Keller on Money

Excerpt from The Gathering‘s newsletter, Tim Keller Speaks on Creation, Fall, Redemption—and Your Money:

The Bible sees the history of the world in four stages—1) Creation by God, 2) Fall into sin, 3) Redemption through Christ, and 4) Final Restoration—the new heaven and new earth. But creation-fall-redemption-restoration are not just discrete stages in time, they are also different aspects of present reality. Put another way, when we look at any object in this world, we know three things about it:

• First, it is part of God’s good creation, yet,
• Second, it is fallen and affected by sin—distorted somehow, broken, falling short of its original purpose. But,
• Third, it is being, and can be, redeemed. The purpose of God is to wipe all creation clean of all the effects of sin until it is all restored to wholeness, beauty, and glory.

This is the basis of the Christian worldview. If you miss any these three perspectives, you have a distorted view of reality. … Similarly, to understand money and possessions properly, we have to do the same kind of worldview analysis.

One of many punch lines:

The only way we can be free from the power of money, and to be sure we are free (and not self-deluded), is to give money away so much that we lower our living standards.