Bernard L. Madoff was sent to jail Thursday after confessing to one of the largest financial frauds in history, telling a courtroom filled with people he cheated that he was “sorry and ashamed” for bilking so many out of their life savings. One can only imagine the betrayal of trust and the agony felt by Madoff’s victims.
In my conversations around Holy Comforter, I hear the anxiety, anger, and betrayal that many are feeling over the sheer greed and irresponsibility that lies at the root of our current economic crisis. Warren Buffett expressed it well in a recent interview, “The people who behave well, are no doubt going to find themselves taking care of the people who didn’t behave so well.”
Without trust, not much in the human journey can survive. It is trust that allows us to grow, to face challenges, to become our deepest and truest selves. So how do we live when when trust is violated? Where do we turn when confidence is shaken?
The Christian faith is rooted in a fundamental trust, a placing of confidence in the love, faithfulness, and abundance of the God who has given us our unique lives in this world. The economic downturn offers each of us a renewed choice to step back from the mind-set of fear and scarcity and recover the truth of sufficiency. Sufficiency isn’t a measure of enough or not enough – in fact it is not an amount at all. It is a mindset based on prior experience, a declaration, a knowing that there is enough, and that we are enough. St. Paul captures the truth of sufficiency in his Letter to the Philippians:
I have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me (Phil. 4:11-13).
Paul suggests that his confidence in God has generated for him a completely new relationship with life and with everything money can buy. When we let go of the mindset of scarcity, of chasing after what we have lost, we are free to take that energy and attention and invest it in what we do have. Such a gentle and persistent effort (and I am not implying this is easy) may help us discover unimagined treasures of a kind, “where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal” (Matt. 6:20).
When trust is violated, we keep going forward with life. God’s grace inspires us to do so. The truth of sufficiency is a place to begin.
P.S. A helpful book I’m reading that has inspired new thoughts about sufficiency and rethinking our relationship with money is Lynne Twist’s, “The Soul of Money – Reclaiming the Wealth of our Inner Resources.” While not written from an explicitly Christian perspective, it echoes the teachings of Jesus in relevant and contemporary ways. He is the master on this subject!
