YOUR PROSPERITY: WHOEVER HAS MORE WILL BE GIVEN?
Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him (Matthew 13:12; Matthew 25:29).
This statement has puzzled many and startled not a few. Quite a number have been stumbled by it. Does Jesus not care for the poor, they ask? Is He pandering to the greed of the “haves” while trampling on the plight of the “have nots”?
The short answer is “No”. God’s “preferential option” for the poor is well documented in the Old Testament. Yahweh has always deeply cared for the marginalised and vulnerable, namely the widow, the orphan, the alien and the disabled. It is inconceivable that Jesus would adopt a different social ethic from His Father.
It is important when reading the various sayings of Jesus, to always remember that they fall into one or more of three categories: prescription, proscription and description. To prescribe means to establish and/or lay down something as a rule. To proscribe means to ban or forbid something. You recommend something when you prescribe it, but you forbid it when you proscribe it.
Jesus is doing none of these two things. He is not prescribing for the rich authority to take from the poor. Nor is He proscribing to the poor to passively acquiesce to the plunder of their earthly goods. No, He is simply describing and acknowledging the existence of a little-known, unwritten rule or principle of stewardship which says: whatever you don’t appreciate will depreciate. It can also be stated thus: What you have no capacity to manage, you will ultimately loose – usually to those who have taken the time to develop that capacity.
Contrary to how some have interpreted it, Jesus’ statement above has nothing to do with whether capitalism is to be preferred above socialism or vice versa. Both systems have failed and are failing Babylonian systems. Jesus is simply advocating good stewardship of God’s gifts. The point of the Parable of the Talents is that if you mismanage what God gives you, you are not entitled to ask for more. Instead, what will actually happen is that you will lose even that which you currently possess. This is the natural order of things and it partly explains why the rich get richer.
Most financial counselors will tell you that one major cause of both generational and situational lack is financial mismanagement. This in turn is a result of one’s mindset. There is a poverty mentality and there is a prosperity mindset. As a man thinketh in his heart so is he. If a man has a $100 mindset, there’s no use giving him a million dollars. He will continue to bring his life back to his mindset. He will find creative ways and means to waste and squander the million bucks, until he is back to $100. Water always finds its own level! This is why if a person has a poverty mentality, money wont really help them.
The first prerequisite to finding financial freedom and economic empowerment then is a change of thinking toward material wealth. What changes in mind will change in time. Change all negative thoughts towards money. Money isn’t good or bad. It’s your thinking that makes it so. Money borrows its goodness or badness from the one who holds it. Like a loaded gun, money can be very dangerous when used improperly. But it can be awesome and powerful when used properly. The same $100 can buy crack or groceries. So let’s quit tripping!
Stop calling money names (dirty, filthy lucre etc). We all know that you cannot attract what you criticize. So if you are in the habit of criticising money and calling it names dont be surprised when it takes wings to fly away.
A variation of Jesus’ statement above is what the New Age people call “the law of attraction”. Don’t get put off by the fancy titles. There is nothing new under the sun. All truth is God’s truth. Satan has never come up with a valid original principle. What he does is plagiarize God’s material and then tout them as his own. The so-called law of attraction is divine truth recycled, with no credits given to the One True God.
The truth that Jesus brings out in the Parable of Talents is this: money goes to where money is. This partly explain why the Queen of Sheba would haul a caravan consisting of 4.5 tons of gold and other precious metals to Jerusalem and hand it over to King Solomon, the richest man that ever lived. He really didnt need that more money. But money goes where money is, and “to him that has more will be given”.
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