It belongs to God; give it all back

Friday, Nov. 20, 2015

As we approach an election year, it seems that the economy and how our government handles the economy is on the minds of many. Presidential candidates debate their economic policies, often expressing divergent views. 

A common complaint is that the government seems to have forgotten that it has no money. The money it spends actually belongs to us, the people. Yet many believe that the government seems to forget whose money it is.  Irrespective of where one stands on the political scale, to the left or to the right, no doubt you have or have had issues with how the government spends your money.

As Christians, we need to be careful about making these kinds of accusations against our government, lest we expose a level of hypocrisy, often unrecognized by many.  Before we complain about the government squandering resources that in truth belong to someone else, we need to acknowledge that most of us are guilty of the same thing. That which we are spending as if it were our own belongs to God. Many Christians spend their time and money as if these actually belonged to us, all the while forgetting that if in fact we have given our lives to God, everything within that life belongs to Him. While those who are elected may answer to their constituents on Election Day, those of us who call ourselves Christians will have to give an account of how we used our resources at the end of our lives.

Stewardship, in every aspect of life, is central to being a faithful Catholic. People often protest after hearing a homily about money, but when Scripture speaks about stewardship, it addresses much more than money, it speaks to the entirety of our lives. Wise money management is simply one part of what it means to be a faithful steward. 

What is a steward? In the most simplistic terms a steward is a manager who administers that which belongs to someone else. If you own a business and hire an administrator to oversee the finances of that business, you have hired a steward. The money they manage is not theirs; they cannot spend it as they please.

If one is a follower of Jesus Christ, we realize that we are managers and what we have is not our own. We surrender our claim to that which we perceive as our own and give it to Christ. Now, according to our own acknowledgment, He owns it all. It is at His disposal to do with as He wills. 

There is not a moment of the day that is ours. Christ owns our mind, our thoughts, our attitudes, our opinions, our tongue – all of these are to be governed by the One who owns them and are to be used to further 

His kingdom. He owns our family, our spouse, our children, our job, our house, our clothes and our bank account. He literally owns it all and this ownership is to be tangibly acknowledged in the way each of these resources is used.

This is rarely the case. However, if we are going to grow in our spiritual life, if we are going to be conformed to the image of Christ, faithful stewardship must be addressed. It must be an area in which there is consistent growth. One cannot be a growing disciple of Jesus without coming to terms with the need to be growing in the area of stewardship.