From the "Stewardship" issue of The Living Pulpit, July-September 2006 Stewardship Theology By David W. Reid

Do you want to experience real freedom? Just give your money away. It may be more easily said than done, but that is the prescription for stewardship recommended by the late French philosopher Jacques Ellul. In his 1969 book, Violence: Reflections from a Christian Perspective, Ellul described how money has come to represent a certain type of “spiritual” power in the contemporary society, and he addressed how that power might be overcome.

“Not by accumulating more money, not by using money for good purposes, not by being just and fair in our dealings,” Ellul wrote. “The law of money is the law of accumulation, of buying and selling. That is why the only way to overcome the ‘spiritual’ power of money, is to give our money away, thus desacralizing it and freeing us from its control.”

Charles L. Campbell, the Peter Marshall Professor of Homiletics at Columbia Theological Seminary, in Decatur, Georgia, incorporated Ellul’s thoughts on stewardship as part of a project to write new descriptions of many aspects of Christian life. Much of Campbell’s work is laid out in his 2002 book, The Word Before the Powers: An Ethic of Preaching. Campbell grounds his theological reflections on the concept of powers and principalities described in Ephesians 6:12. When he surveys the landscape of contemporary American consumer culture, he finds that the spirit of Mammon is second to none in its ability to hold people captive.

Giving away money should be seen as an act of resistance, Campbell said in an interview. Money tends to be the standard by which people measure their own worth. It is the fundamental way by which most people think they should be rewarded for their accomplishments. It shapes interactions with other people and provides comfort and security.

No wonder people tend to cling to their money, despite the Gospel’s insistence that possessions do not bring salvation, said Campbell. Campbell believes there is plenty of reason to preach about this. A major objective of preaching, he noted, should be to set people free from captivity rather than load burdens upon them.

Redescribing stewardship in this way invites the church to transform Christian giving from a routine matter of filling out pledge cards and writing checks into a disciplined practice of resistance to principalities and powers.

According to Campbell, when Christians resist the power of Mammon by giving away money, money then becomes a sign of grace rather than domination. But beware, he warned. When church members catch on to the significance of giving as an act of resistance, they may start asking questions about how the church uses its own money. For example, they may wonder why accumulating money for endowments is necessary.

But stewardship is not really about money, argues James Wilton Lewis, professor of Christian ethics at Anderson University, in Anderson, Indiana. In fact, money is the last thing Christians should think about when they hear the word stewardship. Rather, said Lewis, stewardship is best thought of in the context of “whole life stewardship.”

This concept starts with God’s creation of the earth and the role of human beings as stewards of that creation. Properly conceived, it covers all facets of human interactions Lewis said. He traces the roots of whole life stewardship to the covenantal relationships between God and Israel. From there it fans out to include relationships with all of God’s creation.

“I see stewardship as a very relational concept,” said Lewis.

Lewis finds support for whole life stewardship in parts of Psalms and Isaiah and again in the New Testament when Jesus declares that he has come not to destroy the law but to fulfill it.

“Jesus doesn’t let us off the hook in our relationship with things and stuff and money,” said Lewis.

That message is reinforced in Luke 12 when Jesus tells the story of a man who decides to tear down his old barns and build larger ones to hold all that he has accumulated. But the man is rebuked by God for focusing on material things.

“I wouldn’t say that (material) things have no value,” said Lewis, “but they do not have ultimate value.”

People are sometimes valued for the size of their house, their land holdings, their stocks, and their money, but human beings are too complex to be judged simply by the number of things they accumulate, Lewis stated.

Once people become oriented toward God, they understand that God has a claim on their possessions, including their money, he said, and they discover that their true worth lies in their relationship with God and with the rest of creation.

All humans have desires, Lewis acknowledged, but desires should be shaped by a new vision of the world “that comes through Scripture and relationship with God, rather than a vision of the world that is given to us as participants in our liberal democratic society.”

Christians are not called to escape the forms of capitalism in which they are immersed, he said, but to wrestle with what it means to be in relationship to God and what really matters in God’s world.

“I think this helps us make decisions that are sometimes qualitatively different than those decisions that seem to be rational in a consumerist society,” he added.

About the Author

David Reid is the editor and publisher of Vital Theology. He is a former director of communications for Duke University Divinity School. Earlier, he was a newspaper reporter and editor and manager of public relations for a Fortune 500 corporation. Readers of The Living Pulpit will find much to like in Vital Theology, an “independent, ecumenical newsletter that provides thoughtful, theological perspectives on the trends and events that shape our lives.”