Biblical Stewardship: The Original Contract

By: Brian Seay, CFA

What does the Bible say about Money, Wealth and Investing?

When I started Capital Stewards, I knew that I wanted the firm to be based on the biblical concept of stewardship. I wanted to be a good steward of the resources that clients entrust us with to manage. But what does that mean?

I’ve been a Christian a long time and there has been a lot of teaching about money over the years. In my view, some of that is true, right and consistent with the Bible. In other cases, some of what I’ll call the Christian “cultural conversation” about money has been, in my view, inconsistent with what God is prescribing in scripture. Some of what we think are “Christian things to do with money” aren’t really based on the book that tells us how to be a Christian.

That’s not surprising given the complex and often contradictory nature of the topic. How do you balance enjoying God’s creation with the falsehood of the prosperity Gospel? The prosperity gospel says that says by simply obeying God, he will make you “rich,” we know that not to be the case. How do you provide for your family while still being generous? Should you borrow money to build wealth, or is debt sinful and bad? The list of questions goes on.

So I wanted to start over, go back to the beginning, and take a hard look at what the Bible really says about money, stuff, wealth, resources, generosity, investing and a number of other topics. It does, in fact, have quite a lot to say on the topic, even if we prefer to ignore it. This blog post series is my reflections on this journey through scripture.

The Original Financial Contract:

Perhaps I’m the only person that feels this way, but sometimes I wonder if it is ok to have money. Should Christians take a vow of poverty? Shouldn’t we be generous with our resources?

The answer is not necessarily, and yes. Yes, we should be generous, I’ll cover that later. But we aren’t supposed to be wallowing in our suffering in God’s creation. Life is supposed to be full of joy and goodness. Suffering and bad things happen in a sinful world, lets get that out of the way. But God intended for us to live a life that is full of his blessings…when we live a life that is full of worship and obedience.  

In Genesis 1, God created the universe and everything in it. Each day, he makes a different portion of the universe (you’ll have to go elsewhere on how all that works 😊). And on each day, the created stuff is good! At the end of the chapter, God gives humans control over all the creation. In Genesis 2, we know that the garden where Adam and Eve live, in a place known as Eden, has rivers and land full of gold and jewels. The garden, its fruits, gold and jewels can’t be inherently bad. God made them, and everything he made was good. You can probably see where I’m going, there is nothing inherently bad about gold, money or anything else in the created world.

So God makes the world, a lush garden full of good stuff and puts mankind in the garden and says it is yours to control, there is just one catch. You worship and obey me. Enjoy everything else, but don’t eat from that tree knowledge. You probably know how the story unfolds. In the next chapter, man eats from the tree and sin enters the world.

The focus on enjoying the blessing of the Earth while walking in obedience to God is reaffirmed in the story of Noah. After the flood, God again blesses his family with control over the earth and all its living things. Man’s great “do-over.” It didn’t last long.

The Israelites subsequently lose their land and are held captive in Egypt. The simple contract between God and man is affirmed a third time in Deuteronomy 30:16. “If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God[a] that I command you today, by loving the Lord your God, by walking in his ways, and by keeping his commandments and his statutes and his rules,[b] then you shall live and multiply, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land that you are entering to take possession of it.”

Fairly simple. God made good stuff, we are here to obey and worship God, and we get to enjoy his creation. So, if you are walking in obedience to God, and worshipping God, then he wants you to enjoy his creation! That’s the original design intent for the world. In the modern era, we don’t often barter directly with animals and farm our own food, but we use our money to buy the things that sustain us physically and bring us happiness in life. This is all good and intended to bring us joy.

Obviously, there are lots of ways to worship God and be obedient to his commands in scripture. As I go forward, I’ll talk about how we can worship and be obedient with our money and resources. But we need to start with the basic idea that God intended for us to walk with him and in-turn, experience flourishing and blessing. That’s the point of creation.