Dipping into the Countercultural Pool

For those of us who are of a certain age -for instance, if you remember watching "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" episodes when they ran originally on TV - then the word "countercultural" may conjure in your mind certain discomfiting images: hippies puffing on illegal drugs, waves of students burning draft cards and folk musicians wailing against just about everything including the cars that hauled them to Woodstock.

However, if we want to subscribe to Christian principles, we must cultivate our own countercultural inclinations, albeit ones that are not immediately so visible as those mentioned above. Many of the beliefs we hold dear to authentic Christianity are not always in favor in the wider culture, so we must act courageously when the prevailing wisdom would lead us to betray these principles.

Whenever I discuss giving money in front of any group, I can reliably count on at least one person to quickly interject that "stewardship is more than money! It's about giving your time and volunteering!" My response is always to acknowledge that, of course, stewardship is far more than dollars and cents; it includes elements of time, talent and treasure for sure. We should all strive to do as much as we can in all of these important areas. Unfortunately, my sense is that folks who mention this are often less concerned with volunteering, and more concerned with lowering expectations of their own gift!

Cynical? Perhaps, but I don't mention this to heap opprobrium on those who say such things it, but instead to highlight how deeply our culture has ingrained a certain selfishness in all of us. When we speak about Christian principles of stewardship we talk of its two components:

1. Giving in proportion to our blessings
2. Giving from our substance, not our excess.

It's this second component that I feel is the more difficult in today's world. I once stood alongside a pastor who had spotted one of his parishioners to whom he'd extended an invitation to a capital campaign meeting. This gentleman begged off the invitation citing a well-worn laundry list of excuses - increasing business pressures, familiar obligations, credit card debt, etc. Reverend Father, moved by his dilemma, asked the gentleman to come to the meeting anyway so that he could hear about the plan, share in the fellowship and partake in the hors d'oeuvres. The man replied, completely missing the irony, that he could not attend, because he was flying along with his wife for a two-week vacation to Las Vegas!

We are bombarded with inducements to spend our money and satisfy our whims. The virtue of the very device that allows you to peruse this blog -the internet - has the counterbalancing vice of permitting us to virtually eliminate the very concept of delayed gratification. We see it or hear it, we jump to a website and then a couple clicks later this latest object of our desire is en route to our mailbox. ( I am susceptible to this in the extreme. If an author, in a book, newspaper or magazine article I'm reading happens to favorably mention another book, I've been known to leap, in mid-sentence, over to the computer to arrange for Amazon to speed that tome to East Palestine as quickly as I can!)

Giving money has true meaning when it requires our sacrifice. Sacrificial giving is not equal giving but it is equal sacrifice. I'm touched when I recall one donor who mentioned to me once that she had decided to drive the car another 50,000 miles instead of trading it in order to make a more meaningful gift. That's impressive - and that's an example of giving from substance. If I don't miss what I'm giving away, then I'm practicing something other than authentic stewardship. Maybe I'm practicing a certain tokenism - making an effort to be a "giver" rather than a steward. This kind of giver wants to be among the "good people" who support important causes, but perhaps as much to assuage guilt as to take ownership in something larger than himself.

If we restrict our giving to the dollars we have left in our pockets after our whims are satisfied, then we're on the ship to nowhere. I know I can't pass a car dealer or a bookstore without fighting the urge to splurge, so I certainly don't exempt myself from this need to be assertively countercultural.

I know this might sound good; it might seem to make sense. But as I always tell me volunteers, we operate in the real world, not the one we wished existed. Are we willing, as the woman with the car above was, to drive a less impressive vehicle when our friends and neighbors are rolling around in shiny new rides? Can we live with having our friends, co-workers and neighbors think us "less successful" because we don't display our wealth in the latest fashions, the designer furniture, the exotic vacations?

Think back to the churches and schools we attended growing up. These were largely built and sustained by people with far fewer resources than we have today. Our parents, grandparents and their parents built some magnificent churches on immigrant job wages. How did they build these magnificent churches that we could only dream of building today?

They did it because their faith was a more important component of their lives than ours is to us today. They practiced stewardship. As we all know, practice makes perfect.

Quote of the posting:

"Angels can fly, because they take themselves lightly."
G.K. Chesterton