I was in college when I read that Steve Jobs was returning to Apple and planned to offer computers in multiple colors.  Choice seemed like a good thing to me.  I bought some stock.  It split and grew.

I also worked for Sam’s Wholesale in college and learned that Walmart’s stock had just leveled out after plummeting.  I started participating in Walmart’s emplyee stock program.  Part of every paycheck was withheld and invested in company stock without any brokerage fees.

When I got married I worked for free at a music publishing company.  But my sugar-mamma wife was a well-paid auditor.  We decided to invest a fourth of her paycheck in her company’s investment program and other stocks and mutual funds.  We invested aggressively, took big risks, and they paid off much of the time.

Since then, we’ve not always saved and invested.  There have been months when I had no income coming in and no prospects for the next month, but when possible, when we’ve had more than enough, we’ve tucked it away in a savings account at the very least.  This has been handy.  In my first year as an artist I flipped down a bunny slop mountain and broke my hip.  We had to use all our savings to pay the bills and treat all the medical problems that lingered for years afterward.  When we built a house and then my career turned downward, we had to use savings to pay our mortgage some months.  And we’ve used savings to help people we come across who need more help than our checking account can give them.

But the more I see of the developing world, the more I’m uneasy with our investment strategy past and present, regardless of its usefulness from time to time.  These days, whatever we don’t use – to pay our bills and help out – currently goes into a savings account “just in case.” Some months that’s nothing.  Sometimes it’s an embarrassingly large amount.  That’s the music/blog/speaking business: Unpredictable.

When there’s more than a month’s income in savings (the longest I’ve been without work), I’m asking weird questions now like Why should I save for the future when people are dying in the present?  And guys like Francis Chan are getting to me too.

I’m in a battle – a skirmish really – between being practical/prepared and becoming what might just be more Jesus than I’m comfortable with. It’s too risky.  What if?

I know very few things for certain when it comes to money.  But I know that investing is not inherently evil.  And those who do it aren’t either.  But I also suspect that investing (especially above a certain dollar amount) isn’t often necessary – not if we take seriously what God has to say about church, community, family and retirement.  Oh, wait, retirement’s not in the bible.  Exactly my point. And investing comes with its own spiritual hazards, just as poverty does. 

I’m finding myself experimenting, praying a very scary prayer these days:

“Two things I ask of you, O LORD;

do not refuse me before I die:

Keep falsehood and lies far from me;

give me neither poverty nor riches,

but give me only my daily bread.

Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you

and say, ‘Who is the LORD ?’

Or I may become poor and steal,

and so dishonor the name of my God.

(Proverbs 30:7-9)

This post isn’t about erecting new laws for God’s people concerning money and generosity.  It’s about me being brought to an uncomfortable place at which I now face some cutting questions: Why is abandoning savings so frightening for me?  I don’t love money, so what is it I’m really afraid of losing if this prayer is answered?

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