When “trusting God” is just an excuse to be lazy
You’ll see it in many evangelical churches — people with their hands raised to surrender their lives to God’s will. While for some this is a gesture of surrender toward goodness, it can also be a gesture of adopting helplessness.
Sometimes “God will provide” just means “I don’t feel like trying.”
That was certainly the case for me. When it came to my future (career, finances), I was taught by example to trust God over learning how life works and preparing for that. Yet I somehow deep-down must have known this idea was foolhardy. For example, although I had no sense of how much any given job would pay or how much rent cost (nor any particular interest in learning), I also didn’t trust God to wipe my anus after I went to the bathroom. I didn’t trust God to protect me from a car accident — or at least, I didn’t trust him enough to go without a seatbelt. (See also: the untimely death of Rich Mullins. 😬)
As I reached my mid-20’s, my mistake started to dawn on me. Broke and living in cockroach infested apartments, I started to ask myself whether I might have looked at this all wrong. What if I stopped waiting for a miracle and instead took responsibility for my own situation?
A friend and I had a falling out over this recently. She isn’t where she wants to be in life. But she insists that she’s right where God wants her: God is planning her future. She is trusting Him instead of taking action. What, I asked her, about the thousands of kids in Yemen who will starve today. Is God planning their future, or should we try to help?
I’m not unique in my lack of preparation, and I can’t blame it on my religion. Most people, Christians or not, haven’t even done basic financial work — only one in three American households has a budget. Using God to justify this laziness is a pretty sad reflection on what faith means to us, though.
Newflash: You’re living in an extended childhood. Take out your pacifier. It’s time to wake up.
Over-spiritualizing finances is just a way of whitewashing over a few self-centered fallacies:
Mis-interpreting Biblical passages. You have interpreted the Bible through an individualist lens, as if each word were intended for you personally instead of for groups of people.
The specific scriptures I used to justify lack of preparation (“I know the plans I have for you”, “Do not worry about tomorrow…”) were not actually a blanket promise spoken to me personally in my giant suburban house. They were spoken to groups of people within a specific historical context.
Let’s say the individualist lens is justified — what about passages that specifically condemn lack of financial planning, such as the Parable of the Talents?
Belief that God is at your beck and call to fix your problems. If God is really your master and not your servant, you’ve got to do some stuff yourself.
Nazi resistor and ardent Christian Dietrich Bonhoeffer would call this “cheap grace” — taking advantage of God’s favor for selfish reasons instead of truly appreciating it.
God gave you hands for a reason. Use them.
Ceding agency over your life in the name of “childlike faith.”
Newflash: You’re living in an extended childhood. Take out your pacifier. It’s time to wake up.
Ignoring the reality that “God”’s provision is usually just other people’s compassion. They feel bad for the mess you’ve landed yourself in.
I can’t tell you how many pastors and missionaries I know who spent their lives relying on God’s providence for the future — and are now living off their kids’ generosity and public assistance. If we really want to get people off government benefits, let’s start with some basic education around adulting.
Many “trusting God”-brand Christians also benefit from bankruptcy laws and don’t feel bad because it must have been God’s will. But bankruptcy is supposed to exist for extreme circumstances, not for people who didn’t feel like taking care of themselves. The inconvenient truth is that “bankruptcy” just means “everyone else pays off your debt via bank fees.”
Fast-forward 10 years from when I started to take responsibility for my life. I now belong to a group of frugal people who call ourselves “Mustachians” — mustache, because we are “growing” our financial skills.
Sometime in our adult lives, we realized that all our financial stress was unnecessary. We’d been sweating our finances not because we lacked money, but because we were living a highly privileged lifestyle, insisting on luxuries no one in history would ever have dreamed of. We were behaving like spoiled children instead of responsible adults.
Mustachians combine frugal living with wise investing to create stable financial futures for ourselves and our kids.
We ride bikes when possible. We buy less meat and eat more beans, eggs, grains. We host game nights instead of nights at the movies.
Mustachians outsource less. We learn household skills like cooking delicious food, plumbing, mending our own clothes, resurrecting old furniture. As Mr. Money Mustache quips, “I’d do my own heart surgery if it were safe.”
Imagine if God were truly controlling your financial future. It might not be the future you’d envisioned.
You might wake up tomorrow to find your brand new Ford Explorer replaced with a very functional used bike.
You might find your Honey Nut Cheerios replaced with oatmeal ($.69 / lb in bulk!!), and that expensive living room set returned.
You might even wake up in an apartment in an affordable part of town — a neighborhood where not everyone looks like you.
🙀
I’m not close-minded to the idea that God could provide for my future. If you wake up tomorrow and God has miraculously created a budget for you, please contact me. I’ll immediately shut down this blog and join your church.
In the meantime, I work hard. I polish my own shoes. I pore over my budget spreadsheets each month, reading glasses at the ready.
I guess for now, I plan to keep pulling up my own pants.