As Challenge students in Classical Conversations progress through their academic journey, they’re not just developing analytical thinking skills and a robust knowledge base. They’re also approaching a pivotal time in their lives where practical life skills become increasingly important. Among these crucial skills is financial literacy, particularly from a biblical perspective.
Why is this relevant to Challenge students? As they begin to take on part-time jobs, receive allowances, or consider future career paths, understanding how to manage money wisely becomes essential. The principles of biblical financial literacy will help shape their attitudes towards wealth and guide their financial decisions as they transition into adulthood. By learning these concepts early, Challenge students can develop sound financial habits rooted in biblical wisdom, preparing them for the financial responsibilities and choices they’ll face in college and beyond.
In this blog post, Dr. John Thornton, an expert in accounting ethics and author of Jesus’ Terrible Financial Advice, shares valuable insights on the biblical perspective of wealth management. His teachings offer a unique blend of practical financial advice and spiritual wisdom that can benefit Challenge students as they begin to navigate the complex world of personal finance.
The Best Use of Wealth: Biblical Financial Principles
Quickly skim through the “Red Letter” section of the Bible and you’ll find that Jesus has much to say about wealth. Yet there is only one place where he tells us the best use of wealth. In an odd and confusing little parable, the Parable of the Shrewd Manager, Jesus speaks of an owner who commends the shrewdness of the manager who just defrauded him. What had the “shrewd” manager done? He gave his master’s creditors considerable reductions in their debt so they would welcome him into their homes when he was fired.
After Jesus chides his followers for not being as shrewd in accomplishing his purposes as the world is at accomplishing theirs, he gives us the best use of money: “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings” (Luke 16:9).
Use Wealth to Gain Friends for Yourselves
If you’re like most people I talk to, Jesus’ exhortation to “use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves” strikes you as just plain wrong. It rings shallow at best and completely misguided at worst. Doesn’t everybody know you can’t buy friends? At least not real ones!
Using wealth to gain friends for yourselves sounds like Andrew Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People – one of the bestselling self-help books of all time, but widely panned by critics as a tool for insincere “friends” to separate you from your money. History is littered with people who have foolishly wasted their money on false friends who departed as quickly as the wealth did. Hence the well-known expression, “The fool and his money are soon parted.”
Even Jesus’ own Parable of the Prodigal Son exposes the pitfalls of someone left wanting after wasting his inheritance on wild living. Had Jesus forgotten that lesson when he urged his disciples to use worldly wealth to gain friends? Of course not!
The Heart of the Father
It is no coincidence that Jesus’ Parable of the Shrewd Manager comes directly after the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). Everyone was flocking to see Jesus, and the Pharisees and the teachers of the law leveled this criticism against him: “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them” (Luke 15:2).
In response, Jesus gave three parables—the Parable of the Lost Sheep, Lost Coin, and Lost (or Prodigal) Son—all of which culminate with the common theme of a celebration, in heaven and on earth, when that which was lost is found.
So, too, with the prodigal son. When the humbled, starving young son comes to his senses, he returns home, intent on begging for forgiveness and a place with the hired servants.
“But he was still a long way off; his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him, and kissed him.” The lost son’s plea for forgiveness was drowned out by his father’s lavish reception, complete with “the best robe, … a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate” (Luke 15:21,23).
I would have ended the parable right there. But Jesus didn’t. He brought the other brother into this story. The older brother is anything but pleased that his slacker sibling has crawled back to the fold. Despite his Father’s pleas, the older son reviles his little brother as underserving—certainly not worth wasting any more of the family’s wealth to welcome him back.
Jesus contrasts the beautiful picture of a father’s love for his lost son against the disgruntled son’s response because he wanted the Pharisees and teachers of the law to see what mattered to God. Lost people being found. Dead people brought back to life.
The real question Jesus is asking is: Will you have the heart of the Father? Or of the other brother?
The Gaining Friends Test
So how can you use your worldly wealth “to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings”?
Ask yourself this simple question whenever you use your wealth. “Will this make a friend?”
When you use your wealth to love others as God loved you and give Him the glory instead of taking it for yourself, you simultaneously fulfill the Great Commandment and the Great Commission. You make friends forever.
