This post was written by Nick Pridemore, College Pastor, Bloomington, Indiana. You can also find him on werdguys blogging on all things faith and fatherhood.
In
what ways can we teach good stewardship of finances and the discipline of
tithing?
Money.
Bleh. There, I got that out of the way. I realize going into this post that
money is one of the touchiest topics in faith. This is not necessarily without reason.
It is true that many preachers are overly focused on money. The so called
“prosperity gospel” has distorted Christianity into a false promise of riches
and cushy living while ignoring the true gospel’s offer to “follow Me into
death”.
It is true
that many preachers seek power and excessively lavish lives by becoming masters
of manipulation and guilt. However, it is also true that many people use these
statements to justify ignoring biblical teachings on selflessness,
responsibility and stewardship. To be blunt, we hate hearing biblical teachings
on money because we love our stuff.
The
reality is Jesus talked about money a lot. He talked about money more than
heaven and hell combined. He talked about money more than any other single
topic other than the Kingdom of God. Almost a third of the parables are about
money. Here’s the crazy thing; it was never about money. The frequency
with which the Bible talks about money is not about God needing your money. God
doesn’t need you to fund his kingdom.
The reason
the Bible mentions money so frequently is summed up in one statement Jesus
made; “wherever your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21).
God actually is concerned with our view and treatment of money, not because he
cares about our money, but because it’s an indicator of where our heart is. For
example, consider the biblical directives to help others in need (Prov 28:27,
Matt 25:31-46, Acts 2:45), use your resources to further the kingdom of God
(Romans 15:20-24, Phil 4:1-20), and tithe faithfully (Malachi 3:10, Matt 23:23-24).
If you are a believer and choose to ignore these because you are unwilling to
let your money go then you cannot genuinely say, “Money is not my treasure,
Jesus is.” No, money is your treasure, but that doesn’t feel good to admit.
Therefore,
we should practice and instill in our children biblical ideas of stewardship.
We should start early. One of the biggest mistakes parents can make in this
area (aside from modeling greed and selfishness) is to assume kids are
oblivious to money and stewardship. Many parents operate under the “don’t worry
about it, this is grown up stuff” philosophy. Waiting until kids are taking
economics in high school to teach them about money is a mistake. By that time
society has already been teaching them to grab everything they can and hold on
to it with all their might for 15 years. Kids as young as 3 or 4 can understand
ideas such as “we don’t need more toys to be happy, lets do something
fun” or “we have so many toys, maybe we should send some to kids who don’t have
toys”.
I’ve
mentioned this same tactic in other posts; using toys and ideas kids understand
to teach bigger lessons. Isn’t that what Jesus did with parables? He broke the
Kingdom of Heaven down into ideas we can understand by re-contextualizing them
in words and stories we can relate to.
This post never actually got around to answering the original question. For
that I apologize. But before addressing how to teach stewardship and
financial responsibility to children I thought it was important to solidify
that we should teach such things. Next week I will give some tips on how
we tackle such things in my house.
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