Money loves safety.
One of the chief concerns that Tina and I have in giving money - particularly as we’re just out and about - is that we don’t want money we give to fuel misbehavior. The organization, persons or charity that we give money to - we want to know how they’re going to treat it.
Money is a tool that if misused, has the capacity to be harmful.
Remember that line in “Liar Liar” where Jim Carrey’s character refuses to give a panhandler change “Because I believe you will buy booze with it”?
That’s what I’m getting at.
We’re in a great season of giving and I was reflecting this morning on how a few things, one of them being how we can end up playing the “giving lottery” at different times in our lives.
What I mean is we give money blindly, until we don’t.
We’ve had churches we were nervous about tithing at - not because the church had an integrity problem, or a pastoral issue, but because the church had such financial issues that the financial issues were going to prolong what was obvious - they had a practical problem that had to be addressed. They were overextended.
It didn’t feel good, it didn’t feel safe to give because it didn’t feel like money was going to further the Kingdom, but rather to bloated credit lines.
I had a massage therapist who told me that they had been giving discounted massages to someone who had vented during sessions that they were tight financially. One such session, the client indicated that they were becoming so broke, they were going to need to cancel the house cleaner. The house cleaner, the massage therapist said? You can afford house cleaning but can’t afford full price massages?
Be careful where your charity - and your tithe - is going. You only have so much to give and as you work the baby steps and become more solvent, you’ll find more opportunities to give and realize that there are good places to give (healthy church) and bad places to give (charities you haven’t researched).
Do your homework, pray, get your spouse involved, vet - and don’t give unless you feel totally comfortable that your gift is going to be helpful - otherwise, you’re just giving a drunk a drink.
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