Day 38: Let's Wrestle with the Text and One Another!

Thank you for keeping me on track that today our focus is really to be on Proverbs chapter 10. With that said let’s take another look at verse four: “Lazy hands make a man poor, but diligent hands bring wealth.”

Let’s wrestle a little with the text and with one another’s perspective of the text. A number of your posts from yesterday share that it is your opinion that wealth is not for everyone. I beg to differ. If what you are saying is: Not everyone is wealthy and not everyone will become wealthy, I wholeheartedly agree. But, the text is sharing a principle of wealth-building: God created humanity with skills, gifts, and creativity in such a way that if they choose to become diligent and utilize these endowments, they can over time generate income for their families. In essence the text is saying: We all have been created with the POTENTIAL to make and accumulate wealth.

(Now, the text does not address, or is it meant to address in this specific citation, the known historic violations of human rights by one group upon another in the removal of their potential to have equal access to shelter, education, fresh drinking water, and financial opportunities as cited by the United Nations [cf. The Wealth and Poverty of Nations by David S. Landes].). My argument is not on the existence of systemic violations that affects wealth-building opportunities in many nations. My contention is that oftentimes a failed Christian view of the Bible and money is that “making money is not God’s will or that some have been specially graced by God to make money and others have not been.” To that claim, which I think some of yesterday’s posts intimate, I offer my contrary perspective, which was so well articulated by the famed minister who helped found Temple University, Russell H. Conwell. In his classic book that captured one of his most powerful and historic lectures in Philadelphia, Acres of Diamonds (p. 20-21), he shared my sentiments better than I ever could when he said:

“For a man to have money, even in large sum, is not an inconsistent thing. We preach against covetousness, and you know we do, in the pulpit, and oftentimes preach against it so long and use the terms about “filthy lucre: so extremely that Christians get the idea that when we stand in the pulpit we believe it is wicked for any man to have money—until the collection-basket goes around, and then we almost swear at the people because they don’t give more money. Oh, the inconsistency of such doctrines as that!

Money is power, and you ought to be reasonably ambitious to have it. You ought because you can do more good with it than you could without it. Money printed your Bible, money builds your churches, money sends your missionaries, and money pays your preachers, and you would not have many of them, either, if you did not pay them. I am always willing that my church should raise my salary, because the church that pays the largest salary always raises it the easiest. You never knew an exception to it in your life. The man who gets the largest salary can do the most good with the power that is furnished to him. Of course he can if his spirit be right to use it for what it is given to him.

I say, then, you ought to have money. If you can honestly attain unto riches in Philadelphia, it is our Christian and godly duty to do so. It is an awful mistake of these pious people to think you must be awfully poor in order to be pious.”

Armed with that perspective, how do you interpret Proverbs 10:4? Let’s hear your view!