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 For the Week of March 15, 2010by Rubel Shelly Dennis Talbert lives in Michigan. Dennis Talbert heads a nonprofit organization that helps churches and neighborhood groups counsel people whose financial problems have them in danger of losing their homes. Dennis Talbert has a big, big challenge on his hands. As I was reading about Talbert and his Michigan Neighborhood Partnership in the Detroit Free Press recently, I found his approach to be both refreshing and practical. He doesn’t blame the economy. He doesn’t blame the government. He doesn’t let people off the hook for personal responsibility. “We live a lifestyle we can’t afford,” he says. “I think that’s the No. 1 issue.” Incredible! One of us could be the root of his own problem? We should live within our means? We should tune out those ridiculous TV ads that keep telling us to spend money we don’t have? We should draw up spending plans and actually live by them? I told you he had some novel ideas. Talbert doesn’t deny there are real problems out there. He isn’t unfeeling enough to say that there are no legitimate victims of a company’s collapse or health problems that made it impossible for some to work. But he makes the same point Dave Ramsey makes, the same point common sense screams, the same point that is stressed in the Bible: Human beings become our own worst enemies when we naively think we can be irresponsible with money and suffer no consequences. Life is the ultimate “reality show” that says otherwise. When he launches his attack on fiscal folly, Talbert tells about a young woman he knows who has a “modest job” in Detroit – but who lives in upscale West Bloomfield and drives a Mercedes. “Every dime she has goes to her lifestyle. We live in a culture that tells people spend, spend, spend.” Money isn’t evil, and you don’t need to feel guilty if you have some. A roof over your head, clothes for the kids, and a car that gets you safely from Point A to Point B are good things. The biblical counsel about money isn’t that you should avoid it or give it all away. It is, instead, that (a) you shouldn’t build your sense of identity around wealth or the lack of it, (b) you mustn’t let the desire for money and things become the driving force of your life, and (c) you need to learn to share what you have with the people around you. It’s really pretty simple. As a friend of mine likes to say: It’s when your outgo exceeds your income that your upkeep becomes your downfall. The trouble comes when expensive short-term ego props are put in the place of long-term values that are free for the cultivation – love and loyalty, patience and peace, gentleness and goodness. Now that’s a lifestyle you can afford, and it doesn’t cost you a dime.   |
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