Christians and Wealth

Books and other resources

Welcome to another edition of the Mueller Report!

Last week I mentioned a book in my pile about a “trader” who stole billions of dollars. The book is called Billion Dollar Whale and it blew my mind!

The main character, Jho Low, was not a trader. He was a thief. Through extremely complex financial and social manipulation, Low was able to siphon billions of dollars from the Malaysian sovereign wealth fund 1MDB into his personal accounts in the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands (among other places). He cultivated and used his connections with wealthy middle eastern sovereign wealth fund managers, with the Malaysian prime minister and his family, with celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio, and with bankers and financiers at various banks in various countries to vouch for his activities and give the transfers of hundreds of millions of dollars a sense of legitimacy.

In Great Gatsby style, Low used his money to gamble, spend millions of dollars on one-night parties he often spent more time observing than celebrating, jet all over the world, pay for the Malaysian First Lady to buy tens of millions of dollars of jewelry and high-end clothing and other accessories, buy part of a large music company, buy multiple houses in multiple cities in the U. S., and form his own movie production company, Red Granite, that ironically enough, produced The Wolf of Wall Street…

I’ll write a full review on my website next week, but that should give you a sense of how fascinating (and horrifying!) this scam was. The gall is breath-taking and the waste is sickening. But it has led me to reflect on a couple things:

1. What should we make of the global elite? 

I am talking about Hollywood stars, billionaires, world leaders, etc. who seem to live in a different world that runs on different rules. Should we ignore them and simply go about our lives as usual continuing in our same social circles? Should we criticize the global elite? Try to emulate them? My initial answers are “yes,” “maybe,” and “most likely no,” but I have this unnerving concern, which I think is shared quite broadly today, that how the global elite live, and what they do with their money, and more importantly with their political influence, can significantly impact our lives. 

What does it mean to live in a world where most people would be thrilled to have $2,000,000 saved by the time they retire while many others might drop that kind of money (or more) on a piece of art or a big party without batting an eye? The breadth and scale of wealth today boggles my mind.

2. Can we really classify people as “ordinary” or as “global elite”?

Of course people fall along a spectrum from those with significant negative net worth (lots of debt) to folks who have billions of dollars in net worth. Lifestyle also varies significantly. Sam Walton used to drive a beat-up pick-up truck even after making millions of dollars. Many celebrities, athletes, professionals, and businessmen who enter the ranks of the nouveau wealth elite live beyond their means and blow through their money. 

Given these spectrums, how helpful is it to think about a “global elite” lifestyle versus an “ordinary” lifestyle? 

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I spoke to some high school students this past week about the origins of money and banking. I always try to correct the misconception that the Bible says, “Money is the root of all evil.” The actual reference from 1st Timothy 6:10 says: “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”

Money and wealth are not evil. They are dangerous. Cars are dangerous, gas lines and stoves are dangerous, fire is dangerous. The important consideration is whether we are using them properly and effectively. Do we have good safeguards in place?

As I have talked with folks at church about this topic, I’ve resolved to put together a reading group this summer about wealth. The focus will be less didactic and more conversational and exploratory.

Many young people in my church are keenly interested in becoming wealthy. Many of them come from families that are wealthy or are surrounded by wealthy people. So we will look at these books and have some conversations about how to manage and build wealth:

• Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki

• Retire Young, Retire Rich: How to Get Rich Quick and Stay Rich Forever by Robert Kiyosaki (in a previous edition I mentioned how this book influenced my decision to buy The Abbey)

• Financial Peace Revisited by Dave Ramsey

But it is also essential to ask what is the wealth for? Why do you desire so strongly to be wealthy? We’ll consider:

• Managing God’s Money: A Biblical Guide by Randy Alcorn

• “Is Poverty Spiritual?” from Spirit of the Disciplines by Dallas Willard

• “Don’t Waste Your Life” video by John Piper

• The Bible

My wife pointed out to me last night that talking about wealth, and how to create it, and why to have it, is exactly the sort of thing that should be talked about by Christians within the church. Because if we don’t talk about it there, we’ll talk about it with co-workers or listen to people on the internet or self-help gurus who don’t have God’s Kingdom or the welfare of one’s soul in mind.

Book Review

On the topic of Christians and wealth, I finished my review of Brian Fikkert and Kelly Kapic’s book Becoming Whole. Here are a few excerpts:

This book tries to marry theology and economics in addressing poverty. The authors want to bring spiritual brokenness or “deformation” into the conversation about why people are materially poor and whether improving their material circumstances should be our highest goal….

The “American Dream,” Fikkert and Kapic argue, should not be where Christians try to get poor people. Turning poor materialistic religious traditionalists into wealthier materialistic naturalists does not seem like much of a gain in the grand scheme of things. They argue that the more people buy into Western Naturalism, the more they become like “consuming robots” living in relational poverty and internal disorder. The authors connect this to our current mental health challenges and the remarkable rise in depression and suicide in wealthy technologically advanced societies. 

Returning to the main goal of the book, Fikkert and Kapic argue that people are complex and in trying to help them we should consider far more than their external incentives, constraints, and material resources the way an economist might. Instead, we should recognize that people are made up of Mind, Affections, Will, and Body. They have healthy or unhealthy relationships with God, Self, Others, and Creation. When Christian charity or aid focuses on some of these categories but not others, it fails to address the whole person and therefore fails to bring deep human flourishing.

When I talk about poverty, I point out that in the modern developed world poverty is much more of a cultural, social, or spiritual problem than it is a material problem. There can be healthy and unhealthy poor communities. Many immigrant communities, both historically and today, have been quite poor by American standards, yet have often been healthy places to live because they had hope, intact families, social networks, significant religious observance, etc. 

Contrast that with inner city ghettos or rural midwestern poverty. Many communities are experiencing cycles of poverty where multiple generations have lived in similarly poor conditions. In these communities there is little hope of success, often social and family disintegration, and even hostility towards those who are successful.

Becoming Whole is a great resource for how to tackle the tangle of problems that exist in unhealthy communities of poverty. Fikkert’s classic When Helping Hurts is another great resource.

Next week I will share about future plans for The Abbey and in May I’ll finish telling the story of how The Abbey got up and running.

Talk to you next week!