This is part two of an edited transcript of an interview with Following the Money, covering the topics of happiness, living as a believer in a hostile culture, giving, and more. See my last blog for part one.
Question: It seems many Christians are worried about our country’s future instead of simply trusting in the Kingdom that God has already promised us. Why are Christians so easily shackled by fear, when God wants them to live in faith?
Answer: I think the more we have, the more we have to lose and the more we fear losing it. If you don’t have a lot, you’re used to not having a lot, and the prospect that you might lose some of it isn’t as daunting. When you have a huge amount of wealth and possessions, and it’s built on how well the stock market is doing, real estate values, and values of retirement programs, your hope can easily get based on those things, and you are going to be tempted to be insecure and fearful.
In 1 Timothy 6, we’re told not to put our faith in riches, which are so uncertain, but to place our hope in God who is absolutely certain. Things have mass, mass has gravity, and gravity holds us in orbit around our things and money. Humans are easily centered on money as a false god, and that is why Jesus says you cannot serve both God and money. You can have both God and money, and money isn’t inherently a bad thing. First Timothy 6 does not say that money is the root of all evil; it says the love of money is the root of all evil. That’s the whole point.
We take a secondary thing, like money and possessions, and make it primary, which is a place only God should occupy. Whenever we do that, we’re committing idolatry because we’re putting it above God. If your trust is in your money, you’re not just committing spiritual idolatry; you are also setting yourself up for anxiety. Of course you’re going to be worried. Of course you’re going to be fearful because that which you value most is precarious. You could lose it at any time!
But you will never lose your relationship with Christ. If you truly know Him, God is there for you, and the Holy Spirit indwells you. Romans 8 says we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us and causes all things to work together for good. Will He, who did not withhold His only Son, withhold other things from us? No! The chapter ends with “Nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.” That is the best news and true grounds for ultimate optimism.
Unfortunately, sometimes we Christians sound like pessimists, becoming depressed over the direction of our culture and focused on so-called prophecy. I certainly believe in studying eschatology, but I think many people have gone overboard in focusing on the end times. We have been living in the end times for 2,000 years, ever since Christ ascended. He may come any moment of any day, but He may not come for 100 or 500 years or more. Now, I’ve said that to some people who have acted as if it were heresy. My response is, it’s been 2,000 years. Would 2,500 years be such a stretch? Some have responded, “Things can’t keep going because look at the way the moral foundations of America have declined.” But where is America in the Bible? We’re not nearly as important as we think we are. When Rome was crumbling, when the Jewish nation was crumbling, people could have said “Christ has to return!” But cultures come and go. Nations and powers come and go. God, however, remains on the throne. He will return when He is good and ready.
Question: Talk to us some more about happiness. From studying this subject in Scripture, what did you learn that might surprise some readers?
Answer: I wrote a large book simply titled Happiness, as well as a mid-sized book titled Does God Want Us to Be Happy? and a smaller book called God’s Promise of Happiness, both of which cover the central themes of the larger book. In those books, I write about how Scripture is full of celebration. As an example, consider the Old Testament passages, and the commands the Israelites were given for feasts. They were to store or save up money to pay for the week-long feast where you should eat and drink whatever you craved. Wait a minute, couldn’t people be guilty of gluttony or drunkenness? Well, yes they could, and of course, they shouldn’t do those things. God is not promoting gluttony or drunkenness, but He wanted His people to eat and drink and celebrate. They were told to laugh and sing and gather their families and take off a full week from their work! Chronicles has a remarkable passage that describes how after that first week, they were having so much fun praising and worshiping God and singing and feasting, that they decided to take another week. It’s very clear from the context that God approves of this! He's not saying, “Get back to work, you people. No rest, no relaxation, no fun.”
God built the Sabbath into the Israelites’ weekly schedule. It was enforced. Rest, recreation, fun, eating all happen when you sit around and feast. You laugh, you tell stories. The pagans had feasts characterized by immorality, violence, and drunkenness, but Yahweh’s people had God-given feasts that honored and celebrated Him. They were known as the happy people. People of other nations, if they got to know the Jews, would say, “Wow, they’re different.” Other people were drawn to them.
Think of Jesus being raised in a family that kept all those celebrations. Today, the closest the church seems to get is when we have the little communion wafers and grape juice. They are a symbol of a feast. Well, the early church used to have the actual feast, not just the symbols, but now you have to stretch your imagination to think of communion as a feast. In the early church, they were called Love Feasts. People came together to celebrate the love of God and their brotherly love for each other.
In Happiness, I talk about how all the members of the United Nations at the time voted unanimously to have an annual International Day of Happiness on March 20. One of the things I propose is that local churches adopt that day and say, “We are going to celebrate the International Day of Happiness by putting on a great feast, and inviting everybody in the community to come at no charge. We’re going to have amusement rides, bouncy houses, water slides, free food, music that everybody will like. Please come—we want you to celebrate happiness with us!” Then we can share with them what the Bible says about happiness, and specially what Isaiah called the good news of happiness that the Messiah Jesus has brought to us. The angels said to the shepherds, “We bring you good news of great joy!” That needs to be our central message.
I agree that the church has to make a moral stand about what’s right and wrong, and that may make us appear to be anti-happiness. But if we’re actively celebrating God’s saving grace, as well as His common grace to the whole world, then we’ll have credibility instead of being thought of as the people who are always negative. It’s like, “These are the most cheerful people I know. Wow, if they’ve got concerns in this area, I’m going to listen because they are clearly not anti-happiness.”
Question: In your book The Treasure Principle, you lay out the idea that we have to give in order to be happy. There is simply no other way. We are designed to give, and help those who are less fortunate than ourselves. It makes us happier. As Americans, we are rich, relatively speaking, compared to the rest of the world. But here in America, there are people living in poverty. How can we, as Christians, best help the poor and the needy in our own communities?
Answer: I think the first principle is you can’t effectively help people that you don’t know. Now, certainly we should give to organizations helping people in places we can’t personally reach. But the general rule is that we will never have a heart for people that we don’t see and do not spend time with. If we don’t know anybody who’s poor, if we don’t go out into our communities and meet people and talk with them to see what we can do for them, we can’t really make a difference. I think it’s important for churches to support local ministries by volunteering at a soup kitchen, doing downtown ministry, etc. Churches often get involved in ministries because some people in the church developed these relationships, and they started supporting that inner city ministry by volunteering and giving their time. Pretty soon, they’re telling their friends about it and their small group Bible study, and encouraging them to get involved.
In my own church, a physician walked away from a successful medical practice and set up a clinic in one of the poorest areas in the city. They give virtually free medical care. Those who can pay are charged a small fee. Those who can’t pay, don’t, and they still care for them. Churches support them, people volunteer, physicians volunteer, nurses volunteer, and trained therapists and people with counseling skills volunteer, because their clients need more than physical care. They need emotional and mental health care as well. But the idea is that these believers are out there actually connecting with those who are needy.
Certainly, missions trips to poor parts of the world—where people are desperately poor, and lack the resources that are available in America—are vital. But we shouldn’t neglect meeting needs in our own communities. Instead of writing people off as drug addicts who are just trying to bleed the system, we should recognize that many of these people have very complex stories that involve abuse and hurt and pain. But we just don’t know until we meet them and give generously of our time and resources.
Glorifying God by using His money to help others isn’t merely a duty; it’s a delight! Giving brings great happiness, and our happy God rejoices when our hearts celebrate. In the only statement of Jesus in the book of Acts that’s not in the Gospels, Jesus said, “It is more blessed [makarios, happy-making] to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). The grace of God is the lightning that produces in our lives the thunder of giving. Where God’s grace has truly touched our lives, generous giving will surely follow.
