of the reader by forcing concentration on basic biblical truths, presenting facts in a direct, positive way to cause him to reflect deeply about today’s “gut” issues.
Hembree’s level-headed approach is exemplified in this quotation: “Much of the tension of the Christian life was taken out of my life when I read Hebrews 12:2.… It was easy for me to admit that God gave me my faith, but the greater lesson is that it was also His responsibility to finish my faith. In other words, I am God’s problem.” Hembree does an effective job of establishing the individual’s relationship to God and society, identifying responsibilities and results, and the book would lend itself well to small group discussion.
John Warren Johnson’s book is primarily a reference manual dealing with various aspects of financial management as they pertain to Christians. Executive vice-president of the American Collector’s Association, Johnson covers the field of personal finance, including day-to-day purchases, longer-term capital expenditures, investments, and handling debt. He also includes a basic glossary of terms and a number of good self-help tools. His central focus concerns Christian stewardship of resources, and the book is written primarily to offer advice on how to avoid financial trouble rather than to show how to dig out of already existing financial problems. It is easy to read and understand, giving basic direction for most of the financial transactions in which the average person will be involved. The information is basic, sound, and very current.
For insight into a deeper problem, turn to David Juroe, a family counselor in Orange, California; his book deals with the problem of compulsive spending. After identifying initial symptoms that could lead to a pattern of unnecessary spending, he discusses the causes of uncontrolled spending in considerable detail.
An analysis of deeper problems that manifest themselves in the abnormal behavior of uncontrolled spending is the central point. Juroe wants the reader to understand the relationship between discontent, avoidance of life’s responsibilities, and the constant clamor today that advocates living for the present only in the hopes of fulfilling all of our hidden desires.
Most Christians will enjoy reading this book, with its self-help quizzes, information on how credit works, hard-hitting look at the advertising industry, and list of symptoms of what to avoid. It concludes with methods to overcome the problem, ranging from simple self-help solutions to professional counseling. Though sometimes necessary to labor through portions of it, the reader is rewarded with insights that go beyond a mere surface discussion of money. It is a book that deserves to be on our reference shelf.
In the fourth book, Edward J. Hales, a Portland, Maine, pastor, and J. Allen Youngren, a marketing and development consultant, attempt to explain fund-raising techniques and processes. They underscore the importance of evaluating requests for money, with a view to Christians developing a greater awareness of wise stewardship of their own funds. The book has excellent charts, graphs, and lists, which help clarify subjects such as “Establishing a Sound Foundation for Giving,” “Finding and Using Sources of Information,” and “The Analyzing of Financial and Non-Financial Information.” All of this is aimed at helping the reader decide how to select where to give his money when deluged with an avalanche of fund appeals.
Hales and Youngren hold that all Christians will be held accountable for the resources at their disposal, and that there must be a basis of selection since no one individual can support everything. The authors further point out that because in most cases those ministries will not be located near the donor, in the truest sense, the donor relinquishes control of his funds once they are given. Hales and Youngren also rightly make a distinction between supporting one’s local church and all other organizations seeking money. The authors’ comments on size of gifts and patterns of giving, and their graphic behind-the-scenes vignettes, should make Christians want a better understanding of how organizations use their money.
This is a fine reference book, and it belongs on the shelves of pastors and financial counselors as well as in church libraries.
These four books taken together provide a good start toward understanding positive financial responsibility and avoiding bad money management. At last evangelicals are beginning to say something of value.
Reviewed by Henry Erickson, business manager of Wheaton Bible Church, Wheaton, Illinois.
If Money Loses Its Value
Faith and the Prospects of Economic Collapse, by Robert Lee (John Knox, 1981, 170 pp., $6.95), is reviewed by Robert L. Cleath, professor of speech communication, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California.
When a mainline Presbyterian ethics professor waves a red flag to warn of impending disaster in the American economy, one may conclude that bad times are imminent. In Faith and the Prospects of Economic Collapse, the Margaret Dollar Professor of Social Ethics at San Francisco Theological Seminary, Robert Lee, assesses our national economic predicament much like analysts Howard Ruff and Harry Browne. His objective, however, is different. Lee is not writing to advise readers of ways to protect their nest eggs if depression hits, but to call people to Christian faith and biblical patterns of living that will lessen chances of collapse and enhance the quality of life for all.
Lee blames our financial woes on undisciplined credit consumerism, profligate government spending of paper money that is not backed, an uncontrolled Federal Reserve Board that creates and disburses money through an irresponsible banking system, diminishing levels of productivity, and an economic atmosphere that discourages thrift and the work ethic but encourages deficit spending and filings for bankruptcy. His no-nonsense approach to the complex workings of the government/banks/industry / labor / consumer economic syndrome that has reaped the burgeoning and immoral tax of inflation lays bare the contemptible manipulation that threatens to ruin our economic system. Citing apt examples and cogent statistics, Lee analyzes the problem with a clarity and wit that enable the layman to grasp the dire nature of our situation.
Despite the candor of his indictment of the American economic scene, Lee is no crepe hanger resigned to await the crash. He recognizes that confidence is indispensable to the working of our economy. We must have faith that it can be made to work This calls for the citizenry to face honestly the hard facts of our insatiable consumerism and the nefarious ways in which incestuous economists and politicians have rigged our financial machinery.
Lee appeals for abandonment of our egotistical lifestyle, which is concerned only with personal safety and prosperity, wastes resources, and isolates us from a needy world. Following biblical principles, we must rather commit ourselves to “eco-ethics” that require concern for all mankind, a simplified lifestyle, willingness to share with the poor, cultivation of the Puritan ethic of thrift, habits of enlightened conservation and good stewardship, and most of all, genuine love in personal relationships.
Lee is to be commended for his astute analysis and prophetic warnings of possible economic collapse, his wisdom in calling for eco-ethical living, and his bedrock confidence in Jesus Christ as man’s absolute hope. One wishes he had also offered workable solutions for the social and institutional dimensions of the problem. These would include how to control politicians who buy power through pork-barrel/special-interest spending programs, how to trim the sails of the Federal Reserve Banking system and major money brokers, how to curtail the greed of big business and big labor, and how to dismantle nonessential public giveaway programs that cause people to keep their hands extended for aid.
Robert Lee has written a stimulating, readable book that will enhance awareness of the severity of the present crisis. It should motivate believers to live more simplified lives in the economic realm and to forthrightly oppose economic power structures and policies that will precipitate a collapse if they are not restrained and reformed. Most of all, it should lead readers to place their confidence in Jesus Christ and live, as Lee recommends, with “concarement”: care, concern, and commitment.
Lay Level Theology
Basic Beliefs of Christians, by Douglas Beyer (Judson, 1981, 64 pp., $3.50), is reviewed by Charles C. Anderson, chairman of the Department of Religion and Philosophy, Ottawa University, Ottawa, Kansas.
Douglas Beyer, pastor of the West Side Baptist Church, Topeka, Kansas, has given us a very helpful book on the essentials of the Christian faith. In an era when it has become popular to forsake theology for action in the church, Beyer reminds us that a basic theology must precede all right action.
The book is written in a way that suits it to a wide range of Christian communions and settings. Beyer is orthodox in his theology, but the book avoids denominational distinctives that would limit its acceptance. He also avoids discussion of tangential issues that would divert our attention from the basics.
The first two chapters deal with the need to consider basics and the effect this can have on Christian living. The last eight chapters treat successively what Christians believe about God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, angels, humankind, salvation, the church, and the future.
Following a brief, popular treatment, each chapter contains a series of study questions on each theme and a rather extensive list of Scripture passages in outline form on aspects of the theme of the chapter. These features make the book profitable for either a quick consideration of Christian beliefs or for intensive study, and for individual or group use.
Beyer writes on something important, does it briefly and well, and makes it usable.
Anglican-Catholic Accord Grows Closer
Nineteen eighty-two should be a watershed year in relations between the papacy and the worldwide Anglican church led by Robert Runcie, the archbishop of Canterbury.
In May, Pope John Paul II will visit England; his coming signals the increasing closeness of the two churches and follows a recent announcement that substantial agreement had been reached between them on the theology of the priesthood (this despite the papal bull, Apostolicae Curae, issued 84 years ago, in which Pope Leo XIII declared for all time that Anglican holy orders were absolutely null and void).
In an important parallel development in January, the British Foreign Office and the Vatican jointly announced the raising of diplomatic representation to ambassadorial level. (This diplomatic exchange also buries the centuries-old conflict between the papacy and the British monarchy that followed the excommunication of Queen Elizabeth I following the Reformation.)
The Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England greeted the establishing of full diplomatic relations with cautious favor, while the Protestant wing and the free churches expressed dismay.
Although the Pope’s tour of Britain is technically a pastoral visit to the nadon’s Catholics, it is also a visit by a head of state, and the Pope will be accorded full ceremonial courtesies. Already there is mounting concern at the excessive splendor and cost of the visit, and the media are describing John Paul as a megastar.
The more partisan Protestants plan to demonstrate in London against the papal visit. Their protest is being coordinated by the Protestant Reformation Society, a mostly Anglican group, and by the United Protestant Council.
Attempting to delineate its stance between the extremist fringe and the ecumenical enthusiasts, the Evangelical Alliance urged its member denominations “not to engage in negative counterdemonstrations of the papal visit,” and “to treat those in the Roman Catholic church with love, respect, and courtesy.” At the same time it stressed that “there remain fundamental differences between biblical truth and the teaching of the Roman Catholic church which cannot be lightly dismissed in a mood of ecumenical euphoria.”
