Money Matters

Faith, Life, and Wealth

R. Paul Stevens, Clive Lim

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781467461962
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

A guide to investing in heaven and being "rich toward God"

Christians often hesitate to talk about money in spiritual contexts, but in the gospels Jesus talks more about money than about "religious" topics like prayer and heaven. Money Matters advocates following Jesus's lead in engaging with matters of economy and finance in a faith-driven way, in both our individual and our corporate lives. The authors draw on their contrasting life experiences to offer a well-rounded look at money in the twenty-first century. Paul Stevens, who grew up well-off in Canada and worked as a carpenter, a banker, and later a pastor and professor of theology, finds a complementary voice in Clive Lim, who grew up without money in Singapore, and now works there as an entrepreneur and head of a family investment firm. With frequent scriptural references, Stevens and Lim offer insight into navigating the economic systems of today, aiming to help individuals, churches, and societies become faithful stewards who store up "treasures in heaven" by investing in the kingdom of God.

Money Matters is a comprehensive yet accessible guide to integrating one's faith with one's approach to money. Just as the Bible variously treats money as a blessing, a sacrament, and a problem, so do Stevens and Lim approach this matter judiciously—avoiding the prosperity gospel on one side and the demonization of material wealth on the other. Capitalism is treated as what it is: a system that has created widespread opportunity and relieved poverty for millions while also exacerbating the gap between the haves and the have-nots. The authors' wisdom is at turns theological, historical, and practical—and always focused on what it means to live with faithful integrity in our contemporary global economy.

1

Growing Up without Money—Clive’s Story

To study money is to study a very large part of what we are.

Jacob Needleman¹

I was trying to sleep, but the urgency of my parents’ voices kept me alert. In the dark of the bedroom, my three other siblings were breathing deeply and evenly, sound asleep. I thought, I must stay awake. My parents’ voices were desperate. Something must be wrong. As I listened intently, I realized they were talking about money—once again—about paying some outstanding bills. My parents kept their money struggles from us, but their anxiety about the lack of money always seemed to crop up in their conversations.

The night air in our tiny room was heavy with tension. How was a child supposed to help his parents with their financial burdens? My parents never directly shared with us children their struggles with money, difficulties that frequently erupted into quarrels. So as a child I would lie in bed and fantasize about money. I dreamed of buying the candies and chocolates I saw on television advertisements. But most urgently I fantasized that my parents would stop quarrelling and my father would not have to work every day so he could spend more time at home with us. I imagined my pockets were filled with a thick wad of currency. In my fantasy I felt safe and gradually drifted into a quiet sleep.

Growing Up in Singapore—the Family Background

Life in post-colonial Singapore in the early 1960s was hard. Crimes were rife, and labor and racial disputes sometimes erupted into riots during which buildings and possessions were burned. Jobs were scarce, and many who did work were not compensated fairly or their salaries were delayed. And they did not dare dispute with unscrupulous bosses for fear of losing their jobs. My father worked for more than a decade as a clerk in a restaurant and lost all his pension when his employer fled Singapore, leaving a mountain of unpaid debts. Dad was an honest and hardworking man. He worked tirelessly seven days a week. But eventually he was stricken with tuberculosis.

My parents were the children of South China’s migrants and grew up during the Second World War’s Japanese occupation of Singapore. My father had a few years of schooling and toiled in menial jobs most of his life to provide for the family. Dad never had a stable job long enough to afford a home. Our family rented a poorly built government apartment that was our only home for the first thirty years of my life. There were two bedrooms, but to supplement the family income, my parents rented out one of the rooms. All six of us—my parents, my three siblings, and I—lived and slept in one room until we children were in our teens. In that cramped situation we were always fighting for space and marking out which corners belonged to whom.

We had enough to eat every day but it was all my parents could afford. Money for education and medical treatments was borrowed from reluctant friends and families, who were themselves struggling financially. In spite of our limited resources, my father was a generous person, always sharing with relatives who were in even deeper financial straits. Chinese New Year is a big event for all Chinese families around the world. For us it was a treat to expect new clothes, shoes, and better food. The best meals were prepared for us to eat together as a family. I later realized that this was a financial burden for my parents as they scraped together enough money to buy new clothes and provisions. Many families accumulated debt in order to obtain these gifts, but they did it to ensure that the coming year would be auspicious.

Life was very different for my mother during her childhood. She grew up in a sizable home in Singapore that housed three generations. They were a business family and owned large tracts of land, the equivalent of a small modern-day supermarket, a food manufacturing business, and a farm. As a child, my mother had her own personal maid. But at the age of nine, her whole life radically changed. As the Japanese Imperial soldiers marched into Singapore in early 1942, the local residents reacted in fear and started rioting. The supermarket was raided, all the provisions and stocks were looted, and the premises were wrecked. The food business and the land were confiscated by the occupying Japanese forces. A family business that was built over two generations disappeared, never to be resurrected. Within weeks of the Japanese occupation, the family’s businesses were gone and a new life of hardship began for my mother’s family.

My maternal grandfather and grandmother were versatile and adjusted to a new way of life as farmers. Eventually, however, even the family home and farm were repossessed by the new independent government, and my grandparents were reduced to subsistence farming on a small plot of land beside a cemetery. As young children, my siblings and I would play in that cemetery, using the tombstones as cover for our games of hide and seek. When I became a teenager, I earned pocket money during the weekends by helping my grandfather collect leftover food from the surrounding residences and bringing it to the farm. Over a big fire and huge wok, the leftovers were recooked as food for the pigs and chickens that my maternal grandparents were raising. That pattern of hardship continued in my father’s life.

Life for my dad was always hard. As a child, he lost his father, and both his sisters died from heart disease in their early adult lives. My paternal grandparents were migrants from South China and came to Singapore as farmers to operate a small plot of ground as a vegetable farm. Dad left school after my grandfather died from a tropical illness, and Dad started working when he was barely a teenager. Though he had a few years of schooling, for several decades my father fondly kept a box of books he planned to read. But as a young man he was tragically hit by a military truck and lost part of his hearing. He never fully regained his health. He was diligent and eager to work every day but frequently found himself without work when the businesses he worked for had their mortgages foreclosed or voluntarily shut down. Life was easier when we children started working, but eventually my father succumbed to illness after turning seventy years old.

Study Hard and Earn Lots of Money

“Without money you are nothing.” My parents frequently drilled this into me as a child. My financially stricken parents wanted a better life for me. The only way out of their endless toil, they thought, was to gain the ability to earn more money. Their advice was simple: you need to study hard to earn lots of money. Unfortunately, education among the millions of struggling Chinese diaspora was never a quest for knowledge for the betterment of oneself but a means of social elevation and survival. For thousands of years, Chinese society has been highly hierarchical and stratified. The only means of social elevation was by way of scholastic examinations. Top scholars were rewarded with juicy civil service jobs. This is still the practice in contemporary Singapore, where students are selected during high school to be placed in a scholastic program that will lead to plum civil service jobs.

So you can see how my sense of identity and well-being is enmeshed with money. For my family, money is indeed the answer to everything! Money is the hope of a better life. So in the eyes of our family and culture, being a good man equals being a good provider. An honest husband and father who struggles to provide for his family is somehow a lesser person than a rich husband and father who provides abundantly, even though he may have multiple wives. Money gives a feeling of omnipotence and the person who has great earning ability has tremendous influence over family members and relatives and is usually forgiven for many sins.

During the first thirty years of my life, all my decisions aimed at making money. I chose my studies based on the potential remuneration of various jobs. I looked for work by comparing monetary compensations. Even though I hated the jobs I had and dreaded going to work every morning, I consoled myself that the monthly pay check was enough compensation for my drudgeries. Looking back, I realize my anxieties about money blinded me to my need to find my calling. So the more I focused on money, the unhappier I became. But in spite of this, I had a goal.

For many years I carried a note, the size of a business card, in my wallet. It read, “I shall become a millionaire by 35 years of age.” I faithfully read it several times a day in an attempt to remind myself of my life goal and to visualize the path I would take to arrive at my goal. I grew up in scarcity and was determined not to struggle for the rest of my life. So I had a plan.

I started my working life loaded with debt. I borrowed money to finish my business education and then took a loan to throw a wedding dinner and to give a dowry for my bride. Money was very tight. I budgeted my daily expenses and drank plain water with my meals instead of spending money for additional beverages. Ironically, even today I am back to drinking plain water with my meals—for health reasons. When my wife and I moved into our new home, it was sparsely furnished with secondhand furniture, and it took several years before we were able to complete furnishing the apartment. My wife mended our torn sofa so many times, one stitching on top of the other, that once a guest took notice and asked in deep concern how we were doing financially. I needed a car for my work and bought a small, secondhand truck. That became the talk of my colleagues, who were driving luxurious cars. I was relentless in my budgeting and determined to become debt-free.

Money and a Bumpy Spiritual Journey

A gradual and deep shift in my relationship with money took place during my thirties and continues to this day. When I was thirty, some of my colleagues invited me to their church. The one time I had previously been to church was during Christmas when I was a student. We were offered candies and invited to sing with the congregation. But church was “out of bounds” in my family, as my father feared that conversion to Christianity would lead us to abandon our Chinese culture and family. Even before I started going to church, I was always more religious than my siblings and frequently accompanied my mother to Taoist and Buddhist temples. I was a sickly child and frequently had to be in bed several weeks at a time, delirious with fever. My mother was anxious that I might have inadvertently offended the gods and so had brought bad fortune and ill health on myself. My family was not very religious, but my parents believed that it was better to appease these gods and please them than to offend them. In my young mind, these gods seemed rather frivolous, petty, and vindictive, much like human beings. I did not want to have anything to do with them. But in the church it was different.

In the beginning, I was curious about the how the church operated, particularly the function of the pastor. Unlike in the temples I visited as a child, where the priests were poorly educated and not trained, in the churches, Christian pastors were university graduates usually with postgraduate degrees in theology. The Singapore economy in the 1980s was developing briskly, the demand for bankers, lawyers, doctors, and accountants was high, and these jobs were handsomely remunerated. Why would someone, I reflected, with such education choose not to make a good living as a professional and so fulfill the responsibilities to provide for his or her family? But as I continued to visit the church and engaged the pastors with my questions, I became increasingly fascinated with Christianity.

I found church surprising. Everyone seemed friendly and welcoming without any obvious motivation apart from genuine hospitality. I was fascinated by the learned and carefully crafted preaching. After I became a Christian, I read about St. Augustine’s conversion and his first impression of Ambrose, the bishop of Milan: “My pleasure was in the charm of his language. It was more learned than that of Faustus, but less witty and entertaining….”² The demeanor of the pastor intrigued me. He bore himself with both dignity and humility. He spoke as a well-educated and intelligent person yet with obvious compassion and kindness. I wondered why he was willing to serve as a poorly paid Christian pastor. What was behind such a commitment? I returned every Sunday to listen to the preaching. “Gradually, though I did not realise it, I was drawing closer to God,” as Augustine said of himself centuries ago.³ When we were both thirty, married with a three-month-old infant, my wife and I decided to embrace the Christian faith. I did not discover God. He was looking out for me and waiting for me. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5:8).

A bumpy spiritual journey had begun. Raised in a Confucian family with a conservative and patriarchal father, I was taught to respect and obey my parents, especially my father. Any disagreement with him was rebellion. In our culture, the relationship between father and son preceded all other relationships. Showing respect and obedience to your father is the highest honor a son can show his father. In a Chinese family, filial piety is the highest virtue. This influenced my spiritual journey.

My relationship with God developed in the same direction. I saw God as a “super father,” all-powerful, demanding, and deserving of obedience, a virtue that was ingrained in me as a child. I projected my own distant and strained relationship with my father onto my relationship with God. It took me many years to realize that God is not a distant “super father,” remote and disapproving. Only when I realized that God is a “compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness” (Exod. 34:6) did I venture into coming near to him and develop a personal relationship with him. Now as an enthusiastic new believer, I wanted to make my faith an integral part of my whole life. There was a problem, however, with my entanglement with money.

I still wanted to be rich. But I always had this nagging feeling that I should be a pastor or missionary, because that is what all Christians seem to aspire to become. I prayed about it and struggled for discernment. I honestly did not feel that I was ready to be a pastor or a missionary. My pastor himself was trained to be a banker but studied to be a pastor after a mission trip. But wisely, my pastor encouraged me to continue to work as a business executive if that was how I discerned God leading me. But he also made it clear that I should, however, set aside time to volunteer in church ministries as a way to serve God and others. So I continued my preoccupation with money.

I put myself into the grind. I traveled incessantly and worked twelve hours a day at my managerial job. I was promoted every year and became the youngest senior manager in a multinational corporation. I was totally preoccupied with my work, driven negatively by fear and positively with the promise of success. Though I wanted to be rich, it began to dawn on me that I was really seeking security. I dreaded the struggles that my parents had to go through to make ends meet. So I put everything on hold: time with my parents, as well as time with my wife and children. I will have time for them, so I thought, once I reach my financial goals. I still remembered the card I carried in my wallet years ago, “I shall become a millionaire by 35 years of age.” A couple of years after I became a Christian, I decided to tear up the card but the desire for money remained. By my early thirties I was quickly advancing in my career in an American multinational based in Singapore. I was poised to become a vice president, but I was constantly nagged by a deep desire to start my own business. I was an executive but wanted to become an entrepreneur in order to achieve my financial goals. This is not as easy as it seems, especially when you have a family.

Becoming an Entrepreneur

When I expressed my desires to leave my job, my family and particularly my parents were puzzled and confused. I was advancing in my career far beyond my years and had a tremendous prospect in the new and growing wireless telecommunication industry. Why was I leaving a well paid and stable job to take unnecessary risks? Some of my family considered my behavior irresponsible and naive. My uncle was sent to talk some sense into me by highlighting how difficult it would be to start a business and how inexperienced I was. I understood my parents’ anxieties. I had all the opportunities and stability they never had.

It seemed to them that I was throwing away all my blessings. In spite of all this, I left the American multinational and before my thirty-sixth birthday decided to become an entrepreneur. I felt I had waited long enough and had already passed my thirty-five-year age target to become a millionaire.

My new venture expanded quickly and money started flowing. We grew from two employees to two hundred within two years. Now I faced a new problem. In the first part of my life I struggled with scarcity and now, having met my money goal, I had more than I needed. And I learned another ugly truth about money. When we do not have enough we fight one another; we fight even harder when there is too much. The business was doubling in size every year, had expanded into the Asian region, and was poised to grow even further. But success brought a tension I had never expected.

My business partner and I, both Christians, started having disagreements. Our differences escalated. He wanted full control. I resisted. The animosity grew and resentment filled our hearts. I believe Christ was at work during this period of my life even though I failed to see him (see Rom. 8:28). I was working eighty hours a week and enjoying my newfound success thoroughly. I started working before dawn and sprinted through the day in exhilaration, frequently skipping meals. I sighed every evening when the sun set and darkness came. There was still so much to be done! Eventually I would say to the Lord about this period, “Nobody could stop my frantic drive for success and wealth but you, Lord. You stopped me right in the middle of my swelling pride and money-making.” I was struck with a mysterious malaise, shivering in the heat of the day, growing weaker and thinner with the weeks. I started coughing blood. I had to slow down.

After several months, my illness was eventually diagnosed, and I was successfully treated and told to rest. I was barely into my late thirties and had never taken an extended break in my life. My illness made me face the possibility of death. I reflected on how short life is on this earth, and lamented on how little time I had spent with the people I love. I acknowledged the Lord’s hand in my illness. “The LORD disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in” (Prov. 3:12). After many agonizing months, I peacefully decided to sell my stake to my partners and leave the business I had started. I took a year of sabbatical before my fortieth birthday. But what next?

At forty I was too young to retire. I seriously contemplated God’s call for my life and discerned that I should return to business ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Growing Up without Money—Clive’s Story
• 2. Growing Up with Money—Paul’s Story
• 3. Holy Money—a Brief History and Why It Is So Complicated to Handle
• 4. Giving to God and Caesar—the Complicated End of Dualism
• 5. Grappling Shrewdly with Capitalism
• 6. How to Buy Forever Friendships
• 7. Why Money “Talks”—the Social Value of Money
• 8. Whose Money Is It Anyway?
• 9. The Health and Wealth Gospel
• 10. Investing in Heaven
• Questions for Reflection and Discussion
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography