Bonus Episode with Dr. Craig Blomberg

In this episode we pause our Idol Treasure series to sit down with Dr. Craig Blomberg. Craig joins Courtney to dive deeper into many of the topics covered so far. There are strong cultural and spiritual factors that influence our behavior with money, so as we continue to learn why wealth is accumulating in DAFs, Craig brings a strong biblical perspective to expand on the purpose of wealth, the roles our society plays in our understanding of stewardship, and we’ll explore many questions like: 

• How much do I have to give for it to be considered generous?
• How does scripture balance the goodness of wealth with the potential dangers of it?
• Why aren’t more pastors preaching about money?

Enjoying the Idle Treasure series? Leave us a rating and review, and subscribe to receive bonus content. 

Idle Treasure is sponsored by the Center for Financial Discipleship.

Transcript

Loving God Or Loving Mammon

Speaker 0:00

You asked earlier about how do we know when we love mammon and maybe it's when we think first in economic terms about any kind of an issue. How does this affect me? How does this affect my community? How does this affect my nation economically? If that's the first question we ask, rather than what does God want, what has he revealed in his word about this, then that may be a telltale clue that we're actually worshiping Mammon rather than God.

Speaker 4 0:42

While creating the Idol Treasure series, there were a few interviews that took place much later than the others, and many of the episodes had already been written. Instead of trying to squeeze these conversations into existing episodes, I thought it best to feature these interviews as bonus episodes. So today we're taking a short pause in our normal idol treasure cadence to bring you a one-on-one conversation with Dr. Craig Blomberg. Craig is a prominent biblical scholar and distinguished professor emeritus of New Testament at Denver Seminary, where he taught for over 30 years. To many of us in the stewardship ministry space, Craig is a beloved author and a trusted voice. His books, Neither Poverty Nor Riches, and Christians in an Age of Wealth are two of my personal favorites. The timing of this episode fits really well as Craig and I dive deeper into many of the topics we've touched on so far in this series. There are strong cultural and spiritual factors that influence our behavior with money. So as we continue to learn why wealth is accumulated in DAFs, Craig will bring us a strong biblical perspective to expand on the purpose of wealth, the roles our society plays in our understanding of stewardship, and we'll explore many questions like how much do I have to give for it to be considered generous? How does scripture balance the goodness of wealth with the potential dangers of it? And why aren't more pastors preaching about money? Let's get ready.

Why A Bonus Interview With Dr. Blomberg

Speaker 4 2:39

I'm your host, Courtney Markley, and I'll admit, when I first heard how much money was in DAF, I was shocked. But it led me on a journey to discover what really lies beneath this number. Some Christians say there isn't a problem. Others are frustrated by the amount of charitable assets not getting deployed. But this story isn't just about donor advised funds. It is about you and me. This is a story about how our culture has shaped the way Christians behave with money. It's a story about the goodness of wealth and the weight of responsibility we feel to steward at wealth. It's a story about the vulnerable reasons why we often keep money to ourselves. And it's about the opportunity of a moment. Journey with me as we seek the answer. How should Christians respond to this idle treasure? So I'm curious if you could tell us more from a from a biblical perspective, what is the purpose of wealth?

Speaker 3:50

There is a beautiful passage in First Timothy chapter six that uh I think gives a great balanced answer to this question. Um First Timothy six is the chapter that uh a lot of people know simply for verse 10 the love of money is uh a root of all kinds of evil. But as uh Paul continues writing, and you get near the end of the chapter in verse 17, uh 1 Timothy 6, he says, Command

Series Framing And DAF Context

Speaker 4:26

those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, uh, but to put their hope in God. And then in verse 18, he repeats himself again, command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and be generous and willing to share. But I deliberately did not read a half verse in between those two bits, which says, uh, put their hope in God, who richly provides us for everything, with everything for our enjoyment. So it's it's a beautiful way of saying there are needs. Uh, this is not a world where everybody has the same amount of resources or the same amount of access to resources, uh, going all the way back to the fact that it's a very sin-filled world. So uh the Christian's responsibility is to do a little something. Uh, one person can do only so much to help alleviate that inequity. But

Purpose Of Wealth In Scripture

Speaker 5:33

when we do that, when we are generous and not arrogant, um, when we are willing to share, and and we can say before God uh with a clear conscience, yes, I'm being generous with what you've blessed me with, then there is an amount that uh we don't have to become ascetics that uh is given to us for our enjoyment. I think that's a verse, maybe because it's tucked away at the end of a letter uh that people don't get that far in reading that needs more attention.

Speaker 4 6:11

Yes, and I absolutely hear that and respond to that. And I think the big question that so many people grapple with is well, how much of is it for me to enjoy and how much do I give in order for it to be considered genuine, uh generous? And uh how how do you direct people when they ask you that question?

Speaker 6:33

Well, a word that often comes into this uh context also is the word sacrifice. Paul talks in uh uh 2 Corinthians 8 about the the model of the Macedonians, uh poorer part of the the empire that was giving sacrificially for uh a huge need after uh an empire-wide famine. And he is trying to encourage the Corinthians, who uh were a wealthier congregation, simply to keep the pledges that they had already made. And so he's pointing to the uh the Macedonians as a model. Sacrifice may go a little bit beyond generosity, but there is uh something of a synonymous nature between the two words, and I think the point of a sacrifice is that you intentionally go without something that is good that you might have liked uh significantly, uh, not just a whim, uh, for the sake of others who have far greater needs than yourself. Would I have loved to go on a cruise this year, but I decided to use that money for uh something else? Well, I'm probably being generous. Um, I didn't really have to go on a cruise in the first place. Um that's uh that's a gravy on the top. But did I sacrifice another trip to uh England to see my grandchildren because one of our daughters married a British man and is raising our kids over there? That that feels like I've given up a little bit more. Each person will have a different sense within their own context. I really have not met a lot of people that don't have a fairly good sense of what qualifies as truly generous because so often they say, yeah, when I'm honest, I realize I'm not.

Speaker 4 8:39

I appreciate how you give us that example of perhaps not going on a cruise versus buying plane tickets to go see your grandkids. One does when you talk to grandparents, one feels like more of a sacrifice. That's right. That's right. Yeah, exactly. So I I love that you gave us that that context. It's really helpful. We're gonna start to like slowly wade into some of the potential like dangers of having wealth. But before we go there, I know that it can be really tempting for folks to almost like villainize wealth or villainize people who have a lot of wealth. But how does we know that's not God's intention for this tool? So, how does scripture really give us that

How Much Is Generous Versus Sacrifice

Speaker 4 9:20

balanced view of the goodness of wealth?

Speaker 9:23

Well, Genesis 1, you don't have to read very far in into the scriptures to see that everything God created was good, including a material world. And that sets the Judeo-Christian tradition off from certain other religions and worldviews where the material world is inherently evil. When you look at the Old Testament and you look at some of the people who were blessed by God who made it into the uh roll call of the heroes of faith in the Old Testament, you have wealthy people like Abraham and most likely uh the generations immediately after him, Isaac and Jacob and Joseph. You have people like Job, although he lost it all and didn't know he would regain it. He certainly started extraordinarily wealthy and ended extraordinarily wealthy. One of the things that people don't always realize about Job, they probably get bogged down in all the repetition of the accusations against him and his defenses, is smack dab in the middle of the book. He talks about all the poor people he helped when he had his wealth. Wealth is definitely a good thing, but it can be very easily abused as well.

Speaker 4 10:45

So I'm gonna pivot a little bit. A personal question that I have um spent a lot of time studying and observing in different people as a financial counselor is what does it look like to actually love money? Because you just referenced 1 Timothy 6, right? Where it says the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And I have, I don't know about you, but I have yet to encounter someone that's like, yeah, Courtney, I worship money. I love money. And I think it's one of those sneaky things where we might be doing it, but we're not laying out this giant altar to money. It looks very different than perhaps what the idols that they worshipped in the Old Testament. So, in a modern context, what does it look like for people to to love or to worship money?

Speaker 11:30

Well, it's it it's interesting. I have to I have to start with a uh biblical context where you can't serve two masters, uh you can't love God and mammon or or material possessions. That actually occurs a couple of places in Jesus' teaching. One of them is right in the middle of Luke 16, which is sandwiched by two parables that are both about money. Uh, one that we often call the unjust steward, where uh a bit of a rhapscallion is is praised not for his injustice, but for his shrewdness. And Jesus says the the children of this world are often

The Goodness And Risks Of Wealth

Speaker 12:16

shrewder in dealing with their own than uh the children of light, uh sort of an ironic aside. And then the uh story of the rich man in Lazarus, where you have uh an extremely wealthy person with a beggar by his doorstep, whom he presumably sees daily and uh never uses a single finger to help him in any way. And so uh I think when you have uh acute needs for yourself, like the steward did in the first parable, and when you see others with acute needs, those are particularly key situations to use as a barometer. Do you think entirely about yourself? Do you think at least primarily about someone in great need when you are in a position to help and even without a huge uh amount of difficulty in doing so? Uh, I think those can demonstrate where one's loyalty really lies.

Speaker 4 13:30

One of the things that I've been studying for this particular project, and again, just in my work in general, is that when we're looking at Christians and non-Christians and we're asking them questions about just how they relate to money, what are their financial goals, what are their retirement goals, all these kinds of questions. How much do they give? What do they look like there? There's usually not that big of a distinction between Christian responses and non-Christian responses. One of the questions that I'm leaning into for this project is how has our culture shaped the way that Christians behave with money? And in your book, you talk about this phrase, affluenza. I know it was popular a while ago, and I would love to just re-introduce it to maybe folks who haven't heard this phrase before, and then talk a little bit more about how our culture has shaped the way, especially Christians in America, behave with money. So if you could tell us what is affluenza?

Speaker 14:25

The risk of stating the obvious, it was a coined word that combined the two words affluence and influenza, which is the fancy name for what we normally just call the flu. So it's the idea that affluence can turn into a kind of sickness like the flu, uh, that consumes us with the constant desire to uh acquire and to buy and to purchase more, especially things that we don't really need, if we're honest.

Speaker 4 14:59

And why do you think, or let me let me ask you this first before assuming, do you observe that a lot of Christians kind of have this attitude and kind of fall into this trap of

What Loving Money Looks Like Today

Speaker 4 15:12

affluenza?

Speaker 15:13

Oh, absolutely. I I have it myself from time to time. Um it's impossible to live in a culture that bombards you with however many dozens of advertisements on a daily basis, whether it's online, on television, at the movies, radio, everything is commercialized so that even subconsciously I am being told over and over again, you need this, you want this, you deserve this, and and we all succumb. Uh, there's no one that I know personally that doesn't have a touch of the disease.

Speaker 4 16:00

So let's talk about like our political culture. How has the political messaging kind of changed in the recent decades, really, to convince us that it's our patriotic duty to shop? Not just that we have this desire, but it's actually a duty to our country. It's very interesting.

Speaker 16:16

The first time I consciously remember hearing that message was after 9-11, when uh George W. addressed the nation, brought up this topic that, in addition to all of the other horrible things, that the killing of several thousand people and the destruction of the Twin Towers and the other planes that went down, caused that uh it would have a significant economic impact on uh the country unless people consciously made efforts to keep the economy strong and growing. There was a sense, I can't reproduce his wording now, that this was a part of patriotism. Uh, although I'm old, I'm not old enough to have lived through World War II. Um, but many people, my parents' age and and generation, who are now with the Lord, did and told me about that period when I was younger. And it was exactly the reverse message then. It's your patriotic duty to save because we need materials for the the war effort. I'm not sure either of those extremes is biblically justifiable. You asked earlier about how do we know when we love mammon, and maybe when we think first in economic terms about any kind of an issue. How does this affect me? How does this affect my community? How does this affect my nation economically? If that's the first question we ask, rather than what does God want, what has he revealed in his word about this, then that may be uh a telltale clue that that

Affluenza And Cultural Pressure

Speaker 18:17

we're actually worshiping mammon rather than God.

Speaker 4 18:21

That's a hard thing to unpack with people, I find, who um, if you've been taught your whole life, again, this is what it's supposed to look like, and this is your duty, and we're protecting our country and doing things to promote us and our community. It's hard to then step back and go, oh, wait, but what if God wants us to help this country over here? What if we're supposed to be going and doing this over here? So can you help us um maybe just give us some insight into what are some of those like money beliefs that many Christians in the US embrace, um, being in more of a capitalistic economy that maybe aren't actually found in Scripture?

Speaker 19:03

Well, I would I would start and and uh lose some friends right with my first statement by saying uh I do not believe that scripture teaches a particular economic system, economic beliefs that undergirded societies uh throughout the biblical period. And the most prevalent is what some scholars today would call the theory of limited good or the idea of uh uh a pie. And if you have more of the pie than I do, then there's less to go around for everyone else. One of the gifts of Adam Smith and the uh articulation of capitalism in the uh 18th century was to say no, uh wealth can be created. It's not an infinite, unlimited pie, but it is not limited by the size of the pie right now today. You can find now and then the tiniest hints of recognition of that in different ancient societies. You can find hints of it in some biblical teaching. Uh, you can also find hints of what might be called socialism or even communism uh if you uh don't analyze things deeply in various scriptures. Socialist thought is even more recent than capitalism. Marx lived in the 19th century. So to try to either on the far right or the far left impose probably the two best known uh

Patriotism, Consumerism, And Idolatry

Speaker 20:54

contemporary systems, none of which, by the way, actually operate anywhere. There is no pure capitalist society and there is no pure socialist society. To try to baptize one of those as the Christian approach is simply to commit a giant historical anachronism and and not recognize what's going on in the text.

Speaker 4 21:21

Yes, thank you for unpacking more of the the history and helping us connect some of these dots to like how have we gotten where we are now? Can you give some specific like if if you're sitting down with someone, maybe it's the first time that they're hearing, oh wait, like the Bible doesn't necessarily support capitalism as a whole, as this is the number one best type of economy. And as you said, I think you said it very well. Uh it doesn't per give us one set economic standard necessarily to follow. That might just blow someone's mind right there. And so, like, can you give Of what would you give them as like here's a few like primary examples of maybe how we're operating, how it might um run counterculture to scripture, or how it might be like harmful to other people, just so we start to um yeah, give us some like handles to grab onto around this like meatier subject.

Speaker 22:20

Well, when Paul is trying to collect for the impoverished saints in Judea and in 2 Corinthians 8, uh 13 to 15, he says, My desire is not that you become uh impoverished so that they can become rich. And then most translations say, but that there might be equality. Now that sounds incredibly communist, um, and it's also impossible because even if you created perfect equality one day in a sinful world, the next day it wouldn't be any longer. I think the better translation is equity, or like the ESV says, uh fairness, because then Paul does something remarkable. He refers to the principle of collecting

Does The Bible Endorse An Economic System

Speaker 23:09

manna in the wilderness back in the book of Exodus, which ought not be where people think if they're looking for timeless principles, that was a stopgap measure for 40 years only. And yet the principle that he sees as still applying in his world is he says, so that no one had too much and no one had too little. And so the the equity is to say, as long as there are people who have too little, then that means some people have too much because there is enough to go around. I might look at the opening chapters of Acts, where the earliest model the church adopted was a common treasury. And uh in fact, you can find the two lines that summarize uh Karl Marx's communist manifesto. He stole them straight from the New Testament, from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. You don't get them in the same passage, you get them in two separate passages in Acts. But the fundamental mistake of Marx, or two fundamental mistakes of Marx, was one to take God completely out of the picture, and second, to try and legislate it. This was all being done voluntarily. Okay, so now I can breathe a sigh of relief that you're not asking me to vote for communists, but where's the sting in the tail? There are people who have greater needs than I, and without impoverishing myself, I should be wanting to help them. And what that help looks like changes within the book of Acts. Later it involves choosing deacons and having what today is sometimes called a deacon's fund. Then later it's a special appeal when Agabus prophesies the famine that's coming. There may be all kinds of mechanisms in different societies, but the question is, where's your heart? You get some unexpected income, is the first thing you think of is what can I spend it on for myself, or how can I use it for somebody else?

Speaker 4 25:44

Thank you for that. I find that although there's a big generosity movement happening, and I feel that, and there's a lot of people who are starting to really lean into it. I feel like we're also kind of combating that consumer-driven culture that says, Well, it's good, it's a desirable thing to have more things or to have more status or more success or whatever your more is. And I know there's a uh there's just like this

Equity, Acts, And Voluntary Sharing

Speaker 4 26:10

rally cry, this hunger for more Christians who want to hear this message being taught in church and and being taught exactly what you're sharing. Help us to really think biblically about money and not just um help us to think politically about money or socially about money, but really biblically. Why do you think that it's just become kind of hard to talk about money at church? The majority of the feedback that I receive is most pastors avoid preaching on money and possessions. And why do you think that is?

Speaker 26:44

The more obvious reason is because no matter what they say, they'll get flack from somebody. Now, that's true about a lot of topics that that preachers can preach on, but but this one is pretty much guaranteed. The less obvious reason is if you're gonna preach on something, you need to practice what you preach. My wife and I were blessed, uh, the first two churches that we were part of, uh one in Scotland because we got married and 46 years ago and went on a three-year honeymoon called Doctoral Studies. Our church in Scotland, and then our church, the our first church, we lived in South Florida for three years before moving to Denver, where we've been ever since. Both had pastors who, not in any bragging kind of way, but just now and then, maybe not even from the pulpit, but in other contexts, let it be known that they gave 25% of their income back to the Lord's work. And that blew my mind because it's not like either church was giving them a huge amount of of salary. The first year we were married and living overseas was also when uh Ron Siders, uh first edition of Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, had just been published. Uh, the previous year we're in a young adults group that read it and discussed it. And I discovered that Scottish Christians tend to think that frugality is part of the gospel. Oh, how interesting. That was a new challenge for me. When you see models of people doing it well, but a lot of times uh pastors feel they have to preach on something they're not very good models of themselves, and they'd be better off than bringing in a guest.

Speaker 4 28:47

I like how you approached it as there's the really obvious reasons why we don't talk about money, right? You're gonna make people mad no matter what you say. But then there's the the less obvious, is it's really hard to walk this out, and not very many pastors feel supported in that particular

Why Pastors Avoid Preaching On Money

Speaker 4 29:04

area. And as you said, it's more the examples. Like, do we have living examples of other people who are walking it out? And it's hard when you live in a culture where money conversations are so taboo, your neighbor might be super generous, but you may never know about it. And so it's it's interesting to try to find that balance between we don't want to share about our giving or generosity for the wrong reasons, but there are, I think, healthy ways we can do this to be an encouragement for other people and to encourage that generosity. So I feel that invitation to share with people what you're doing and what God is inviting you into and how you're taking steps towards obedience. So I'm curious. Two more questions as we're wrapping up, and uh, I feel like we could spend a whole day really diving into each of these and we're kind of hitting them a little bit higher level. Um, because the the goal is really obviously not to solve anything for anyone, but really just to start opening up these conversations for people. And I look at this as a way to hopefully plant seeds that cultivate a desire in people to want to learn, to want to read these books, to want to have these conversations. And so we're we're giving people just kind of little teasers, I feel like, all along the way. So I know this next question, we could, I mean, you you've probably written a whole book about it, if not a couple of them. But the question is that I continue to come back to is what's really at stake here? Can a lack of stewardship threaten, and when I say stewardship, I suppose I mean more specifically, can a lack of giving threaten our salvation? Or perhaps point to um the fact that maybe we haven't experienced that grace of salvation yet? Or is this simply a matter of sanctification and it's a matter of growing uh mature Christians?

Speaker 30:57

Well, let me read you a passage and see how you think it answers that question. What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, Go in peace, keep warm, be well fed, but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by actions, is dead. James 2, 14 to 17. There have been some writers who have been so troubled by that that uh they say, well, when when James says, Can such faith save them? The answer must be yes. But uh in Greek there are two ways of uh asking uh a question, two different uh adverbs that that suggest an answer to a question. One means

Models Of Generosity And Transparency

Speaker 32:03

you're fishing for an affirmative answer, one means you're fishing for a negative answer. The one that's the negative is the one that's used here. So there's there's no question that James is saying no. And he's deliberately giving an extreme example. He's not saying you lose your salvation because you didn't give to your best friend's daughter's appeal to go to Guatemala on a special missions trip. He is saying there are fellow believers, they are right there in front of you, they are in the extremity of need without clothes or food, and you do absolutely nothing, then yes, that is a sign that any faith you profess is no better than the very next two verses examples of demons who have faith in the sense they know that God exists, but they shudder. That is not saving faith.

Speaker 4 33:12

Those passages keep me up at night, Craig. I'll tell you what. Oh, but I believe firmly is what I need to hear. So uh I constantly go back to them. Uh-huh. Because I love I I do I love that line of even the demons believe and shudder. They know they may believe that God exists, they don't surrender to him, they don't live their life for him, they don't, you know, take him at his word. And so it's it's interesting.

Speaker 33:40

And sort of like people that are terrified that they've lost their salvation, and I try to say if you had, you wouldn't be worried at all. You wouldn't even be asking the question, you wouldn't care. The fact that you say this might keep you awake sometimes tells me you're probably a very good example of being a very good steward. It's the people that hear that and

What’s At Stake: Faith And Works

Speaker 34:10

they just want to argue with you that it can't possibly mean what James meant that I worry about.

Speaker 4 34:17

Hmm. I appreciate that reframe. I do. That's really helpful. And I truly believe that the the people listening into this podcast are gonna be ones who are hungry, who are wanting to um just continue on their journey and growing in Christ-likeness and and safeguarding themselves from that love of money. So how can how can wealthy Christians, and I'll say that I consider wealthy um in the global term, so I mean you and I are are wealthy. Absolutely. How can wealthy Christians guard themselves from being polluted by the world? To quote also James.

Speaker 34:59

That is the second half of James 1:27. Maybe the answer is to read the first half of the verse. True religion is visiting orphans and widows in their distress and keeping oneself undefiled by the world. It is a brilliant combination of social concern mixed with personal impurity and the church loves to divide itself into which half of that verse it's gonna focus on to the exclusion of the other half. And James says, You can't do that and not be true religion. You gotta have them both together.

Speaker 4 35:51

That's perfect. That's beautiful. Thank you, Craig.

Speaker 35:55

You're welcome.

Speaker 4 35:56

At the end of my time with Craig, I was left with a deeper impression that there is both far more grace poured out on us and far more work to be done than we realize. Our relationship with Christ should massively impact the way we see the world and those we pursue in it. What does it look like to grow in both social justice and personal purity? I'll be the first to admit I feel very much like a student and not an expert in this arena. But thankfully, Jesus doesn't ask us to be perfect, he simply invites us to follow.

Speaker 3 36:30

Living in a world where so much is going on, it's hard to even him ourselves think, and him by her. And I don't think I can handle my those of the loose.

Guarding Against Worldly Pollution

Speaker 4 37:38

Special thank you to Dr. Craig Bloomberg. Our closing song this week is My Reason by Jamie. Join us next week as we start to shift our focus from the cultural and spiritual reasons why money and deaths often stay stagnant to looking at the relational factors of stewarding money. We'll discuss the challenges facing families with multi-generational wealth in an episode titled The Burden of Blessing.