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The Paradox of Generosity

By October 3, 2024No Comments

“Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered.” 

–Proverbs 11:25

In the remarkable novel, Viper’s Tangle, Francois Mauriac weaves the heart-wrenching tale of Louis, an elderly lawyer. Louis has amassed extraordinary wealth and is now in the final season of his life. As he recounts his past, Louis reveals his deep-seated resentment towards his family, driven by a life dedicated to the accumulation of wealth. His greed has created a tangled web of bitterness and isolation, which he compares to vipers constricting his heart. Louis says, “I have loved only gold, and the gold has paid me back by making me hated and feared.” He goes on to admit, “This fortune I have scraped together, which I have clung to so desperately, as if it could be my salvation, is nothing but a pitiless master.” 

After doing a lot of fundraising over the last decade, I have developed a deeper empathy for the challenges and temptations of the wealthy. As Tim Keller points out, money magnifies the things that keep us from God. The spiritual power of money is that it makes us think it can give us far more than it can. Besides the overwhelming temptation to pride and superiority, the wealthy are faced with a host of vices that are ever-present, including placing their trust in the things they possess and using their wealth to exclude and manipulate others.

The wealthy are often surrounded by people who make it very difficult to enter into authentic relationships. They constantly wonder who to trust, and who is befriending them for their own gain. Perhaps worst of all, those with means are surrounded by people who have too much stock in only telling them what they want to hear, not what they need to hear. This creates delusional and false narratives about their character and competence. As a result, the wealthy can be utterly blind to their narcissism and hubris.

What is interesting to note is that those who do not possess extraordinary means often struggle with similar temptations. The poor tend to either despise or idolize the wealthy. They covet or despise because they do not have what they desire.

To loosen the grip of pride and materialism, the call to the wealthy is to do something that seems counterintuitive. Give it away. Money, as one author notes, is like water. It is not intended to sit stagnant and become stale. It will breed disease. The currency of the kingdom is love, not money. When money moves, it brings life and flourishing.The capacity to do good is immeasurable and it starts with a paradoxical but irrefutable truth, “it is better to give than receive.” As Christian Smith notes in his book The Paradox of Generosity, we need to recover a simple, but ancient notion that blessing others is the blessing. “Whoever brings blessing will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered” (Prov. 11:25).

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