Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Annoyance

Ok, I'll say it here for the last time: Matthew 6:21 does not by any means instruct Christians to give their money to worthy causes.

In fact, it says nothing about our use of money at all.

It seems clear from the two preceding verses that Jesus is contrasting "treasures on earth" with "treasures in heaven." He is not particularly excited about the earthly ones--such as money and anything it can buy. So, the refrain "where your treasure is, there you heart will be also" is not a budgeting dictate, because Jesus is telling us to invest in eternal treasures and to abandon sublunary ones. Unfortunately, some Christians like to use this verse as an slogan for financial management and charitable donations. These are wonderful things, obviously, but such thinking entirely misses the point of the verse; instead it ironically encourages us to be even more concerned about our money, putting us in danger of doing precisely what Jesus tells us not to do in the verse. Please stop misusing scripture. That is all.

2 comments:

Leisha said...

I like that you used "sublunary". Nice vocab word.

thatoneguy said...

Yeah I was all excited because I haven't had many good chances to use it lately.