Affluenza

Our pastor is going through a series called "How to be a Christian Without Being Religious". I think it is a great idea and he is doing a good job of it. I know that it smacks a bit of Emergent, but so far I think we're still on the side of truth. Last week he introduced the idea of "RTDs" which stands for "religiously-transmitted diseases". Obviously he's having fun with some plays on words.

Today's topic was on what he called "affluenza", which is about our greed. He said that this year's Christmas offering is going to go toward digging wells in the Central African Republic. His vision is that our church could make it so that everyone in that country has fresh drinking water. It is indeed a laudable goal and one that we can get behind (though I do wonder where the gospel gets shared in this). To accomplish this he challenged everyone to step up their giving.

He challenged those who aren't giving to start. He challenged those who give irregularly to give regularly. He challenged those who give regularly to make sure that they give cheerfully. And he challenged those who give cheerfully to stretch themselves if possible. He did make the good point that we will often stretch ourselves to put our kids in private school, start a business, etc, but we won't stretch ourselves to give. Fair enough.

This is something that Amanda and I feel like we've dealt with over the years. We feel like we give to the point where it hurts a little bit. Now we're to the point of deciding what we could potentially get rid of in order to raise $1000 toward this effort. Amanda has already put in $100 of her allowance money that she hasn't used. We're going to sell some books. I'm considering selling our pool table that I almost never use. We have some ideas. Now it's just a matter of making some decisions.

We don't believe that God has called us to live as ascetics. However, we also know that we are blessed beyond measure compared to most in the world. Mike listed some interesting statistics. The mean household income in the US is something like $43K/year. In our town of Cary it is $77K/year. In the Central African Republic it is $240/year. God didn't give us this so that we can enjoy more comforts. He gave us this so that we can serve His kingdom.