Never in my life have I heard any preacher make the connection between The Lord’s Prayer and the manna from Heaven in Exodus, even though it’s quite obvious. I suspect this is for the same reason that I’ve never heard anyone take the Sermon on the Mount seriously. I don’t blame them, the teachings of Christ’s sermon are outrageous and defy all common sense, but it’s nonetheless obvious from where he’s getting some of them.
“Give us this day our daily bread.”
You aren’t supposed to save money. How’s that for a radical teaching? Yet, it’s hard to read the words of Jesus seriously and come away with any other meaning. You never find Jesus telling a parable that involves money and having the prudent saver being praised for his prudence. On the contrary, most of the time the fellow saving money goes to Hell.
Examples (I’m paraphrasing the parables here from memory):
“Once there was a man who saved grain and goods in his barns until they were full. After filling them, he said to himself, ‘There now. You have enough for many years. Rest and enjoy yourself.’
Fool! That very night his life was required of him.”
Another:
A master had three servants. He was going on a journey and put each of them in charge of an amount of money to be steward of in his absence. To the one he gave 10 coins, to another 5, and to the other one.
When he had gone, the servant with 10 invested it in the market, buying and selling and made 10 more. The servant with 5 did likewise, and made 5 more. But the wicked servant, knowing his master was a hard man who didn’t like loss, was afraid to invest his money and so hid it in a hole in the ground.
When the Master returned he looked kindly on the servants he’d given 5 and 10 coins to, but as for the one who hid his coin he said, ‘Throw him out into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
These are just a few examples. At no point does Jesus seem to find virtue in the saving of money.
One sees the same tendency against saving in The Lord’s Prayer. Christ instructs us not to ask that God give us a comfortable life of monetary security, but rather that, each day, every day, we wake up not really knowing where our food is going to come from, save that it’s going to come from God. Give us this day, our daily bread.
And, of course, Jesus is here pulling from the Old Testament, where the Israelites, in their wanderings through the desert received, each day, a meal of manna that fell from heaven. Literally bread, which tasted as though it had been made with honey, fell from the sky or materialized on the ground like dew each morning. There was a catch though. You couldn’t save any of it. If the Israelites tried to gather extra and save some manna for the future, it would rot overnight, and worms would grow in it. God had no intention of letting his people save their resources for the next day. They were, instead, to learn that every day their existence was from Him and Him alone. Saving is, after all, an illusion. There’s no actual security in it. “This very night his life was required of him.”
So it goes.
How many people today spend their whole lives saving for a retirement that never comes. Or, even if it does come, how much of their life did they squander saving for it. Not living, only hoarding. See, no matter what your savings rot. Either the money itself vanishes, through inflation, or stocks crashing, or real estate prices tanking; or your souls starts to turn sour. Do you imagine that God will not ask you one day why so many people around you were in need when you had so much stored up in your barns?
“Therefore I tell you, take no thought to tomorrow, for tomorrow will take thought for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil there of.”
You’re not supposed to “prepare”. You’re not supposed to “plan for your future.” One, how could you, you have no idea what the future holds. Two, by making your own plans you leave no room for God’s.
This is the part in the sermon where the preacher usually walks back his statements. “Well,” he will say, “we all know that you’ve got to be a good steward of what God’s given you, so some saving is good. But the broader point of what Jesus said is…”
Or something like that.
I’m not going to do that, if only because everybody else always does.
According to Jesus, you’re supposed to live each day, in the day, totally reliant on God, for you cannot serve two masters. Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Worldly attachment was only seen as preventing people from following Christ. I can’t come because I’ve just bought a field. I can’t come because I’ve got to meet a man at the market to sell a cow. And so on.
Lest I be a hypocrite, let me acknowledge that I don’t follow through on this either. I have some savings. Maybe I shouldn’t. Probably I shouldn’t. So look, I’m not telling you what to do with your finances because I also don’t follow Christ’s advice. I’m just saying, it’s interesting that everybody who saves money in Jesus’s stories is thrown into eternal fire.
That’s not something you really get from listening to Dave Ramsey.
Excellent points. I don't know your finances, but if you have a mortgage like me, it's likely your debt far exceeds whatever savings you have. I think some planning is implied (walking it back).
"Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.' " — Dave Ramsey