59 | “Give Until It Hurts” is Bad Advice

It's too abstract.

It ignores the nuance of people's life experience and unique personality.

It ignores the nuance of different types of resources.

It lets some people with a low bar for "what hurts" off the hook.

It drives others with a high bar for "what hurts" into tough spots.

It's impossible to create any kind of accountability.

It pretends like it's black and white, and once "it hurts" you have arrived at a state of enlightenment.

The reality is that it's a lot grayer than that.

I think there are two spectrums that begin to provide some direction for where we're trying to go.

The first has to do with the resources that are being released or given away.

Relatively speaking, time and talents are typically easier to give away than financial resources.

Some percentage of your income (purple) is harder.

Some portion of what you have accumulated in cash, investments, and real estate (blue, gray, and yellow) is even harder.

With each step, you're releasing more power, control, discretion, authority, and optionality to someone else and that is a hard thing for most humans to do.

The second has to do with where or with whom the released resources land.

*This feels more personal to a person's specific worldview and faith convictions, but I am using our own personal Christian faith as the basis for this spectrum.*

Relatively speaking, releasing resources to your own personal interests is the lowest level of engagement or "others-centeredness”.

Giving that contributes to the common, social, or cultural good is a higher level of "others-centeredness".

Giving that reallocates financial wealth and repairs relationships with the most vulnerable members of our society is the highest level of "others-centeredness”. We typically view our traditional tithe as a component of this category.

Personally speaking, our aim with our finances is to continually move up each spectrum over our lifetime keeping in mind that...

Giving before death is greater than giving after death for refining our own relationship with money.

Giving relative to our own level of financial wealth is greater than the absolute amount of the gift for our own relationship with money.

My hope and belief are that this framework allows us to participate in the redemption of all things, refines our heart to be more like it was created to be, and in turn, plays a role in helping us clarify and discover "how much is enough".

Thanks to CC for helping clarify these thoughts!