When it comes to money, lots of people have odd views, and even crazier practices. I think of the infamous New York brothers, Homer and Langley Collyer, who were discovered dead in March of 1947, buried under heaps of trash piled to the ceiling in their small house. Over time they hoarded so much debris (140 tons) in their living quarters that the only way the police could gain access inside to recover their putrid bodies was through a window in a second-story bedroom. (The Montreal Gazette, April 9, 1947). They lived in utter, secluded squalor as first-class hoarders. This is despite the fact that they inherited wealth from their father who was a medical doctor, in addition to their own personal wealth, totaling in excess of $1.5 million. They lived like impoverished misers when in fact they were rolling in the dough. People can be funny about money.
Now entering my fourth decade of being a pastor and elder in the Church, I can confidently say from experience that non-Church people are not the only ones with odd or unbiblical views of money. Many Christians have unhealthy views about money and wealth as well. This is surprising and understandable at the same time.
Money is Personal
It is understandable that many Christians have misguided or eccentric views and practices with their finances and possessions because wealth is so personal and intricately woven into the fabric of our lives. We cannot live and function without money because God has ordained that basic human survival and interaction is based on and flows from labor (Gen 3:19), production, and the interdependence of shared goods; all of which is managed, moderated and distributed through the medium of bartering systems that enable the exchange of goods and services. Money facilitates this timeless and universal social enterprise. Our finances are extremely personal.
But this process is complicated by the reality of human sin. Every person is born sinful (Ps 51:5; 58:3) and so every person is inherently preoccupied with self-interest (1 Kings 8:46). And that self-interest manifests itself in specific sins such as greed, envy, materialism, stinginess, discontentment, and more. These sins are often showcased in the domain of money and material possessions. The Bible states plainly that the “love of money” is a root to all kinds of evil (1 Tim 6:10). And this is true in the Church among the Christian community. We are all susceptible to having wrong, weird, and sinful views and practices with respect to money, whether one has a lot of it or very little.
Unbiblical Views of Wealth
While it is understandable that people often have lop-sided and overly-guarded views about their personal wealth, I am always surprised when I come across Bible-believing Christians who hold unexpectedly strange views about money. By “strange” I mean they have beliefs, attitudes, habits, or practices that are in direct conflict with what the Bible clearly has to say about money, wealth, and material possessions. Many times they think they have a biblical view of money, when in fact they don’t. But the Bible is clear, specific, exhaustive, and practical on the issues of money. There is definitely a biblical way to think about money and possessions.
The Bible is the authority on money and wealth, and everything related to it. Jesus spoke and taught frequently about wealth and its implications relative to practical living which flows from the heart. Almost one-third of His parables deal with money. Every Christian should work toward the goal of having a thoroughly developed, thoughtful, biblically informed theology of money and material possessions. But there are plenty of Christians who don’t. And the reasons for that are countless.
Maybe they have inherited their wrong views about money from how they were raised. Or maybe they have been infected with worldly views about money from their secular school education. Or maybe they have been poisoned in their views about material possessions from the onslaught of the secular media or from keeping the wrong company. After all, the Bible says, “Bad company corrupts good morals” (1 Cor 15:33). Or maybe they were indoctrinated with bad theology on money from unbalanced Bible teachers and compromised religious ministries. Or maybe they just routinely give into the sin within which is always vying for self-interest, illegitimate security, and fleshly gratification.
Over almost forty years of church ministry, as I look back and reflect, some unbiblical practices and attitudes about money seem to be more common than others among believers. One common one (maybe the most common one) is that many Christians do not give regularly to the church as Scripture requires.
This practice is manifest in various ways, such as those who give in a hit-and-miss, inconsistent manner instead of giving in keeping with God’s mandate which requires regular giving each time income is received (Prov 3:9; 1 Cor 16:2). Some Christians don’t give to the church at all. Or there are believers who give very little, in a stingy manner, far from being generous and sacrificial as God expects (2 Cor 9:7). God promises to bless generous, sacrificial giving (Prov 3:10; Luke 6:38), and yet many believers circumvent God’s blessing in their lives by employing miserly attitudes and practices.
Anonymous Giving?
Another strange view about giving among Christians is the idea that all giving should be anonymous. I first encountered this view early on in my pastoral ministry while serving at a church in Texas. I began shepherding at a church where the established leaders and elders had developed the principle of “anonymous giving.” This had been the practice for decades before I arrived. The most prevalent example of anonymous giving at that church was that they did not pass the offering plate during the Sunday public worship service as is common with most churches. Instead they had a giving box inconspicuously placed in the back of the church where church members could deposit their offering at non-public times, at their own discretion, so no one else could see them give. This was to preserve their conviction that the Bible says believers are to “give in secret.”
I was pastor at a few other churches prior to arriving at this church, and I had never heard of this “giving in secret” concept. I asked the elders where they got the idea, and immediately they quipped, “Jesus said ‘when giving don’t let your left hand know what your right hand is doing’.” That phrase is an excerpt taken from Matthew 6:3. The elders interpreted this phrase to mean, “No person should know how much or how often you are giving; only you and God should know.” And the elders applied that principle stringently and consistently across the spectrum of all their ministries. None of the pastors or elders at their church were allowed to know how much members were giving or how often they were giving. Although they did have one designated church accountant who had a ledger with that information, yet much of the giving that came in was anonymous, especially if given in cash, so that even the church accountant did not know who it was from.
A few years later after I arrived there was a new lead pastor at the church and this giving in secret concept was foreign to him as well. He eventually challenged the elders that this long-standing policy of anonymous giving was actually unbiblical. He had two main arguments.
First, he said that these elders were misapplying Jesus’ statement in Matthew 6:3. He noted that when Jesus said to give not letting your left know what your right hand is doing, it doesn’t mean Jesus was advocating for universal secrecy in giving. This was just another example of people taking a Bible verse out of context. The pastor correctly noted that Matthew 6:3 needs to be interpreted in light of its context. Jesus made this statement as he was exposing the hypocrisy of the Pharisees who sought the favor of men by doing public religious acts with the wrong motives. The Pharisees purposefully gave “to be noticed by men” (Matt 6:1). Matthew 6:3 is focusing on the motive for giving, not the method of giving. Jesus did not intend to say that all religious deeds were to be done in secrecy. In fact, in the same sermon as Matthew 6:3 He commanded the multitudes, “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify you Father who is in heaven” (Matt 5:16).
Jesus’ imperative in Matthew 5:16 is the exact opposite of the notion of the elders mentioned earlier who said all giving needs to be done in secret. Giving to God is a good work. In commenting on Matthew 6:3 John MacArthur correctly exposes the common misunderstanding about this verse as many take it out of context, assuming it supports the idea that all righteous giving is done in secret:
Matthew 6:3 has often been interpreted to mean that all good works are to be done in absolute secrecy. But true righteousness cannot be kept entirely secret, and should not be. ‘How blessed are those who keep justice, who practice righteousness at all times!’ (Ps. 106:3)….The question is not whether or not our good works should be seen by others, but whether they are done for that end. When they are done ‘in such a way’ that attention and glory are focused on our ‘Father who is in heaven’ rather than on ourselves, God is pleased. But if they are done to be noticed by men (6:1), they are done self-righteously and hypocritically and are rejected by God. The difference is in purpose and motivation. When what we do is done in the right spirit and for the right purpose, it will almost inevitably be done in the right way (MacArthur, Matthew 1-7 Commentary, 357).
The second argument the new pastor confronted the elders with was when he said that their concept of sanctioned anonymous giving in the local church undermines needed accountability among the church members. God commands all believers in the church to give regularly, generously and even sacrificially (Rom 12:8, 13; 1 Cor 16:1-4; 2 Cor 8:2). All church members need to be held accountable to other members of the Body of Christ regarding fundamental biblical commands. And God has put elders and pastors as leaders in the church to oversee and shepherd the saints.
Giving In the Setting of Public Worship
Part of overseeing is managing the giving and the finances. Basic to shepherding is holding the saints accountable to obeying God’s imperatives. Giving to the church is an imperative. Interestingly, after about five years of the new pastor being at the church he noticed that the church giving was in continual decline and that the church was way over budget and could no longer pay many of their basic bills. It was a church of about 300 people.
The pastor insisted to the other elders that all the elders review the current giving habits of all their current members over the past fiscal year. After some resistance, the other elders agreed. Up to this point the elders never knew anything about any member’s pattern of giving. When the research was completed and the numbers were tallied, it turned out that the majority of the church members were not giving regularly and another large percentage were not giving to the church at all. Since that revelation, that church now regularly passes the offering plate during every church service, and more members are giving faithfully.
The apostles set the precedent of proper leadership in the local church regarding the method of giving. They believed the sheep needed to be held accountable for their giving. The apostles, who were elders and pastors in the first New Testament church, required regular public giving from their church members. When they collected money from the local church members it was not done anonymously or in secret. Giving to the church was part of the public act of worship. Luke tells us that the early church saints would bring their church offerings and lay the money at the apostles’ feet in a public setting (Acts 4:35, 37; 5:2). Everyone in the church could see who was giving and how much. Every local church should follow that model. Local church members should give to the church leadership with full transparency, as an act of worship (1 Cor 10:31).
The apostle Paul followed the same practice. He expected Christians in the local church to give with full transparency to their local leadership on a regular basis. He never commanded anonymous or secret giving. Paul commanded and practiced the very opposite: regular, generous, public giving in a corporate context (2 Cor 9:1-15).
Jesus also commended public giving in the corporate worship context. Note this famous account of the Widow’s Mite as Jesus and His apostles observed believers giving to God with full disclosure in a public setting:
And He sat down opposite the treasury, and began observing how the people were putting money into the treasury; and many rich people were putting in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which amount to a cent. Calling His disciples to Him, He said to them, “Truly I say to you, this poor widow put in more than all the contributors to the treasury; for they all put in out of their surplus, but she, out of her poverty, put in all she owned, all she had to live on” (Mark 12:41-44).
Jesus and His disciples were observing who was giving and even the exact amount. Jesus did not condemn this public act of giving. In fact, Jesus never commanded nor commended anonymous giving.
Peter and the eleven apostles, Paul, and Jesus were all following Old Testament patterns of giving, which was always done in a public manner, with full disclosure and high, visible accountability before the established leadership.
The Need for Accountability
Cain and Abel’s required giving in a worship context was public and the amount along with the content was fully disclosed (Gen 4:3-4; Heb 11:4). Abraham’s giving to the priest Melchizedek was public and the amount was fully disclosed (Gen 14:18-20). When Moses collected the offering to build the Tabernacle of Israel, the whole congregation was encouraged to participate and all the people gave to the leadership generously, publicly, and with full disclosure regarding the value and amount (Exod 35:1-24). Required sacrifices that were brought to the priests in the sacrificial system were considered acts of giving to God, and it was all very public, hidden from no one. Even the value of what was given was public knowledge. Rich people were to offer lambs. Poor people could offer pigeons (Lev 5:1-7). No giving was secret or anonymous. The prophet Malachi publicly rebuked the people for not being faithful givers and then called them to give the required amount that God commanded (Mal 3:10). Giving in the corporate assembly was not to be anonymous nor a secret.
Many more examples from the Old Testament could be given, all of which support the established principle of giving by the saints, namely that it be regular, generous, and not anonymous. Rather, giving among God’s people, from Genesis to the New Testament, is always directly given to God’s appointed leadership, whether it was to prophets, priests, and kings in the Old Testament, or apostles, elders, and pastors in the New Testament church.
Giving with transparency and openness to the church leadership assures personal accountability. Trusting God’s method takes faith. But those who give in faith, in keeping with God’s stated model will be blessed in return. That is God’s promise to every believer. Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). So, if you are believer, reflect on your habits of giving to make sure they are in keeping with the biblical pattern. And take particular note of your thoughts and practices in light of the popular mistaken notion out there, circulating in many Christian circles, that says secret, anonymous giving is God’s standard and more spiritual than giving with transparency to God’s undershepherds in the local church. That is the opposite of what God expects.
