I was talking to a friend of mine today about how we know that God will provide for our needs ... but what exactly ARE our needs?
"Oh God, I really NEED a Porsche."
We might laugh at that kind of prayer. But it shows how deeply ingrained our western culture is and how it has seeped into the church.
What do we mean when we say that God will provide for our needs? Does it mean that we'll never, ever, not in a hundred years, go without? Is there room in our theology for a God who would allow a Christian to suffer want?
Is it ever God's will for a Christian to declare bankruptcy? There now, I've said it. The B word.
It's not something that is all that easy to do in Canada. In the States, declare bankruptcy and within six months you have at least some credit rating back. But in Canada, it's a very grueling process. You have to list all your assets and liabilities, then your bi-weekly (or monthly) income and expenses, itemize it, have a bankruptcy trustee go over each one and allow or disallow each one. The debts are forgiven in the sense that you don't ever have to pay the creditors back - at least not all of it. They are prohibited from calling you up to demand payment. That in itself is a great relief.
But for nine months, every expense is scrutinized, and every last cent that isn't spent on necessary (and approved) items is given to the bankruptcy trustee to be distributed to the creditors at the end of the nine months. If you've kept your nose clean, at the end of that period, the bankruptcy is "discharged" and you don't have to report to the trustee anymore. So that means there is a little more money at the end of the month.
However, that's not the end. Your credit rating is absolutely ruined. And it stays ruined for years. YEARS. Seven years, to be exact. And then you have to start from scratch.
The whole process is designed to make a person think very hard before committing to that kind of step. And it's also designed to teach people who have not managed their money well, HOW to follow a budget.
The mechanics aside - what is the will of God in this matter of a Christian declaring personal bankruptcy??
The truth is - I really don't know for sure. All I know is what we went through.
We had tried to operate a business. "Spend money to make money," we were told. So we got a fax machine, and spent money on faxes and on long-distance telephone calls to grow our contact network. We got lots of good contacts - but no sales. More and more money disappeared into the phone bill. We were spending some $700 a month in long-distance alone. This went on for quite a while. We borrowed to pay the bills, and we borrowed to pay the loans we got to pay the bills. The debt was crushing us. We felt like failures. We were stressed out all the time wondering where the next meal was coming from, or who would call us next asking for a payment.
In desperation, we went to the Orderly Payment of Debt (OPD) office. They looked at the debt load and (bless them, they didn't laugh) told us that if we went for OPD, we would be mortgaging our children's future for the next 30 years. They advised us to declare personal bankruptcy.
That period of time was the most wrenching of our lives up until that point. We were dealing with the possibility of being stigmatized by the very people who claimed to care about and love us - as long as we measured up to their expectations, we found out. The internal struggle, the pain of daily wondering when it would all fall apart around our ears - early on in the mortgage with no assets to call our own - we agonized about this decision.
And that's when we got a first-hand dose of "Christian love and concern." When I mentioned to one person that we were having significant financial problems and we didn't know what to do, she said, "Well, THAT's not speaking in faith...."
OUCH. And then she started telling me that she knew how I felt, how she and her husband were struggling to have enough money at the end of the month, and how God always made sure that they were able to pay the bills, yada, yada, yada.... She just didn't understand that it wasn't like someone could write us a check for a thousand dollars and fix everything. We needed over fifty times that amount just to make things manageable.
Another lady called me on the phone every day. She assured me that she and her husband were praying for us, that they were believing for a miracle. "Did you get your miracle yet?" was her first question, every time.
Finally, we knew it was time to declare bankruptcy when we sat across from a loans officer at a finance company to take out our second loan to buy groceries.
So, that week we decided to go to the trustee and declare bankruptcy. Although the initial setup was a difficult experience to say the least, the trustee looked at us at the end of the meeting, and said, "None of your creditors is allowed to demand payment of this debt ... ever again." For me it was like a two-ton weight fell off my shoulders.
And the next day the phone rang. It was this lady again. "Did you get your miracle?" she asked. "Yes," I said. She was excited and wanted to hear all about it. "God used us declaring bankruptcy to erase all of our debt," I told her. She stammered, cleared her throat, and made some excuse to hang up.
She never called again.
OUCH again.
We learned not to let anyone know about our predicament unless we had to. It was our experience that nobody wanted to hear anything about financial difficulty in the life of a Christian unless it was already resolved. It was a taboo subject, and fodder for criticism and judgment from many in the church. It went against some people's theology, a theology started by Wall Street and legitimized in the Christian community by such charismatic folks as Kenneth Copeland, Oral Roberts, and Robert Schuller.
I'll tell you what I think. I think that God can use ANYTHING for His purposes. I think that in some cases (not all) it IS God's will for a Christian to declare personal bankruptcy. It's not something a Christian would enter into willy-nilly. Going that route is not without a whole lot of heart-rending soul-searching and prayer.
I also think that Christians need to cultivate a response to the shocking news that someone has failed financially (or for that matter, morally), a response that isn't based on snap judgments, but on a desire to understand. Not a desire to understand the mechanics of the failure or to comprehend whose fault it was, but to really hear the heartache and the shame that is behind such an admission... and to focus on THAT rather than whether it's right or wrong.
God taught us so very much through the bankruptcy. He showed us just how powerless we were to get out of this mess on our own, and that was an object lesson to us of the spiritual predicament that ALL of us are in - unable in our wildest dreams to have a relationship with a holy God based on our own merits. When our debts were forgiven, we got a true picture of forgiveness - we never had to wonder whether this company or that company would come after us for payment. We knew they never would. "Just as if we'd never owed," was the perfect illustration of the Christian concept of Justification by Faith.
We did learn how to live within our means. Cutting up the credit cards, living on cash only, was a huge adjustment but we learned how to do it. It made life so much easier after we were discharged from the bankruptcy and nobody would give us any credit for years afterward. And we resolved never to get into a debt we couldn't pay back - ever again.
And there were so many experiences where God really came through for us and met our everyday needs through the kindness and the generosity of His people - for not ALL people in the church judged us. Some of them actually loved us... and showed us they loved us. God Himself worked a couple of really amazing miracles of provision along the way.
I think I'll save those miracles for another post.
"Oh God, I really NEED a Porsche."
We might laugh at that kind of prayer. But it shows how deeply ingrained our western culture is and how it has seeped into the church.
What do we mean when we say that God will provide for our needs? Does it mean that we'll never, ever, not in a hundred years, go without? Is there room in our theology for a God who would allow a Christian to suffer want?
Is it ever God's will for a Christian to declare bankruptcy? There now, I've said it. The B word.
It's not something that is all that easy to do in Canada. In the States, declare bankruptcy and within six months you have at least some credit rating back. But in Canada, it's a very grueling process. You have to list all your assets and liabilities, then your bi-weekly (or monthly) income and expenses, itemize it, have a bankruptcy trustee go over each one and allow or disallow each one. The debts are forgiven in the sense that you don't ever have to pay the creditors back - at least not all of it. They are prohibited from calling you up to demand payment. That in itself is a great relief.
But for nine months, every expense is scrutinized, and every last cent that isn't spent on necessary (and approved) items is given to the bankruptcy trustee to be distributed to the creditors at the end of the nine months. If you've kept your nose clean, at the end of that period, the bankruptcy is "discharged" and you don't have to report to the trustee anymore. So that means there is a little more money at the end of the month.
However, that's not the end. Your credit rating is absolutely ruined. And it stays ruined for years. YEARS. Seven years, to be exact. And then you have to start from scratch.
The whole process is designed to make a person think very hard before committing to that kind of step. And it's also designed to teach people who have not managed their money well, HOW to follow a budget.
The mechanics aside - what is the will of God in this matter of a Christian declaring personal bankruptcy??
The truth is - I really don't know for sure. All I know is what we went through.
We had tried to operate a business. "Spend money to make money," we were told. So we got a fax machine, and spent money on faxes and on long-distance telephone calls to grow our contact network. We got lots of good contacts - but no sales. More and more money disappeared into the phone bill. We were spending some $700 a month in long-distance alone. This went on for quite a while. We borrowed to pay the bills, and we borrowed to pay the loans we got to pay the bills. The debt was crushing us. We felt like failures. We were stressed out all the time wondering where the next meal was coming from, or who would call us next asking for a payment.
In desperation, we went to the Orderly Payment of Debt (OPD) office. They looked at the debt load and (bless them, they didn't laugh) told us that if we went for OPD, we would be mortgaging our children's future for the next 30 years. They advised us to declare personal bankruptcy.
That period of time was the most wrenching of our lives up until that point. We were dealing with the possibility of being stigmatized by the very people who claimed to care about and love us - as long as we measured up to their expectations, we found out. The internal struggle, the pain of daily wondering when it would all fall apart around our ears - early on in the mortgage with no assets to call our own - we agonized about this decision.
And that's when we got a first-hand dose of "Christian love and concern." When I mentioned to one person that we were having significant financial problems and we didn't know what to do, she said, "Well, THAT's not speaking in faith...."
OUCH. And then she started telling me that she knew how I felt, how she and her husband were struggling to have enough money at the end of the month, and how God always made sure that they were able to pay the bills, yada, yada, yada.... She just didn't understand that it wasn't like someone could write us a check for a thousand dollars and fix everything. We needed over fifty times that amount just to make things manageable.
Another lady called me on the phone every day. She assured me that she and her husband were praying for us, that they were believing for a miracle. "Did you get your miracle yet?" was her first question, every time.
Finally, we knew it was time to declare bankruptcy when we sat across from a loans officer at a finance company to take out our second loan to buy groceries.
So, that week we decided to go to the trustee and declare bankruptcy. Although the initial setup was a difficult experience to say the least, the trustee looked at us at the end of the meeting, and said, "None of your creditors is allowed to demand payment of this debt ... ever again." For me it was like a two-ton weight fell off my shoulders.
And the next day the phone rang. It was this lady again. "Did you get your miracle?" she asked. "Yes," I said. She was excited and wanted to hear all about it. "God used us declaring bankruptcy to erase all of our debt," I told her. She stammered, cleared her throat, and made some excuse to hang up.
She never called again.
OUCH again.
We learned not to let anyone know about our predicament unless we had to. It was our experience that nobody wanted to hear anything about financial difficulty in the life of a Christian unless it was already resolved. It was a taboo subject, and fodder for criticism and judgment from many in the church. It went against some people's theology, a theology started by Wall Street and legitimized in the Christian community by such charismatic folks as Kenneth Copeland, Oral Roberts, and Robert Schuller.
I'll tell you what I think. I think that God can use ANYTHING for His purposes. I think that in some cases (not all) it IS God's will for a Christian to declare personal bankruptcy. It's not something a Christian would enter into willy-nilly. Going that route is not without a whole lot of heart-rending soul-searching and prayer.
I also think that Christians need to cultivate a response to the shocking news that someone has failed financially (or for that matter, morally), a response that isn't based on snap judgments, but on a desire to understand. Not a desire to understand the mechanics of the failure or to comprehend whose fault it was, but to really hear the heartache and the shame that is behind such an admission... and to focus on THAT rather than whether it's right or wrong.
God taught us so very much through the bankruptcy. He showed us just how powerless we were to get out of this mess on our own, and that was an object lesson to us of the spiritual predicament that ALL of us are in - unable in our wildest dreams to have a relationship with a holy God based on our own merits. When our debts were forgiven, we got a true picture of forgiveness - we never had to wonder whether this company or that company would come after us for payment. We knew they never would. "Just as if we'd never owed," was the perfect illustration of the Christian concept of Justification by Faith.
We did learn how to live within our means. Cutting up the credit cards, living on cash only, was a huge adjustment but we learned how to do it. It made life so much easier after we were discharged from the bankruptcy and nobody would give us any credit for years afterward. And we resolved never to get into a debt we couldn't pay back - ever again.
And there were so many experiences where God really came through for us and met our everyday needs through the kindness and the generosity of His people - for not ALL people in the church judged us. Some of them actually loved us... and showed us they loved us. God Himself worked a couple of really amazing miracles of provision along the way.
I think I'll save those miracles for another post.
Well said! And yes, talking honestly about money/finances/income/debt is the last great taboo isn't it?!
ReplyDelete... for now, yes. I'm sure the church will find something else (grin)
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing your story. I know a lot of people who swim in the charismatic pond who can't be honest about a lot of things because it's not "speaking in faith". Which really means, "speaking in denial". In our culture credit is so available that we can find people willing to loan us so much money for a business that we will never be able to repay it. I know families that have faithfully tithed, have no hidden horror of sinful behavior hiding in the closet and they've still had to declare during an economic downturn. And they've been turned out by their "christian" community. I know charismatic "faith" believers who go deeper into debt rather than admit they don't have money to give to the church this week. That never ends well. I shudder at churches I go to when I see their offering envelopes include space for credit card info so people can tithe on their credit card. "Wall street" inspired theology indeed.
ReplyDelete"Speaking in faith" = "Speaking in denial."
ReplyDeleteTruer words...
That's been my belief for a long time. Where is the honesty in that kind of thinking? and it's pervasive - one example is a chorus we sing in church (and which I cannot bring myself to sing) "Let the weak say I am strong, let the poor say I am rich, let the blind say I can see, it's what the Lord has done in me." Hm. C.S. Lewis said that Christian don't tell lies; they sing them. These days, we've progressed to the point where we tell them too, and then call it "speaking those things that be not as though they were." (That is God's prerogative!)
It would be a lot more honest to SAY we are weak, poor, and blind (like Jesus talks about in Revelation 3 to a church in Laodicea) - in other words, admit to God, to ourselves and to others the exact nature of our wrongs (to borrow a phrase from the 12-step program of spiritual recovery) - so that He can do a work in us. Otherwise, we become the same as the Pharisees who said, "We see," and Jesus told them, "Because you say, 'we see,' your sin remains."