Episode 282 - Have You Made Money Your Valentine? with Andy Crouch, Randy Alcorn, and Tom Hsieh

The middle of February is often filled with commercialized images of love. Flowers, chocolates, those little chalky tasting heart candies with sweet messages. 

It all revolves around Valentine’s Day. 

And in between booking restaurant reservations or talking about how you reject the hallmark holiday, we might stop to ask ourselves, what do we really love?

Most of us know the right answers here: family, friends, God. As entrepreneurs, we love our work and what it affords us.

And, let’s face it, a lot of us love money.

But can we dig a little deeper here? Money isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it can be a catalyst for great good in the world. As long as we learn to think about it rightly. 

And that’s what we’re going to do in today’s episode. We’ll hear from author Andy Crouch, theologian Randy Alcorn, and entrepreneur Tom Hsieh talk about how we can develop a biblically informed relationship with money that leads to generosity and joy.

Full Episodes Listed:

God and Mammon with Andy Crouch

Investing in Eternity with Randy Alcorn (with Guest Host Daryl Heald)

Choosing Vulnerability When You Don’t Have To with Tom Hsieh

All opinions expressed on this podcast, including the team and guests, are solely their opinions. Host and guests may maintain positions in the companies and securities discussed. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as specific advice for any individual or organization.

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Episode Transcript

Transcription is done by an AI software. While technology is an incredible tool to automate this process, there will be misspellings and typos that might accompany it. Please keep that in mind as you work through it.

Joey Honescko: Let's face it, a lot of us love money. But can we dig a little deeper here? Because money isn't a bad thing. In fact, it can be a catalyst for great good in the world. As long as we learn to think about it rightly. And that's what we're going to do in today's episode. We'll hear from author Andy Crouch, theologian Randy Alcorn, and entrepreneur Tom Shea talk about how we can develop a biblically informed relationship with money that leads to generosity and, surprisingly, joy. I'm Johanna Esco, and you're listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Let's get into it.

Andy Crouch: I want to talk about two mysteries, relating to Jesus most famous words about money. And of course, you know what they are. You cannot serve God. And most modern translations will say money. So the first mystery is why not? Why couldn't you serve God and money, each in their appropriate way, the way Jesus said you could? God and Caesar. So Caesar's, the pagan emperor of the Roman Empire. People pressed Jesus on the question of, whether they should even pay taxes to see is there any says, well, render to Caesar what Caesar's and rendered God wants God. So serve Caesar and appropriate ways don't see services are the way you serve God. Don't treat Caesar like a god, but you can serve Caesar in his appropriate way and serve God. Why does Jesus never say you cannot serve God and Caesar? But he does say you cannot serve God in money. And then what exactly does Jesus say? Because older translations have Jesus saying, you cannot serve God and mammon. What does that word doing there? And, what would it mean that Jesus said, you cannot serve God not just and money, but God and mammon? So, first question first, why? Why is money more powerful than Caesar? I want to suggest it's because money, especially in large quantities, gives you a power that Caesar does not have. What is money? You learned it in economics. It's a medium exchange, a unit of account and a store of value. And this means that money is fungible, countable. Storable. Power, power, the ability to get things done in the world, the ability to get what you want in the world, the ability to get that and get things done, perhaps even without other people wanting that to get done. That's power. And money gives you a form of power that's fungible, countable, and storable. So fungible it can be exchanged for other things. So this this obviously is one of the key things about money. It's actually a very little use all by itself, but you can turn it into whatever you want. Not true of most forms of power, including Caesars. Caesar has a great deal of power as the lord of the Roman Empire, but he can only exercises power in that office. In that land, his power has to be used in a particular context, has most power is contextual, but money allows you to use power wherever you want. Anywhere that legal tender is accepted, you can exchange it into anything. That's power that Caesar doesn't know. Then it's accountable. You know how much you have of it. And this is definitely not true of most kinds of power. How much power exactly does the CEO of a company have? Well, certainly some, but if you've ever been in that role, you know, it's hard to know exactly how much you have. There's certainly no way to count it. But you can measure money. You can count money. You can know how much is on your balance sheet, how much is available to spend, and you can't really do that with power. There's an uncertainty to other kinds of power, but not with the kind of power that we call money. And maybe most powerfully, you can store it. It's storable, a store of value. You can save it for later. And most kinds of power have to be exercised now. At the moment that you have it, because you may not have it later or it may not be given except in a given moment. I'm. I've got this moment. I've got the power to speak to you right now, but I can't save it for next month or next year. I've got to use it now. But if I have money at a time of my choosing, I imagine at least I can use it. And all of these kinds of power are kind of Caesar doesn't have, and all of them add up to a power that is not dependent. There is no dependance in the power of money in the way there is in most other forms of power, even political and military power. Caesar only had his role because he was the adopted or sometimes biological son of a powerful man. It was a relationship that gave him power. Even in our modern democracies, people get power through the consent of the governed. But if you have enough money. The honest truth is you can get whatever done you want without anyone really having to know or care or even validate who you.

Andy Crouch: Are.

Andy Crouch: Because money talks without you having to be a person. It's impersonal power. This is a power greater than any other in the world. And if you have it or had it, or can imagine having it. Why would you need God? Who needs God? When you can get what you want, whatever you want, when you want it, when you know how much you have, you can store it. And you don't have to be any particular kind of person to get what you want. Honey. God, when you had money. So this is the first reason you can't serve it, because this is a the most direct rival to God in human affairs. And the reason people come to you, and the reason you and I live with anxieties about money, with hopes for money, is because of the kind of power we imagine it will give us. But there's also a deeper thing going on, and it gets to the word that Jesus used. Jesus was speaking Aramaic, and every once in a while the Gospels will leave an Arabic word untranslated, and they do so in this case, they write down in Greek, you cannot serve God and they just leave it untranslated, ma'am. And it's a Semitic word that roughly means money or assets held in trust or the create trust. Why do they not translate this word? Well, the most common kind of word. We don't translate our names. You don't translate a name from one language. Translate. You just transliterated that name. And that's what the gospel writers do here. And the early church concluded that the reason they did this is they understood something that Jesus was saying, which is that we're not talking about an ordinary noun here. We're not talking about even just a principle or an idea. We're talking about a quasi personal, unnamable power in human affairs that intends something that has a will in the world that is opposed to the will of God. And the ordinary way we talk about this ordinary, extraordinary way is we are talking about a demonic power. The early church concluded that Mammon was not just an idea or principle, but the name of a being in service of the enemy of all that is good. The opponent of all of God's works in the world that we sometimes call Satan or the devil. That Mammon is this demonic force at work in history, with a kind of quasi personal ability to whisper and speak to human beings and to arrange and distort human affairs in a particular direction. And what is it that Mammon wants to get done in the world? Well, it wants the opposite of what God wants. God has made this good, beautiful, abundant, material world. He fills it with persons. He says this world is already very good. But now I want you to fill the earth, multiply, and bring forth all the possibility and all the value out of the world. As the world is filled with persons, it will become full of the knowledge and love of God and the knowledge of love of one another, and in some ways the knowledge and love of the world itself. While Mammon being aligned with the demonic being part of the demonic forces at work in history, hates all of these things, and Mammon hates persons. It wants you to operate impersonally it actually wants to turn persons into things. In fact, when Mammon really gets its grip into a human society as it had gotten its grip into the Roman Empire, as it got its grip into the capitalism that built our Western world, the result is treating persons like things, treating persons impersonally. And while God wants the world to be filled with persons so that the whole world will be known and loved, and God will be known and loved in everything. Mammon wants to empty the world of persons. Mammon wants everything to be impersonal so that there's no one left, only things, and ultimately not even material things. Just an immaterial world that is devoted to pure power without dependance. You cannot serve a demon that wants to destroy persons, relationships, creation itself. And also serve the true God who wants to reunite persons, restore relationships, and liberate creation from its bondage to decay. You cannot serve God and Mammon and this demonic power called mammon. Besides our world, our modern world, in an absolutely unique way in history, how can you doubt? This is the principle that is driving human events in a way that wasn't even sure in Jesus day wasn't even true a thousand years ago, but is incredibly true today. You cannot serve God and mammon. And so the basic way to dethrone money and mammon is generosity. It's giving because most ways we use money give us control and safety. But giving release is control by definition. When you give, you no longer have control. Giving is risky by definition. When you give, you're giving up some store of value. You could have held on for some other use and you're just saying I release it. It is the basic detox activity, the second detox mode. So generosity is the first. The second would be transparency. If we were together in person and I do this with many, many groups and I do it with many individuals, rather than just talking about our family's generosity in percentage terms, I would put up graphs and tables that have numbers on them. They show you how much we make in a given year, our family, our household, how much we have been entrusted with our net worth, how that's changed over time, how we've given, how we've spent, how we've saved. All with real numbers. And when I do that consistently, people say, I have never, ever heard a fellow Christian outside of some kind of confidential fiduciary relationship, tell me how much they have and how much they make. Brothers, sisters, this should not be so. This secrecy that we have around these numbers that are the most. Immaterial thing about our lives. Is a sign that Mammon has its grip on us. And a very powerful way to detox is to open up your books. Not in a willy nilly way. And I don't do it when it's virtual and online, because it's severed from a relationship right now. But in any kind of relationship, I'm happy to share the complexities of what God has entrusted to our family and how we're trying to be faithful with it. Why is this not normal in the Christian community? Because we are trying to serve God and money. We're trying to serve God and mammon at the same time.

Joey Honescko: And it gives us a great understanding of why we can't serve God and mammon. And in this next section of the show, author and theologian Randy Alcorn talks with William Norville and Darrell Heald about how we can set up more practices and habits that help orient our hearts toward God and away from the powers of Mammon.

Randy Alcorn: I think what Jesus was saying when he said, don't store fruit shelves. Treasures on earth where moth and dust corrupt thieves wreck and steal, but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. What he was saying is, when it comes to treasures, they're not bad. In fact, they're good. And it's okay to store up treasures for yourself. In fact, I'm commending you to store up treasures for yourself. That even sounds selfish, but obviously Jesus isn't calling us to be selfish, but it is in our own self-interest. But the bottom line of what he's saying is you can't take it with you. And that's why it's foolish to store up your treasures on earth, because either they're going to leave you or you're going to leave them. It's not a permanent relationship, right? With our treasures on earth. You can't take it with you, but you can send it on ahead. And that's what he's saying by giving it away now, investing it in God's kingdom. And it's not just our material treasures and our money, but it's true of our time. It's true of our gifting. You know, our talents that God has given us. We can invest those in eternity and make a permanent and lasting difference in people's lives. That's what's so transformative about the message.

William Norvell: Well that's good. Hey, I just keep wrestling. I've read the book and my wrestle is this. Sometimes, Randy, when I go, okay, I get it. You know, there's other things in the Bible where you go, okay, okay. Like, I'm not going to debate the theological points with you, right? Like this is clear, right? This is not debatable from that perspective. But how do our listeners get our head around treasure in heaven?

Randy Alcorn: Well, I think one way to think about it is a lot of people think wrongly about giving where they think, okay, all right, I know it's a good thing because I know people are needy and I know a lot of things need to be accomplished for God's kingdom in the world. So I'll make the sacrifice and do the giving. And I realize God has given me a lot. And so, yeah, I can give some of away, but it's like a begrudging even people who talk about tithing as if tithing were the ultimate. Like tithing is the training wheels of giving. It's like the wading pool. Or, you know, it's the end of the swimming pool where you get in. But then when you learn how to really swim, you go into the deeper water. Well, that's how it is with tithing. So to me, the people are held back and they think that tithing is the most radical kind of giving that a person could do. Well, of course, that's just that's just 10%. And what God has provided for us is just way, way beyond that. But I think the mistake that people sometimes make is thinking of their giving as give vesting. Just I'm giving it away and I'll never see anything from it. But really it's investing. And especially when you make wise giving choices and truly making a difference in people's lives for eternity. And so when Jesus said, you're storing up treasures for yourself in heaven, in Luke 12, there's a parallel passage where he says that you sell your possessions, give to the poor, and then God will give you money bags in heaven. Or sometimes it's translated money belts in heaven. So in other words, it's the transfer of wealth to another location. You could say it's a different kind of wealth, but it's using actual material wealth as the basis for creating wealth in heaven. Now, we don't know exactly what that wealth will look like. We know that often it has to do with eternal rewards of ruling in God's kingdom of leadership. In God's kingdom. A lot of people are thinking, well, I don't want to rule. I just want to go around and have fun or whatever. Well, it's not ruling like in this era of under the fall of corrupt government or whatever. It's going to be magnificent hearts filled with, well, servant hearts of people serving the Lord in his kingdom. You've been faithful a little. I will put you over much. I'll put you over five cities. I'll put you over ten cities. The biblical view of heaven is life forever on a resurrected earth, living in resurrected bodies with resurrected fellow believers, with the resurrected Jesus in a new earth, of resurrected culture and resurrected nature and resurrected animals and, you know, don't have time to develop all that and give this scriptural basis. But I've written a whole books about it. And I'm telling you, once you see heaven in that light, then when you think about investing and eternal rewards and investing in eternity and experiencing forever the result of your giving away of your life and your time and your resources in this life. You think of that being something that you will enjoy and others will enjoy for ever? No matter what form that takes. That is an amazing, paradigm shifting thing. And ironically, it isn't just that we. Okay. Yeah, we have to make all these sacrifices in this life. And you know, that's the pits, you know? But at least it'll pay off in eternity. No, it pays off in this life also.

William Norvell: So could you explain the concept of a financial finish line and how you've developed that, and how our audience could think about that specific concept?

Randy Alcorn: Yeah, some people become highly specific with the financial finish line idea, and others take it more as, not a clear line, but something that they generally strive for. There's obviously advantages to clarity where you say, all right, this is all I need, all I could use. Everything beyond that goes to God when I reach a certain amount. And obviously, I'm not going to say an amount is going to differ with what people believe about it. But when I reach a certain amount that's like in my investment portfolio, do I need to keep pouring money into it so that there will just be way more than I could ever possibly use? Or do I need to give it away now and not leave it to my children after I die and hope they give it away because they may make more income than I do? I hope they do. But give it away now, because God didn't entrust it to my children, he entrusted it to me. So the finish line is, don't feel like you're supposed to keep most of what comes in. If God has given you a lot of money, why has he entrusted it and given us the wrong word? Entrusted it to your care? Well, it's so you can make a difference for eternity. God will make us. He says in second Corinthians nine. He'll make us rich in every way so that, okay, what is he going to say now so that we can live in the nicest house and we can have multiple houses on the beach, in the mountains and and everywhere, and so that we can go on the most exorbitant vacations and, and have the most, the greatest cars and multiple cars and all of that. Okay. It doesn't say that you will be made rich in every way, so that you may be generous on every occasion. And second Corinthians eight and nine, I would just say, read and reread those two chapters and ask God to change your heart. And you see how grace, it's all about the grace of God manifested in people's lives and shown through giving, so that grace is the lightning. Grace is the lightning that comes from heaven, that comes from God. Giving is the thunder. That is our response to the lightning. You gotta have the lightning for the thunder to be there. And if you are not generously thunderously giving, it's probably a sign that you're not experiencing the lightning of God's grace in your life the way you should and could. But the solution? Give more and ask God to give you a cheerful heart as you give and help answer that prayer. And when you see what's being done with the giving that God has privileged you to do, you will get more pleasure and more excitement from that than you could get from any material possession ever.

Joey Honescko: If you're not sure you buy what Randy is saying about the joy that comes from generous living, you'll want to tune into the final act of our show here. It comes from a conversation Henry and William had with Tom Shea, a successful entrepreneur who owns an airline but has chosen to live a life of radical generosity. Tom story doesn't need to be prescriptive, but it does act as an inspiring testimony of what God can do when we break free from the shackles of mammon.

Henry Kaestner: Hold on. I'm saying this. Make sure I'm catching up. Yeah, yeah. You're running an airline. Yeah. And you have elected to live to keep your family budget at the median family income and then give away all the rest. And with that household budget, you're still paying full price for airline tickets, as we've already established. That's correct. Wow. That's amazing. That's unbelievable. So you're looking at this. You've had great business success. Just walk us through that a little bit about what does that really mean. And did you feel it's been a sacrifice. Just you know, is that been a burden that you've carried on and find yourself like, oh, I guess we can't do more than 80,000 because we made this commitment. I guess we got to do it. How is that lived out?

Tom Hsieh: Yeah. No, that's a great question. I mean, well, there have been some sacrifices, so. And so I'll just go back to our very first year of marriage, share some testimonies along the way to really encouragement, you know, very first year, you know, as we were getting married, we made this decision. As we were getting married, we realized that our budget wouldn't afford us, you know, an overseas honeymoon trip. Right. And so but we did something nearby, and it's really nice. We celebrate our honeymoon in San Diego just a couple hours away. But here's the amazing part of the story. So a year later, we get a call from target. All right, so target gets a call, my wife gets this call and she almost hangs up on them. And they say, congratulations, you've won the target Calphalon giveaway C6. My wife and I was like, wait, wait wait wait, you registered, you did your wedding registry at target and you registered for a telephone pan. That home actually entered you into the target telephone. You know, honey of a C6 and this is real. You don't have to pay taxes on this, but you win a seven day, all expense paid trip to Tuskegee, Italy. And that was amazing confirmation, right? And encouraged by then, my wife turned to me at home and said, This is God's confirmation to us. This this is his intrusion and saying, you know, I will provide for you. I will bless you with good things. And I think that's been true. And I can tell a story story. But that's just even from the start. That's been true, but practically what that meant. So I was at a dinner party just a couple weeks ago, and people were surprised to hear that we've never bought a new car in our marriage, we've never bought the new. And people are like, what? How can you do that? In fact, actually, currently I'm driving a 2006 Camry, but I just got a return because we lent it to a friend. You had a friend in the neighborhood, got in the car accident. Car was banged up. They're fine, I left them. The car actually turned out to be for several months. And so we were down to a one car family, which can be a little stressful in LA, but someone in our church said, hey, we hear you down to one car, we have an extra car. You know, why don't you just use it? And so we've been using this other family's car, you know, for a couple of months. And so the dependency we have in our wider community really has also been part of the blessing. Right? So our interdependency right in our community has been a great blessing for us. So I don't know, I don't think I think in terms of sacrifices, I think in terms of, you know, for the amazing things that we've been experiencing.

William Norvell: Wow. Amen. Now I'm William Hare. Good to see you again. We're going to do a quick plug. Tom is in one of my faith driven.

William Norvell: Entrepreneur groups.

William Norvell: Right now. That's right. So gotten to know him over the last seven weeks. It's been really fun. If you don't know about those yet, three weeks series. And they're just really fun to get to know people and hear people's stories in a deeper way. So wherever you are, however you think about life, we like to think that there's a group for you. So go to our website and check it out. If there's not one for you, start one with your affinity group and who you want to be and we'll help you start it. It's been really fun to have a bunch of like minded people coming around again. It's been really fun to get to know Tom and his story, and I did not know, however, that you drive an A6 camera because I driving a seven camera. So now we're even closer than we were before. And that's why we come on the long form podcast. That's right. So take us back to the decision to live in Pomona, and how you have decided to make that a place that you have dedicated so much time and your family have dedicated so much time in. What was that decision like? Sure. And how has that played out over the decades? Roots yourself in a specific place.

Tom Hsieh: Yeah, yeah. So for me, it started in college when I was in college at Harvey Mudd. I got involved with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and really delved into the scriptures in a way, and I opened up the scriptures to me in a way, and they kind of brought me into an adult faith. Right. And then some of the things that I had opened my eyes to in Scripture and really wrestled with or saw before, but by the time I graduated, it guided me of two things. First thing that he convicted me of is that God really has a love for the poor, and it's all throughout scripture. It's just there. But I've never really kind of, you know, wrestled with it or acknowledged it before, but I was just really convicted by the, you know, God's love for the poor throughout Scripture. The second thing that God convicted me of is that I don't have a love for the poor. And I really felt like I challenged me at that time at the point when I graduated, like, you know, here's where my heart is. This is where I'm focus. This is where I'm working. Where are you going? What are you doing? And so I ended up turning down a couple of job offers, some aerospace, end up choosing a two year internship with a Christian missions organization called Servant Partners. Seven partners works in urban slums around the world. And they had a two year internship where they were training. Folks. We're going overseas. I just happened to be placed on the team that was located in Pomona, California. And so at the end of the two year internship, most of my teammates end up going overseas, which is what the training's for. But in my heart, at the end of two years was someone had to stay and work for the transformation of the city of Pomona. The all the reasons why I decided Pomona was a good place for this internship, right? For preparing people for overseas slums was one of the reasons why it also needed, you know, God's light and shalom. And, you know, his people continued being committed and working for its betterment. And so that's how I chose to live in Pomona. I felt like there was a calling for me to be invested for the long term in this city. My wife, my wife was involved with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship as well, in Iowa. So, you know, college in Iowa. She graduated in there, moved to South Central, LA, be part of a team there, you know, with several partners. And so we met in LA. And so, you know, I like to joke that, you know, when she married me and moved to Pomona, you know, she actually kind of moved up. It was actually kind of a step up in terms of neighborhood communities, but.

Henry Kaestner: You not say anything bad about Grinnell, Iowa to me?

Tom Hsieh: No, no, no, no, I was talking about South Central. He was working in south central Iowa. And, you know, when she married me and moved to Pomona from South Central, you know, and in some ways, I mean, they were similar type communities. But, you know, South Central had a much more notorious stigma or, you know, associations with it, right, than the one that's probably less known. But anyway, that's that was the joke I was trying to make now about Grinnell, Iowa, actually, you know, I didn't mention that I actually lived for a couple of years in Iowa. So, you know, I was born in Taiwan and immigrated to U.S. with my family when I was five. And the first place we lived was either Groves, Iowa. We lived in a small community in either. Groves, had just got their first signal light installed when we moved in. And so actually, you know, a couple of years of my childhood in Iowa before coming to the Valley area. Come I want to hear of 60s or less. Just gives a quick view of what the transformation has been like in Pomona since you've been involved. It looked like this. And now it looks like this. Yeah. So, one of the reasons why we feel called to be involved in the political transformation is after working in the city for 20 years with health, started a number of different non-profits, educational non-profits, afterschool programs, Bible clubs, environmental justice, nonprofit, workforce development, etc. we realized it was like pouring a water into a leaky bucket, right? And we realized that there was a layer of political corruption that was really sabotaging the future of the families in our city. So when my friend Ted Sandoval, who was a community servant leader, stepped up and said, I'm going to run, we felt like, okay, we need to get behind him. You know, the city at that point had pretty significant kind of homeless dwellings, tent cities, if you will, in, you know, major blocks, including the Civic Center. So I'm trying to see how I'm trying to the library. This is a huge encampment, but throughout the city there was just numbers and numbers of encampments. You know, since then we've been able to build shelters, whatever, build, you know, programs where we have people graduating from those programs into, you know, more long term housing, sustainable jobs, etc. that's some big deal for transformation. But also an I just kind of I like, you know, just the fiscal health of the city. You know, five years ago, you know, the city was projected to be insolvent. We're running a $10 million deficit and was heading towards insolvency within two years. Just this year, the city is projected to have a $8.5 million surplus. Wow. And so, you know, praise the Lord for that. So that's a bit of a very high level, right. Some indicators of some of that transformation in the. Well, I mean, talking about just a change in the attitude, the spirit of the people, which is the most important, I think is a sense of hope. Right. I think the most difficult thing to combat in a troubled community is a sense of hopelessness, a sense that, you know, the best thing you can do is get to get out versus, you know, how do we actually change this community and, and have it be a place that's worthwhile to invest in and be part of for long term? And that change has been significant. I mean, it won't fit in the 62nd. So, the lots of stories about what that transformation and that hopefulness looks like.

Joey Honescko: Thanks for listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. Our ministry exists to equip and resource entrepreneurs just like you with content and community. We know entrepreneurship can be a lonely journey, but it doesn't have to be. We've got groups that meet in churches, coffee shops, living rooms, and boardrooms around the world. Find one in your area or volunteer to lead one and bring this global movement to your own backyard. There's no cost, no catch, just connection. Find out more at Faith Driven entrepreneur.org.

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