Earlier this year, I reflected on worrying less about “financial security.” It was the latest in a series of revelations to properly order my life.

But upon further reflection, it’s also easy for me to “worry less” about having “enough” money. I’m a middle-class earner in the world’s wealthiest nation. For people around the world in destitute circumstances, such as refugees leaving war-torn countries, having “enough” money in circumstances safe from daily threats to life, limb, and family would be an incredible gift from God.

 

Money Can Be A Problem

Being raised by financial successful parents – including my entrepreneur father – spoiled me. I was not spoiled by them, but rather by my interpretation of what I saw.

I mowed lawns at 6 years old. I delivered papers, mowed lawns and shoveled sidewalks by 11. I was the summer laborer for Dad’s roofing business at 13 years old. I entered the U.S. Army Reserves and the National Guard, and paid my way through college.

But I assumed running a business was easy. I planned to own a home by 25. I expected to earn six figures at a young-ish age. When my business aspirations fizzled, and my political journalism jobs earned modest income in the expensive D.C. Metro region, I berated myself as a failure.

In my late twenties, I realized that I had disordered these goals. Due to keeping a close eye on finances, I had modest savings and some investment accounts. Work skills allowed me career options. I had the discretionary income to spend $90 per week on groceries (I was on a very serious fitness regimen) and to live by myself. I had what many would call financial security, yet I was berating myself as a failure instead of being grateful to God.

 

A Little Perspective

Not everyone who could use a financial boost is in a war-torn nation. As I was starting to figure out the truth of my financial situation, I went to on a mission trip to Peru (photos here – I’m the white dude) for one week. The group I went with frequently praised the faith these poorest-of-the-poor had in God and Christ. The Peruvians’ smiles of gratitude despite their physical circumstances were simultaneously heart-breaking and inspiring.

One of the people in our group pointed out that we weren’t seeing the full picture. This person had spent a year with the poor in another country. He said that while we were seeing real gratitude and a focus on God during our brief visit, he had seen parents broken by the sight of their days-old child dying from an illness that would have been easily healed in America.

This story reminded me of one from my parents when they and my sister went on their second two-week mission trip to Honduras. It was a Christian medical mission; my father, who owned a roofing and new home construction company, ran the house-building crew. While there, they met a 16-year old boy who was the man of his house – his father had been shot, probably during a drug deal. My sister shared her food with him the first day they met, and by the time the two weeks were over my parents seriously considered formally adopting the underfed, undereducated child.

As Dad put it later: “I thought I’d seen poverty volunteering at soup kitchens.” My sister said she almost stayed in Honduras because she felt so strongly about what she saw.

Financial betterment can also help those right here in the States. I know a well-educated, second-generation immigrant whose parents and grandparents worked long low-paying hours to make ends meet. She took until her late twenties to realize she could look for jobs that paid well, took fewer hours and had benefits – and thus leave her less emotionally and mentally exhausted.

 

Awareness is Important

A close relationship with God can happen with or without money. It can happen in the depths of war or in a mansion. And both a secure life and its lack can take us away from Him. Elie Wiezel wrote in “Night” that it was the horrors of the death camps of Poland that crushed his belief in God. For the rich, Christ warned that getting to Heaven is extremely difficult, and Paul wrote, “the love of money is the root of all evil.”

For someone who is a refugee or barely keeping food in the house in a war-torn country, financial security would be a godsend. For millions of poor Americans, financial security is an important aspiration. For anyone with low income, small margins of error mean every dollar must be closely watched.

For someone like me, financial security is relative. That’s a gift from God. But the plethora of opportunities can also be a distraction from Him.