The joy of ... not having money?

Money is on the mind of a lot of people these days. With the downturn of the economy have come a number of movements claiming to have the solution to all of our financial woes. The Tea Party states that what we need to do is deregulate, and then anybody that works hard enough and wants to be rich can be. Occupy Wall Street seems to think the way to financial comfort is by taking from those who already have it. Both movements are agreed upon the end, greater wealth; they just seem to disagree on the means.

But what if the end we should be concerned about isn't wealth? What if the goal of our lives is something beyond the green stuff? Then neither of these movements is really addressing the questions that matter. In fact, they're doing quite the opposite: they're putting up a big fuss about something that, in the end, doesn't matter as much as they'd like to think. And, by putting up such a big fuss, they're distracting others from focusing on the things that really matter, like God, family, and friends.

We Christians can become distracted by this talk as well; I know, as I've been distracted by them recently. For a couple of days now, I've been worried about our financial status. Liz and I aren't on the brink of destruction or anything like that. We know we're very well off: I have a job, we have food on the table and a roof over our heads. We can even afford luxuries like going out to eat with friends once a week. We're what I like to think of as "comfortably tight." There are a number of people in the world who are worse off than we are, but that doesn't mean we don't worry about making the ends meet.

Truthfully, this week hasn't been much different from all the times before. We're trying to save here and there so that we can put some money away for a rainy day. We take two steps forward and one step back. The problem comes when we simply want to run forward, something that I've been trying too hard to do recently. I get in trouble when I want all our debt to be gone now so that I can be saving everything we make. Then, I hear the words, "Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?'" Lk 12:20.

Of course, I don't just want to save up money so that I have a nice looking balance on the bank account. I want to save so that my family can have a good future, so Liz and I can buy a house and help our children go to college. These desires are ultimately good. However, to truly give my children a good future, a good life, I cannot be focused on giving them a wealthy one. Rather, my focus should be on giving them a Christian life, for that is what will ultimately make them happy.

And in the end, the Christian life, the living out of a relationship with Jesus, is what ultimately makes all of us happy. This is something that the disordered concern with money makes us loose sight of. We don't have to be incredibly wealthy to be happy. We can be "comfortably tight" and still live good, happy lives. This is a lesson Liz and I need to learn as we look to the future. If we're committed to me being a high school teacher at some point, and she being a stay at home mom, then we're probably never going to move much beyond comfortably tight.

In fact, wealth can often be a hindrance to living out the relationship with Jesus, though it's a hindrance that can be overcome. Christ says "Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." Mt. 19: 24-25. Money, though in itself a good, often distracts us from God because of our fallen human nature. Our sin throughout time has been to wish to do things on our own apart from God, and money allows for a number of material pleasures we can experience apart from God. It provides man with the ability to do whatever he wants and feeds the multiplication of his desires. Lack of money, on the other hand, quickly narrows his desires so that he must be happy with what he can always have, namely God.

In the end, life is not about money. It's about love; it's about Faith, Hope, and Charity in Jesus Christ. What is all the money in the world really worth if we don't know Jesus's mercy? So, we'll go on living comfortably tight. That doesn't mean money will never stress us out again, I'm sure it will. Hopefully, though, through God's grace, we can always come back to what matters most: God, family, and friends.