Stewardship.

I'm not a blogger. I tend to trip myself up and get trampled by my own thoughts; all before I get them on paper (especially when it requires eloquence and style). But I'm going to try anyway.


There have been a few benign bits of reality that have been floating around me for a while, and I am loving that they have coalesced into into something that basically refines my world view. (Discovering and renewing your world view after accepting Christ may also be a worth while blog post, we shall see...)

So, here it is...

I have recently been asking God to help me with being a good steward. I don't think much about money, I couldn't give a flip about it, really. In fact, I tend to be over generous one week and spend the next week eating beans. I've always been that way. Sometimes I feel like that is an undisciplined part of myself that needs to come under Gods control. So, like I said-I've been asking. And, He's been answering...

What do we really understand about money?
What I understood as a child,is money is a neccessity to eat, to have a place to sleep and clothes to wear. What I learned as I grew up is, it also differentiates people; it creates classes. Money gives the person holding it power.

Why does it create power? Because we humans (being the wise, forward thinking species that we are) developed a system that made it easy for trade to occur. Instead of trading goods, we trade pieces of paper that are a lot less heavy than a 20 lb bag of sugar.
There's nothing wrong with that.
It's smart!
We look to our neighbor and see 40 lbs of sugar, and we look at our bag that has 30 lbs of salt and think "Hey! Why don't we trade? !"
It's cooperation and a beautiful part of our humanity.

We humans are so advanced we created an eco-nomy! "Eco" being that it has to do with the environment- it is an integral part of the world we live in...it's all around us and connects us.

Now, hears the rub- this economy is man made. It's FUBU, for us by us. It was created by man, for mans purpose. It is a man-created value system.
So, an economy has so much more to do than filling our bellies, or putting a roof over our heads.
An economy is the indicator of what man values.

Our current economy has little to do with the world man was born into, or nature.
If you take man back to his basic beginnings there is alot of  struggling with the land. His life was an interaction with the land. He, like the rest of nature: lived, produced, struggled and died. Those are natural laws that only one has so far defied.

What human life has now become has little to do with nature (the world/life around himself), in fact most people ignore the fact that we all live under the same natural laws. Quite the opposite, we go to extraordinary lengths to deny pain, struggle, aging and death.
We also have an uncanny ability to presume our own existence and our own "selves" is better and more important than other's existence.

In the middle of this man made way of life, human life (with the capability to create an economy!!), has in some ways been given a monetary value (think of healthcare, where better care is given to those with more money,OR  think about sex trafficking and other forms of human slavery). Man, who began an economic system, has somehow been turned upside down and is a servant to it.

Do I blame money? No. Money has no power in and of itself. It's a nicely woven, fabric like, piece of paper. What gives it power is mans value of it.

So, this leads me to the question "why does man value it so highly?" Especially here in America and in other westernized cultures where in most cases people have access to getting their basic needs met. Why are we still so driven to have more?

Going back to the "Eco" part of economy.
While trade can be so significant in improving a community (the environment, the eco), this isn't what drives the majority of man's want for it. Community well being hardly has significant value in our current economy.
Maybe a more suitable word for mans relationship with money and trade at this point should be called a "myoconomy", as mostly what drives us is a myopic view of our life, and of the world. We want more money to pad our lives from hardship, we want more to make us believe we won't be touched by the natural laws, or to forget about them all together. We want it to entertain ourselves, and make us feel important and good about ourselves. These are the things we value.


It seems like we are living in our man created value system, where money gives value to life, and a human life has little value outside of its ability to make money.  
Also. we are spinning around on a planet that is so much bigger and diverse than just us humans. While we are creating goods that will make our life easier and more convenient we are creating goods that are destroying other species. While we are consuming out of bordem, there are people that are being dehumanized for the sake of profit which is driven by our consumption.

Man is an amazing animal.
We have the ability to create, we have the ability to organize together, we have created our own world system for heavens sake!
With our abilities to see and understand so much, can we learn to see that our capability to have dominion over this earth ought to be tempered with the fact that our individual lives equate to only being visitors here for a short time and that maybe the stewardship that God bestowed on us is so much more than what is in our bank account?

Can we look outward to the rest of the planet and find a way to live harmoniously?

Can we change our minds to really value life, instead of spending our money and time on the things that will eventually alter life and the world as we found it?
What if the truth was, we didn't need money? What would happen if money lost its value? Then how would we trade- and then what would be important?
Is it possible to create a system to preserve all forms of life? Are we willing to change our view of singular self importance to consider we are a small part of a bigger whole? What if Roussea was right and progress really means going backwards?