This Faith in Finance podcast is underwritten in part by Guidestone. Guidestone envisions a world transformed by Christian investing. Through screening, corporate engagement, and impact investing, our investment strategies allow investors to be more proactive with their investment dollars to make a meaningful difference in the world while preparing for their financial future. Learn more at guidestonefunds.com/slash faith. What does justice have to do with our money?
More than you might think. Hi, I'm Rob West. Scripture calls God's people to practice justice, not as a slogan, but as a way of life shaped by righteousness, mercy, and love of neighbor. Today, Justin Lonas joins us as we continue our series on the cardinal virtues. We'll talk about justice and how our everyday financial decisions can reflect God's heart for restoration and flourishing.
And then it's on to your calls at 800-525-7000. This is Faith in Finance, biblical wisdom for your financial journey.
Well, over the last couple of weeks, we've considered how prudence and temperance shape financial stewardship.
Now we turn to justice and how love of neighbor takes shape in the way we handle money. Our guest is Justin Lonas, Director of Foundational Products at the Chalmer Center. Justin works alongside our friend Dr. Brian Fickert to create resources that equip churches and ministries to think biblically about poverty, generosity, restoration, and justice. Not to mention, their Helping Without Hurting series is one of my favorite resources to recommend for addressing poverty from a biblical perspective.
Justin, great to have you here. Thanks, Rob. It's great to be with you. Justin, when many people hear the word justice, they may think first of politics or courtrooms, and justice certainly has a place in those things. But in the Christian tradition, justice is much deeper than that.
So how would you define justice from a biblical perspective? Yeah, that's a great question and a great place to start. You know, a lot of Christian thinkers, going all the way back to Augustine, to more contemporary voices like Nicholas Wolterstorf or Oliver O'Donovan have approached this question. Uh and it doesn't always bubble up in my experience in Average Sunday morning teaching or conversation for most American Christians.
So, what you mentioned here about courtroom justice is certainly part of biblical justice, but it's only part of it. We would call this retributive justice: punishing evildoers, protecting the innocent, keeping public order, and things like that. But there's more to a full biblical vision of justice, it includes restorative justice or putting things to rights and fixing what's broken. And this is often part of our more legal framework as well, such as when a judge finds a perpetrator to make recompense for what was stolen or broken. But there's a more holistic dimension of justice in scripture as well that fits a broad creative understanding of the way things ought to be.
You know, we often use the word shalom to describe this: this vision of what God has designed us for when people live together in harmony, enjoying flourishing relationships with God, with others, and with all of creation. And the story of creation and new creation is really the lens for true biblical justice in its fullest sense. In the Old Testament, the Hebrew word most often translated for justice is mishpat, which can include all of these dimensions and even include the idea of like the decrees of God and his character. And there's a related term that usually gets translated as righteousness, which is tzedekah, which together are ascribed to God as the foundation of his throne, Psalm 89 and 97.
So justice and righteousness go together. And indeed, actually, when you get forward to the New Testament, there's really just one Greek word that does double duty for both of those. You have to translate it according to context. Uh Diako Sune. And in modern language, we tend to divorce these two.
We hold justice as this legal public thing and righteousness as this personal private behavior question. But personal righteousness and public justice in Scripture are both tied together because they both flow from the character of God and they're meant to characterize God's people. That is such a helpful overview. Let's apply it to money. We've got just forty-five seconds until the break.
So just help us set the stage for why, as believers, we need to think faithfully about finances and love of neighbor as a part of our stewardship journey. Yeah, all of us are interconnected, and the way we choose to earn and spend our money necessarily affects other people in our communities. And as Christians, we can't just take our cues for financial justice from the world around us. We can't merely go on. To just focus on wealth building and viewing stewardship primarily through the lens of personal responsibility or personal fulfillment.
But the whole community is always God's horizon for our financial resources. That is so good. We're continuing our series today on the cardinal virtues. We're focused on justice today. Joining us to have this conversation is Justin Lonas, Director of Foundational Products at the Chalmers Center.
When we come back, we'll continue to unpack this and look at biblical justice and how that relates to how we manage God's money as stewards. Much more to come just around the corner. Don't go anywhere. Uh We're grateful for support from Guidestone, whose diversified suite of investment solutions align with Christian values to create positive change in the world. More information is available at guidestonefunds.com/slash faith.
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Great to have you with us today on Faith and Finance. I'm Rob West. With me today, Justin Lonas. We're continuing our series on the cardinal virtues. Today, we're focused on justice.
And Justin, before the break, we were talking about a biblical view of justice and how we see that there's not a long leap to recognizing when we understand the fullness of biblical justice to the economic or financial components of justice. And when we look to some of the primary texts in God's word, we see his desires for us in this area. Unpack that for us. Yeah, when we talk about justice, you know, it's easy for us to think about God's law. And God's law, especially the regulations for community life that he gives us in Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy.
So much of that involves stewardship and distribution of resources. You know, there's passages about honest weights and measures, fair wages, and care for those in poverty, all side by side. And all of this is grounded in those texts and in the fact that God is the one who owns everything. He owns the land that He's given to the people, He owns the whole earth. And any wealth and resources generated by our work is seen by scripture as a gift from God.
It's not something we create by ourselves without any help. And as such, how we earn it and how we spend it are not independent of justice. We can't separate our economic lives from what it means to lean into God's justice and biblical righteousness. Yeah, that's well said. Scripture often connects justice with righteousness, mercy, the care for the vulnerable.
So how do those biblical themes help us understand justice as more than being just simply fair? Yeah, that's great. You know, it's often the case that people who are suffering from material poverty and people just on the margins of society more generally. Are experiencing a whole lot of the effects of the fall. You know, poverty can be caused by poor personal choices, and that tends to be a majority view of American Christians, according to some research that I've looked at.
But it can also be caused by the sins of others, it can also be caused by just the brokenness that's inherent in the world. Our systems don't work for everybody, our society doesn't work for everybody. People get sick, people have mental health issues. Poverty is complex and For those of us living in a modern Western society, we tend to think of ourselves as kind of a meritocracy. Like you earn everything you get.
And in that view, It can be easy if we're thinking of justice only in terms of fairness, it can be easy for us to not remember to be more proactive, to sense our obligations, not just our rights, to reach down to people who are struggling, who are not able to participate as fully in the culture around us as we are because of different circumstances. Biblical justice just puts a different lens on how we work with people and how we show mercy. It's not enough to want to do it. We've got to stretch ourselves a little bit. Yeah, that's so good.
And one of the things that I've appreciated about the Chalmers Center is that you help us see that poverty is not only a lack of material things, but really it's also a brokenness in relationships. It could be with God, with self, others, with creation.
So, how does that framework then deepen the way we think about justice? Yeah, it gets back to our understanding of who we're created to be and what the fall is broken, you know. Yes, the fall messed with our relationship with God, and we need Jesus to restore our relationship with God. But our relationship with God is also. Part of how we're designed to flourish in other relationships.
We have a relationship with ourself and how we understand ourselves as being made in His image, a relationship with other people and a relationship with creation, which stewardship and our work and money falls under that as well. And when our relationship with God is broken by sin, All these other relationships get broken too. And then broken people. We still go out and are fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it. But instead of spreading goodness and the reign and worship of God through the whole earth, we also spread brokenness.
Like I tell people, broken people make broken systems, and broken systems further contribute to our brokenness. And these things, these things are complex, but. Praise God, Jesus is making all things new and he's working on all of us. It's not just that he's fixing our spiritual life and our relationship with God, but he has a plan for restoration of all things. And how we spend our money is a huge piece of that.
Justin, let's bring this into everyday financial decisions. What might justice look like in how we spend or save, give, invest, even hire and pay and lend, really just making decisions in our businesses and churches and in our own financial lives? Yeah, it's so easy for us. I'm a theology nerd. It's so easy for us to get too abstract on this, but at the end of the day, Think about where you spend your money and don't just look for the most bang for your buck or the kind of traditional American financial advice, but look for ways that you can bless other people.
How can you support a new immigrant family that's opened a grocery store in your neighborhood and spend some of your grocery budget there instead of at the supermarket? That has, you know, is sending all your earnings out of the community? How can you invest locally? How can you spend more time and the social capital that you have to press into those communities and even hire people who maybe need a second chance, who are dealing with a criminal record or who don't have the full skills yet? How can you use your business, your even odd jobs around your home or your office or your church to connect with people where they are and lean into the ways that your blessings from God could bless others?
We talk about this a lot in all of our trainings, this idea that what people in poverty need is not helpers as much as allies. We need people who are willing to do life together with them. And we need them and what they remind us about the nature of how flourishing happens to communities, not just individuals. We need to be engaged in that. And how we spend our money and where we spend our money is just a huge piece of that.
My good friend Michael Rhodes talks a lot about this from the modern application of the biblical teaching of gleaning that we see in the Old Testament, where you're supposed to leave the edges of your field for Those four groups of people that God has special concern for: you know, the fatherless, the widow, the sojourner, and the poor. And in a modern context, maybe that means not spending everything you earn on yourself. Or if you're a business owner, not maximizing every corner of profit, but leaving some opportunities for other people to join you in that work and to come in together in a community that provides for everybody. It's. Uh it's a different mindset than the traditional ways that many Americans think about money, but it's it pays dividends that are way more than monetary.
Oh, this is so helpful. We've got just about 30 seconds left. What is one practical takeaway that someone can apply in their lives today? Yeah, I'd say just when you think about your budgeting, inventory, how you're spending your money, pick some places where you could redirect some of that spending towards people on the margins, like those examples I gave: shopping and investing and odd jobs in the community. That's just picking a few places to sow those seeds could be huge.
Justin, what a treat to have you here today. Thanks for stopping by. Thank you, Rob. It's a great pleasure. That's Justin Lones, Director of Foundational Products at the Chalmers Center.
Learn more about their incredible work helping Christians rethink poverty and respond with practical biblical principles at chalmers.org. That's C-H-A-L-M-E-R-S dot O-R-G. We'll be back with your questions after this break.
So call right now, 800-525-7000. That's 800-525-7000. Or if you'd prefer to email your question, send it to us at askrob at faithfield.com. Stick around. Feeling burdened by credit card debt?
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Taking your calls today here on Faith and Finance, 800-525-7000. Let's begin in Arkansas. Charlie, go ahead. Since I am going to be drawing my full benefit of Social Security in December, I was wondering how much can I make without being tagged. Yeah.
Um so you are at full retirement age. And so that means that you no longer have an earnings limit. That limit in terms of what you can earn only applies to people before full retirement age. But once you reach full retirement age, which is no later than sixty seven, Then you can earn any amount and still receive your full social security benefit with no reduction. But it sounds like you're in good shape there.
You can work away, earn as much as you want, you're going to continue receiving that benefit. Hey, thanks for your call today. Let's head to Franklin, Tennessee. Dina, go ahead. Hello, my question.
My husband and I have been married for fifty-five years and have been tithing. for fifty five years.
So everything we earned, we tithed. We are over sixty five, and when we turned sixty five, we started drawing our Social Security and have continued to work part time. We tithe our part time income We tithe our Social Security income. We get some money from investments and we tithe that money. My question is.
What is the biblical um I mean, not mandate, but just for tithing Social Security, if you've already tithed everything you made. And then you're drawing Social Security What's the answer to that question?
Well, it's a great question. And actually, we have an article in the current issue of Faithful Stewart, our magazine, on this called Tithing in Retirement: a Thoughtful Framework. And so, I'm going to send you as our gift here when we're done today, Dina. I'm going to ask my team to send you a copy of Faithful Stewart issue six so you can read that article. But what you're going to see there is that we acknowledge that, you know, during your working years, tithing is simple.
And by the way, let me just back up even a bit more and just say that this was a part of the Mosaic law. There were actually three different kinds of tithes. And now we're under the law of Christ. And I think biblical generosity, New Testament giving is really more than rules or percentages. It's a fully surrendered life of godliness, which includes, I think, honoring the guiding principles behind the tithe.
But really, the New Testament teaches that our giving should be in response to God's grace because we've now seen what. Christ has done on our behalf on the cross. Our giving, New Testament giving, should be given freely and joyfully. It should be given consistently and proportionately to our financial status, which I think, again, is why the tithe is such an effective guideline. And it's directed to causes that honor God, you know, the ministry of God's justice and God's mercy and God's word, preaching, teaching, and discipleship.
So, you know, we're not under the law. This is not about legalism or checking the box, but this idea of proportionate giving and using the tithe as a starting point, not the ending point, giving to our local church off of first fruits, which you've done consistently throughout your life, what Randy Alcorn, the author, calls the training wheels of giving, I think is a very effective way to think about our giving.
Now, you call out something that I think is very appropriate to say, well, wait a minute, if I'm honoring the Old Testament tithe and I'm giving a percentage, a tenth on the increase, and I did that on the gross.
Well, when I get into retirement, income arrives irregularly. It often includes money you previously tithed on. And so I think you've got one of two approaches. I think the first really is the simpler approach where you just say, listen, I'm going to see every A bit of income as a gracious gift from God, regardless of whether any portion of it is a return of what I've already paid in, because it's coming from investments that I already tithed on before I put them away into my retirement account, or coming from Social Security, which I paid FICA taxes and I tithed on the gross before the FICA taxes were taken out. And now a portion of that is coming back to me.
But regardless, I'm just going to tithe on all the income as it comes in, and I'm going to see it as a gracious gift from God. The second approach is an attempt, and I don't think either one of these, by the way, is right or wrong. I think it's between you and the Lord. But the second approach is an attempt to separate. The growth from principal and tithe only on the portion that represents earnings.
And I think when it comes to the tithe, it's difficult to figure out what that would be because you'd have to really calculate everything you paid in, which you could get from Social Security, and then you'd have to project how long you're going to live, which is an unknown. Only the Lord knows that. But you could take a typical life expectancy. But here's kind of my rule of thumb: for an average life expectancy, I would kind of treat every Social Security check as 50% payroll taxes and 50% gain. And if you lived an average life expectancy, you could say, I think with good reason, that half of every bit of your check is just them returning to you what you paid into your working years, and the other half represents what Social Security will give back to you almost as the gain.
Assuming you live a normal life expectancy.
So that would be one approach. The other approach is to think about: well, how do I do that on money that I've invested? And I think that comes down to how long you've been investing. A 30-year investor, you might take 60% of every dollar that's coming to you and think that's the growth, 40% is the principal. A 40-year investor, 70% growth, 30% principal.
You see what I'm getting at? That's really the way you would have to work on this. I do. And I love your answers. We have learned in our 55 years that we can't out give God.
Yeah. And I think personally what I'm going to do is continue to gladly give. Of all of it, God has been so good to us. And we have counted pennies and dimes, you know, but we've always given. There was a time he was unemployed, we gave anyway.
And we didn't change what we gave and God has been faithful. But I had somebody ask that question of me yesterday. They were asking me, and I was sharing with them God's faithfulness. That, you know, we give all of it. And they say, well, what is the biblical answer to that?
I didn't know. And so I had a minute today. And thank you for your answer. I appreciate your time. I appreciate your show.
Thank you. And let me say thank you to you, Dina, because what you just gave was a testimony to God's faithfulness that somebody else needed to hear. In fact, there's another caller who's holding that has been listening to what I've been saying. Dale, he had the exact same question: Do I have to tithe on my Social Security? And it probably comes from the same place of a genuine heart's desire to just be found faithful because God is so good to us, He is our provider, He is faithful and can be trusted.
And what an opportunity we have to return a portion of what's already His back into circulation in His economy. And I think anytime we can give testimony to God's goodness and His faithfulness, That's an encouragement to somebody else, and that's exactly what you've done today.
So, thank you for being on our airwaves. Thank you for your encouragement to me in the program. And I'm gonna ask you to hold, and we're gonna get you a copy of this magazine, and maybe you can pass it along to your friend, okay? Thank you. We'll do it.
All right. Lord bless you. Big thanks to my team today, Deb and Robert, and Taylor. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.
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