Two Bottom Lines

Two Bottom Lines
#2 in “PRAXIS: Disciplines of Faith and Action”
1 Timothy 6.2b-19
Dr. D. William McIvor
September 14, 2003
Presbyterian Church in Sudbury

Last week I mentioned that the word praxis is meant to describe the unity of our faith and action. Christians have often emphasized one over the other but less often has equal emphasis been placed on both. Praxis helps remedy this. Faith and action must always go together and without one the other is diminished.

For guidance in our praxis we are turning to that portion of the New Testament known as the Pastoral Letters: 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus. These appear to be personal letters from the apostle Paul to two trusted, younger colleagues. As Paul nears the end of his ministry he writes to offer practical advice for their own ministries.

You should know that there is a loud debate whether Paul actually wrote these letters or whether someone else wrote them in his name. Today we would call that deceptive and unacceptable but in ancient literature it was actually quite common. One of the reasons we think Paul may not have written the Pastorals is that his doing so would require an additional period in his life about which we have no information at all. Our best history of the New Testament period is the Book of Acts which ends with Paul under house arrest in Rome. We have no evidence that he ever escaped that situation but his writing the Pastorals would require his having done so. In biblical studies it is one of those unsolvable mystery stories . We just don’t have all the necessary clues. But whether or not Paul wrote the Pastorals they are still chock full of practical advice for Christian living. We could even call these letters “praxis primers.”

If you’ve been reading on your own these praxis primers, as I’ve encouraged you to do, you will have noticed that the Pastorals are often quite blunt. Paul or whoever wrote them pulled no punches when he talked about faith and action. We saw that last week in the discussion about our attitudes. We’ll see it next week in the discussion about prayer. And we’ll see it particularly today as we talk about money. The writer of 1 Timothy distinguishes between two different persons. One is materially-minded and the other is spiritually-minded. Timothy is urged to make sure he knows and teaches the difference. To put it bluntly, does a person think about money first or God first? That’s the issue for us this morning. Let’s read it in 1 Timothy 6.

Teach and urge these duties. Whoever teaches otherwise and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that is in accordance with godliness, is conceited, understanding nothing, and has a morbid craving for controversy and for disputes about words. From these come envy, dissension, slander, base suspicions, and wrangling among those who are depraved in mind and bereft of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain. Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it; but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains.

But as for you, man of God, shun all this; pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, gentleness. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life, to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses. In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the right time — he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords. It is he alone who has immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no one has ever seen or can see; to him be honor and eternal dominion. Amen.

As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life.

There was a television show I used to like in Spokane called “Sunday Evening.” It was locally produced, generally well done, and mostly got good ratings. Often it had a 31 share which means that 31% of the television sets in the Spokane market that were turned on were tuned in to this particular program. But it wasn’t on very long before it was canceled. One person commented that as good as “Sunday Evening” was, all commercial stations need to look at budgets and bottom lines.

That’s what caught my attention. Budgets and bottom lines. “Sunday Evening” was expensive to produce and was only recovering two-thirds of its cost. So even though it was popular it didn’t make it. Things may have great value, but if the bottom line isn’t good, value may not matter. The text says there is a difference between the materially-minded person and the spiritually-minded person. The story of “Sunday Evening” says the same thing in another way. There is a difference between the value of something and its bottom line.

We need to be aware of this difference if we want to think intelligently and faithfully about money and our Christian lives. The author of the text seems to be especially suspicious of money. He tells us that there can be great gain in godliness, if we are content. But when we are not content with what we have, we will pursue material things more than godliness. Then we are in for all sorts of trouble.[1]

But as we talk about money today, I want to avoid a stark contrast between the material and the spiritual. I want to say that the Christian life is not an either/or. To think of our praxis is to think of unity, not spiritual or material but spiritual and material. So in my two points today, I will say that there are, in fact, two bottom lines.

First, there is a necessary spiritual bottom line. This may seem odd at first because we usually think of bottom lines only in relation to that which is material and measurable. But the text suggests that there really is a spiritual bottom line by which we measure our lives. The spiritual bottom line is whether we are fighting the good fight of faith.[2] Here’s what that means.

Some years ago I saw a video of Dr. James Dobson talking about money. I’m not the biggest Dobson fan but I’ve always remembered what he said about money and I think it’s quite good. He began by saying how interesting it is when our children discover some of the same things we knew when we were kids. So a few years ago the Dobsons’ teenaged daughter came home one day and said, “Hey, Dad! There’s this new game called Monopoly™. Do you want to play it?” So the family sat down to this “new” game.

Dobson said he hadn’t played Monopoly for over 30 years but once he started all of the old competitive urges came right back. It wasn’t long before he had Boardwalk and Park Place, Illinois, Indiana, and Kentucky, New York, Tennessee, and St. James. He even had Mediterranean and Baltic! Before long his property had the familiar green houses which soon gave way to the big red hotels. Dobson had extra cash stuffed everywhere. $500 bills were even in his socks. $100 bills were in his pocket. Almost literally he had Monopoly™ money coming out his ears.

His son was first to go broke and headed off to bed. A few moments later his daughter and wife also went bankrupt. In quick succession they hit a couple of his hotels and that was it. The game was over. Jim Dobson had won big. All the money and property were his. His family was not impressed by this and they made him put it away while they went off to bed.

So he started to pick up the game and everything went back in the box. Every last piece of property, every house, every hotel, every last dollar he had played so hard to get and hoard went back in the box. And Jim Dobson sat there all alone in the midst of his great monopoly and became aware of how empty he felt inside.

That’s when he felt God was saying something to him. Here’s what God seemed to say. “Jim, what is happening to you right now is not about Monopoly™. It’s about life so pay attention. Life is just like what you’ve experienced. When it ends everything goes back in the box. It doesn’t matter how rich you are.”

It all goes back in the box. Of course, that’s what the writer meant when he said “for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it.” We have to measure the things of God or how much God is in our lives by a spiritual bottom line. The material bottom lines of life will not do. For no matter how much we may deny it there is in life a necessary spiritual bottom line.

But my second point is that there is also a necessary material bottom line. If we stop with just the spiritual, as many Christians do, we end up with half a gospel. We end up with God against material things, against the very material world God made and pronounced good. The world would have us believe that we can only evaluate things materially but a lot of Christians would have us believe that there is only a spiritual bottom line. In the unity of praxis, I want to state emphatically that there are both. There is a necessary spiritual bottom line but there is also a necessary material bottom line.

The reason is obvious. We do not and cannot live in a purely spiritual existence. God did not make us that way. We live in a real, material world, a world where there is a need for food and shelter and clothing, a world where there is wealth and poverty, legalities and obligations, and things necessarily measured by a material bottom line. We cannot measure things only spiritually. We need the material, too. Run your checking account into the red and you will not get very far at the bank by saying you’re a Christian and that you live by a different bottom line. The banker and, if you persist, eventually the judge will tell you that’s wonderful but you can be a Christian behind bars and talk of your other bottom line to the people there. We cannot escape the necessities of a material world nor should we try.

But here’s the key. There is always, related to the material, something intangible. We measure things by a material bottom line but there is almost always some other value attached to it. For example, I remember talking to a member of my first church whose home was completely destroyed by fire not long before I met her. She told me the things she missed most were not furniture, dishes, silverware, clothing, or things like that. What she really missed were things like wedding and baby pictures, trinkets that had some personal memory associated with them, and special gifts that recalled for her special friendships. Most material things could be replaced. Some material things could not be replaced and the ones most dear to her were the material things that had the highest spiritual or personal value. You see, certain material things are not opposed to the spiritual. In fact, they are the means by which the spiritual becomes real to us.

The story is told that at the height of his career Pablo Picasso was sent a check for $1,000, asking in return a bit of minor advice. Obviously whoever sent the check cared not at all for the advice but simply wanted to have the great painter’s autograph when the endorsed check was returned. Of course, Picasso figured out the game and in one sense refused to play. He didn’t cash the check but instead simply returned it. Before returning it, however, he sketched on the back of it a quick picture of the Devil. Maybe that was his way of saying the love of money is the root of all evil. We don’t know. Picasso wasn’t noted for Christian belief. Of course, his sketch on the back made the check worth many times the amount it was written for and I’m sure the artist chuckled about the irony of that.

The point is that because of his reputation the material things Picasso touched or made achieved a worth many times their cost. With a few dollars of oil and canvass he could create something material that had a value of hundreds of thousands and eventually millions of dollars. Oftentimes the material can only be measured by the non-material value attached to it.

And so we come to this. When we spend money, something happens having to do with more than money. When Picasso drew on the back of a check he endorsed it with a value far beyond the worth of the check itself. Does what we do with our money give it a greater value than the money itself? In other words, can we measure our necessary material bottom line with an equally necessary spiritual bottom line?

Answering that question is never easy. It isn’t easy for me and it’s not easy for you. But the Bible never lets us off the hook. How we go about our praxis with money, how we bring the material and the spiritual together, is critically important.

Many years ago Merrie and I along with our daughter Kristen and son David were on vacation. We were at the Wharf in San Francisco, standing outside a restaurant and wondering if we should eat there. Unseen by us, a small group of men was coming up behind us, planning to enter the restaurant. Just as these men got to us we all happened to turn around and Merrie was quite literally face to face with Muhammad Ali and his entourage.

What happened next has entered into the lore of our family. For Merrie reached for the boxer’s hand, which he did not extend, and said in a voice everyone could hear, “Muhammad, Muhammad, it’s so good to see you!”

The thing I remember most about that experience is the look on Ali’s face. For here he was confronted not by Sonny Liston, Joe Frazier, or George Foreman trying to beat his brains out but by a crazy white woman he had never met before. It still makes us chuckle and when we’re all together and Merrie says something goofy, which she is sometimes wont to do, one of us is likely to tease her by exclaiming, “Muhammad, Muhammad, it’s so good to see you!” Then we all just laugh and laugh.

Muhammad Ali was once asked to name the greatest lesson he learned in life. He thought for a moment and then told the story of the heavyweight title fight against Sonny Liston in 1964.

“Liston was the strongest man I’d ever fought,” Ali said. “Every time I hit him, it hurt me worse than it did him. I gave him everything I had. When the sixth round ended, I was completely spent. I couldn’t even raise my arms. I couldn’t even stand up to go back into the ring. ‘I’m goin’ home!’ I told Angelo Dundee. ‘I’m not going back in there!’“

Hearing this, Dundee demanded that Ali get ready to go in. Ali refused. The bell rang, and still Ali didn’t leave his seat. His trainer pushed him and shouted, “Get in there and don’t come out until you’re the heavyweight champion of the world.”

So Ali struggled to his feet. Liston didn’t. So the fight ended and Muhammad Ali, then still called Cassius Clay, was the new heavyweight champion of the world.

“The greatest lesson I’ve learned,” Ali said, “is to have someone pushin’ you and makin’ you do things you don’t think you can do.”[3]

We may think we can’t get the praxis of money right. We may think we can just go home and sit this one out. But the text is our Angelo Dundee and it says, “Get out there. Fight the good fight of the faith; take hold of the eternal life.” Bring the material and the spiritual together. That is the praxis, the unity of faith and action, to which we are called as disciples of Jesus Christ.

[1] Charles B. Cousar, Beverly R. Gaventa, J. Clinton McCann, Jr., James D. Newsome, Texts For Preaching, Year C (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox, 1994) 531. “The teachings regarding contentment are stock features of Greco-Roman moral philosophy, particularly of the Cynics and Stoics, for whom being ‘content’ with as little as possible was regarded as a virtue. In fact, virtually every line in this discussion about wealth (vs. 6–10) may be found in the moral writings of the day. Many moral and religious traditions recognize the destructive force of the pursuit of money, even if they are less successful in actually helping people to control that force! For the author of the pastorals, of course, there is a particular danger to Christians, since the pursuit of wealth leads some to fall ‘away from the faith’ (v. 10).”

[2] Cousar, 531. “Certainly the stance of this direct address is positive, even aggressive. As a ‘man of God’ (note that the Greek is anthro-pos or ‘person,’ as distinct from ‘male’), Timothy is one commissioned to a specific task (see, for example, Deut. 33:1; 1 Sam. 9:6–10; 1 Kings 17:18). In the performance of that task, he is to ‘pursue,’ to ‘fight,’ to ‘take hold of.’ The language here represents the life of faithfulness as a forceful and vigorous engagement in the pursuit of the good.”

[3] Stan Purdum, ed., “The Habit Whisperer,” Homiletics 10.4 (1998): 36.