Читать книгу Wealth Without Guilt - Roland Hill - Страница 6

The aphorism, “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he” not only embraces all of man’s being but reaches out to every condition and circumstance of his life. A man is literally what he thinks, his character being the sum of all his thoughts. But interestingly enough, treatments of the economic dilemma of Christians neglect this basic truth. Christians are seemingly viewed as machines – give them some modern tools, and they will remedy their economic dilemma.

Tools are important, but more important by far is the right attitude toward tools. A careful observation of Christian thinking about the material world reveals ambivalent and/or ambiguous attitudes. Tools and how-to books on money management alone will not effect the deeper desired changes. The economic quandary of Christians is not due simply to a lack of tools but to an inadequate mindset about tools. To assist Christians in getting beyond this economic impasse, we must begin by considering attitudinal changes.

Man is indeed a creature of his thoughts. James Allen, a British philosophical writer, makes this insightful statement: Man is made or unmade by himself, in the armory of thought he forges the weapons by which he destroys himself; he also fashions the tools with which he builds for himself heavenly mansions of joy and strength and peace. By right choice and true application of thought, man ascends to Divine Perfection; by the abuse and wrong application of thought, he descends below the level of the beast. Between these two extremes are all the grades of character, and man is their maker and master.¹

The Christian’s financial status is made or unmade by his attitude toward the material world. His thoughts are shaped by ideologies that either help or hinder him in a tightening economy. A miasma of ambiguity about the material world exists that hinders or restricts the Christian’s spiritual, as well as economic, freedom. No man can rise higher than his thoughts. No goals can be reached when there is bedlam in the mind. Surgeon and author, Maxwell Maltz, says that both “behavior and feelings spring from belief.^”2

What do Christians think about the material world? It appears that many see the material world only as a necessary evil. This view contributes to old platitudes of folklore such as “poverty is next to spirituality”; “ to be wealthy is a sin;” and “money is the root of all evil.” But mental conflicts come into play when those same Christians read the Bible and discover a message like this – “So that this man [Job] was the greatest [wealthiest] of all the men of the east” (Job 1:3). For centuries Christians have struggled with these conflicting views, without apparent success at resolving them.

Solomon was right when he said, “Guard your heart, for out of it flows the issues of life” (Proverbs 4:23). Allen says: That circumstances grow out of thoughts, every man knows who has for any length of time practiced self-control and self-purification, or he will have noticed that the alteration in his circumstance has been in exact ratio with his altered mental condition.³ So then to hope in any way to impact the economic dilemma Christians face requires an examination of the ideologies that have caused this ambivalence and ambiguity toward the material world. Then the findings of this investigation must be conveyed to Christians as a means of clearing away the miasma of ambiguity. Marvin Karlans, in his book Persuasion, states, “Successful persuasion takes into account the reasons for underlying attitudes as well as the attitudes themselves.”⁴

For many Christians, their equivocal attitudes toward money have resulted in a psychosis. This mental condition causes uncertainty of action, so that Christians fear not only financial failure but also financial success. In the tragic separation between religion and daily life, no area has developed a wider gap than that between faith and economic affairs… The result of the split has been to make faith irrelevant and barren and economic life sterile and without higher purpose. The unfortunate result is that men are compelled to live in the hazardous and complicated world of occupational life without a sense of sacred calling, while their religious lives must be lived in ghostly and disembodied detachment from the arena of action and decision.⁵

D. L. Mundy, in his book God and the Rich Society, sees Christians as a group retreating from the world. He believes this is due to frustration on the part of Christians in not knowing how to cope with the material world.⁶ Mundy is on target, because the Christian’s economic dilemma arises mainly out of a failure to deal with this problem. Mundy further states, “But it can hardly be denied that the characteristic temptation of our day is to give up the struggle with the world, or if we do really live out our lives in the world, we do not struggle with it.”⁷

But for those who continue struggling with seemingly conflicting views of the material versus the spiritual, victory will only come when ambiguous views are averted with the inoculation of pure, clear, correct thoughts on financial matters. Christians must be told: Into your hands will be placed the exact results of your own thoughts; you will receive that which you earn; no more, no less. Whatever your present environment may be, you will fall, remain, or rise with your thought.⁸ So now we know that man is the captain of his ship, the master of his fate, but he does not live in a vacuum. Where do these conflicting ideas come from? How does one solidify his thinking on matters such as this? Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that the individual could rise from the bondage of myths and ambiguous thinking.

Truth must be pitted against error, and error against truth, so that through this tension, the mind might differentiate between the two. But before we can deal with conflicting views, we must deal with how we form most of our attitudes and opinions. “A person’s opinions and attitudes are strongly influenced by the groups to which he belongs and wants to belong.”⁹ For the Christian, attitudes and opinions are strongly influenced by the church.

Since the church plays such an important role in forming the attitudes of its members, it may be correctly inferred that the church has therefore been a major factor in helping create the ambiguous attitudes modern Christians have about money.