Opt In? Opt Out?

How many of you are giving nothing at all? Not to charities of your choice? Not to individuals in your community, who are not members of your family? Do you have a giving problem?

Is it sin? Should I go into full bore Old Testament prophet mode? Well, not giving isn’t really a sin. Christianity is a religion of freedom and grace. We are free to give as much, or as little of God’s money back to God, as we wish. Make no mistake, whether you are a Christian, or something else, all the wealth of this world belongs to the Lord, both the silver and the gold, as well as the cattle on a thousand hills. For some reason, God has trusted me with a portion of His wealth for some undetermined amount of time, but it isn’t mine. At some point, all of it will pass into the hands of other people, who will use it in ways I may, or may not approve. The day will come when I will need to discuss the use of these funds with my Lord. On that day, my hope is that I will hear the words, “Well done good and faithful servant.”

OK? I have found it useful to differentiate between sin and unwise behavior. All sin is unwise behavior, but not all unwise behavior rises to the level of sin. Although, I can’t think of a Scripture to support my theory, somehow the idea that not giving out of what you have received seems a little worse than unwise behavior. Of course, there are exceptions. There were years that we weren’t giving to a church, because we weren’t attending a church. There were two occasions during our marriage when we were teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. I understand there are seasons of life when any giving would be sacrificial giving that would require an inordinate amount of faith.

In this case, I want to improve your life, by raising the level of your consciousness.

An example might be what corporations have learned about participation in their 401k programs. If this benefit is offered as “Opt In,” the employee is required to go to the personnel office, listen to a sales pitch, and fill out a form. Most employees seem to try and evade such experiences. What seems to work better is “Opt Out.” If a small contribution to a 401k starts on the first day on the job and a trip to the personnel office, sales pitches, and forms are required to get out of the program, people tend to let it ride.

So, how do I get you to understand God’s program, or if you prefer the universe’s program, is “Opt Out?”

The Law of the Harvest is real. “As ye sow, so shall ye reap,” is an abundantly clear statement. There are three components to the Law of the Harvest.

1)You will harvest whatever you have planted. If you have planted corn, you will harvest corn.

2)You will harvest more than you planted, perhaps 10 fold, perhaps 30 fold, perhaps 100 fold.
3)The harvest will occur sometime in future. The timing is in the hands of the Lord of the harvest.

While discussing the Law of the Harvest with a friend, he observed that it doesn’t matter to the soil what you plant. Not to go karmic on you, but if you plant hatred and fear, you will harvest…….

Back to the 401k, as an example of the Law of the Harvest. Let’s say the company has a 100% match on the first three percent of an employee’s salary that he contributes to his 401k. That means he gets an instantaneous 100% guaranteed return on that portion of his investment. Try to beat that rate of return. Let’s assume 6.5%, the low end of the range termed Siegel’s Constant for after tax and inflation return on U.S. equities. The first dollar that new employee contributes to his 401k will likely be somewhere around $13 in thirty years.

Although we are now living in a different Covenant than the Law of Moses, the tithe, giving 10% of what comes into your hand is a good goal, or perhaps you might discover it is a good starting point, for giving back to your community and your world.

Don’t believe me. Try an experiment. Set a goal in your own heart that someday you want to give at least 10% of your income to organizations who will make the world a better place, or to individuals who are in need. Whatever you are giving today, negotiate a larger number with God, or even with your own conscience. Commit to giving more for a year. Then look at the results. If you are in a better place, commit to giving a little more. If not, you can ignore this blog post.

Due to my experiences in the Charismatic Renewal, I hesitate to believe that I am ever “hearing from God,” but as time goes on, I am becoming more convinced that if you want to attract blessings into your life, become a blessing to others. Of course, this principle isn’t limited to money, but it seems like a good place to begin. Start where you are. If you are giving nothing, don’t expect to reach 10% today, or tomorrow. Just commit to increasing that number, as the Lord provides.

From personal experience, I haven’t yet been able to out give God.

A Visionary Living in the Material World

I am reading the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, so far an excellent read. People who knew Steve Jobs and worked closely with him all report that he had a weird ability to, in their words, “Warp reality,” with his words and enthusiasm. He had the power to call those things which are not, as though they were.

It didn’t always work, even with a faith in himself that would match Abraham’s faith in God, Jobs still experienced some world class failures. He was deservedly fired by the company he founded. Some of his creations such as the Lisa and NeXT computers were technological and financial disasters.

Yet he persevered. In the book Isaacson states, "Jobs quoted the hockey star Wayne Gretzky's maxim, "Skate where the puck's going, not where it's been." He continued to revolutionize consumer products with the high-performance iMac. He changed the music world forever with the iPod and iTunes. We still don’t know the end results his greatest creation, the iPhone, will have on the world, but a product that he said people didn’t know they needed because it didn’t exist, seems to be changing everything.

What about your calling makes you so excited that your words and enthusiasm would have the potential to “warp reality?” Where do you see the puck going? Where do those two lines intersect? When you find that point, when you craft that vision of the future, maybe, just maybe, you can change the world.