“Now you should finish what you started. Let the eagerness you showed in the beginning be matched now by your giving. Give in proportion to what you have. Whatever you give is acceptable if you give it eagerly. And give according to what you have, not what you don’t have. Of course, I don’t mean your giving should make life easy for others and hard for yourselves. I only mean that there should be some equality. Right now you have plenty and can help those who are in need. Later, they will have plenty and can share with you when you need it. In this way, things will be equal.”
2 Corinthians 8:11-14 NLT
“Give according to what you have.” This is a guiding principle of ownership within the Christian faith. It applies not only to physical goods, but to time and conversation, and other non tangible resources. In the modern world, their is a battle being waged between equal distribution of wealth versus opportunity. This battle is easily addressed here by framing the issue in a persons response to Christ’s grace, rather than as a response to stewardship. When we all seek to do right, not by what we have but by who gave it and how it was given, equal opportunity and equal distribution become tangible realities. The difficulty is that people want to use a metric of entitlement, spoken of as stewardship or welfare to achieve harmony in the body. It should not be so. The admonishment for us is, therefore, a prescient one. If we set out to eagerly give as an extension of Christ’s grace, we can be sure of two things. Firstly, we will be taken care of. Christ’s grace doesn’t magically transition to Christ’s loan. Secondly, we will embolden others to give the same way and thus create the environment that we best thrive in as humans. This requires us to be eager and bold about giving and to look for ways to innovate this process.
JOSH McGARY. COM 