Give generously, and do not let your heart be grieved when you give, because for this act the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all your endeavors.

Deuteronomy 15:10

Some years ago, Harold Bloom, one of the world’s preeminent literary scholars, authored a mammoth study of Williams Shakespeare’s plays entitled The Invention of the Human. Underlying his tour-de-force review of the Bard’s entire opus, Bloom’s primary thesis was that Shakespeare taught us how to think about ourselves in a conscious way that only Chaucer came near to rivaling. Although I had to admire Bloom’s energy and ingenuity, it was clear to me that his premise was, despite its boldness and erudition, fatally flawed. The idea that we weren’t fully aware of the depths of our human personalities until Hamlet came along to soliloquize about our existential conundrums falls apart under the weight of even a cursory reading of the biblical narrative. The quotation, above, from the Book of Deuteronomy stands as one simple but profound example.

What strikes me about the Lord’s admonition to his people is this keen insight into what happens to many (most?, all?) of us when we hear a call to generous giving, or perhaps to any kind of giving. The verse admonishes us to – as the Hebrew puts it – “give givingly” without being grieved. The root of the word “grieved” is ra’a, which has a wide connotation that includes evil, affliction, displeasure, or injury. It’s easy to give ’till it hurts when it often hurts just to think about giving. The other noteworthy aspect of the verse is its context, which is a set of instructions about the Jubilee and Sabbatical Years. Both of these events were designed to care for the poor, relieve debts, restore relationships, and – dare I say it – redistribute wealth. History tells us that the Israelites found God’s commandments to be truly grief-causing; during their millennia-long existence, the Jewish nation never did and never has observed either tradition.

So why is generosity sometimes or frequently a challenge for us, and what underlies our resistance? On the surface, answering the question is a fairly straightforward matter. The temptation to withhold who we are and what we possess arises from a faith deficit (unbelief) which leads to reluctance, rationalization, and sometimes refusal (disobedience). As it has been from the first rebellion in the Garden, our struggle to follow the Lord’s ways and counsel comes down to this simple construct of trusting and obeying.

Each of us confronts one or more of a particular species of the “unbelief that leads to a generosity deficit” syndrome. All humans suffer from a vulnerability where certain circumstances will expose our need for God’s gracious prodigality to intervene. As always, there are issues surrounding our self-knowledge and awareness that can plague us. So, before we go on, we have to ask ourselves whether we are willing to listen to the Spirit and to the counsel of others. If so, we will be more likely to find the underlying sin where God is providing grace for glorious liberty.

So what is it that literally bedevils us in our seeking to follow the Father’s good purpose of generous giving?

The meta-problem : Greed – Is God really enough? Will he provide enough? Will we ever have enough? These are questions at the bottom of the unbelief ladder. They reveal the most comprehensive enemy of generosity, greed. What exactly is greed? The Greek word has a strikingly simple connotation, which is to desire or amass more than we need. It’s this very simplicity that reveals the challenge. It leaves us at the mercy of the Holy Spirit and our relationship with him. It doesn’t allow us to take up a lazy, routinized posture that would mainly lead to sloppy sanctification.

What the biblical definition of greed means is that we have to listen to the still, small voice leading us into rest and surrender. For me, the call to generosity violates my conflicting impulses to fantasy idealism (I’m giving it all away, tomorrow) and self-indulgence (I’m spending it all on me, today). What these two warring tendencies uncover is that greed is all about myself. I want to look like the big man through conspicuous liberality or conspicuous consumption (or just plain consumption). Or perhaps I am looking to provide an unassailable safety and security net. Whatever its outward manifestations, greed always displays itself through identifiable symptoms.

Symptom #1: Fear – We’re afraid of losing our stuff. Or we won’t ever have enough stuff. Or the stuff we have won’t ever be enough for us. Any of these anxious thoughts betray our attachment to our largely unformed standards of what it means to have enough. The fundamental problem is that we have an issue with data sources. For example, the traditional secular view of retirement is that we need at least a million dollars saved on the day we cut our ties with “the Man” in order to live on a modest $40,000.00 per year. Paul’s counter is that “if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content” (1 Tim. 6:8).

Symptom #2: Legalism – Whenever we are dealing with commandments, moral precepts, or ethical principles, the ghosts of Phariseeism appear and seek to complicate our obedience. Legalism has two dimensions to its nature. The first is the inclination to establish rules that tell us how much we need to do in order to be “good enough.” The second is the temptation to spend time figuring out how little we can get away with for that same purpose of feeling OK about how we’re doing. These are two sides of the same coin. One is the ceiling approach, the other a floor analysis. Either way, the motivation is the self and our limiting standards instead of faith and grace that bring divine freedom to exceed our limitations.

Symptom #3: Justification – Christians sometimes struggle to grasp the difference between discernment and argument. Everyone needs to do the first: to ask questions about what God is doing and what he is calling us to do. We come to those questions with a Spirit-led and biblically-informed disposition to give an open hearted yes to the Father’s desire that we imitate his goodness. The second involves a predisposition to debate the issue in a way that limits that imitation. Argument, when it is most effective, uses positive sounding terms like prudence, reason, foresight, balance, and the like. Justification is the powerful servant of legalism.

So, for example, we all have faced the classic tithing dilemmas: Do we have to give on our gross or net income? Should we round up, or down? Does tuition at our children’s Christian school count? Is almsgiving part of tithing, or separate? Do we give, or do we lend? If we lend, is it at interest and with a strict expectation of return, or is it with Jesus’ admonition in mind that we do so without such expectations? Who is “worthy” of our largess and how do we measure worth?

The Cure – How do we escape the enemies of generosity? As in medicine, I think Gandhi’s old saw – diagnosis is three-fourths of the cure – applies well to our giving. In order to understand ourselves, we need diagnostic tools that go to the heart; that meet with an honest response; and that God himself is wielding in order to heal us. Our verse from Deuteronomy 15 provides one such tool: In what circumstances are we grieved when it’s time to give? There are others. For example, the Spirit can convict us of our defensive and justifying legalisms. He can show us how much we have over-complicated our giving. He can reveal our argumentative and fleshly caution that pass for discernment and prudence.

Above all, the Father can – if we will allow him to – convince us of his own character, and then imprint it on our hearts. The Scripture is unequivocal in its evocation of God’s nature. He is unstinting in goodness, mercy, and care for us. If such statements stir as much doubt as they do faith, I would make three simple recommendations: First, that we still our minds and reflect on all the ways the Lord has been generous in sustaining and providing for us. Second, that we meditate on the rich biblical content that declares the facts – Psalms 145 is an excellent starting point. And, third, that we ask for grace to do violence – through acts of purposeful giving – to whatever attitudes and constructs that hinder and blunt our generosity.

It is the Father’s good pleasure to give us the kingdom, and his equal pleasure to use us to give the kingdom to others.