INVESTING IN THE KINGDOM

Have you ever thought about investing in the Kingdom of God?

White attending seminary in the Chicago area I was fortunate to have a friend named Jim. Jim was an elderly man, who along with wife, Millie, had volunteered to spend a year providing repair work and other labor as needed at the seminary. He was quite a guy to be around. One day he told me how fortunate he had been that his financial advisor years before had invited Jim to invest in a small Japanese company he never heard of. The company's name. Toyato.

In the September 2009 issue of The Christian Century, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, invites disciples of Jesus to think about investing in the Kingdom of God with their economic resources, just as people invest in the secular stock market. He writes in part of his article:

“We invest in the things we love and our hearts get wrapped around the things we invest in. This is why we talk about the importance of "buying in" when people commit to things that are difficult.

If we pay for a diet program, we're more likely to stick with it. If we give regularly to our churches, we're more likely to care which candidate the pastoral search committee selects. If we make sacrifices for a relationship, we're more likely to value that relationship.

 Marriage counselors often tell people who feel they're growing apart in a relationship to invest in their partners now, before they become even more distant. Put your treasure into the relationship, they say, and your heart will follow.

Of course, it takes discipline to invest in something before we know how good it will be; it's always easier to just do what we feel like doing. This is what we expect people to do; we're surprised when they find reason not to satisfy their immediate desires or take the path of least resistance. Putting our treasures before our hearts is an anomaly.

Sociologist Max Weber wrote that Christianity—particularly Protestant Calvinism—gave rise to modern capitalism because, among other things, it motivated Europeans to restrain their immediate desires and save money, thus creating the capital necessary for investment and economic growth.

 This worldly asceticism combined the discipline of people who could delay gratification for the hope of something better with the social vision of a world redeemed by its Creator. The Protestant ethic made it possible for people to put their treasure where they wanted their heart to be.

It's hard to deny the results of this investment. Capitalism has more than doubled life expectancy in developed countries over the past 200 years, and it has contributed to a drastic reduction in preventable disease, illiteracy and extreme hunger. While globalization has its critics, the poor of the world seem more than ready to welcome the job opportunities and consumer products of this economic system.”

In my stewardship preaching I have always taught that God doesn't need our money, the Lord needs us. For matters of the Creator's own choosing, most things in the Kingdom of God here on earth get accomplished by us. Miracles, by the nature, must always be in short supply. And that giving is a spiritual discipline just as is praying. But I think the guy with the name almost as long as mine is on to something in his Christian Century article. We invest on money in many things for the value of a return. Why shouldn't we not think of investing in the Kingdom of God in the same way?

Now I'm not advocating material giving for a material gain. In my opinion that kind of teaching goes against the grain of Jesus' intention. But if we love God and believe in the Kingdom, why shouldn't we want to invest in it to see it grow here on earth?

-Monty Keeling