Luxury, part one

You won’t want to TLDR ‘dis. I know most of my writing is fluff, but this is serious, and this topic empassions me.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to understand the plight of oppressed peoples.

I can rant up a storm on the topic, quite abit of it truthful and quite abit of it just me popping off on it. After much consideration, study, and prayer, here’s how I see my views on money forming:

A luxury is defined as any thing you spend money for that benefits you or your family alone, and no one else, including God. It is narrowed to define anything that costs ‘more than necessity.’ [define: luxury]

Luxuries are not bad. Numerous times God is shown to be a loving Father who enjoys giving the wonderful things of the earth to his children. If tangible things were bad, this could not be. [ Matt. 7:9-12]

In fact, when we are in obedience to God, we are told “we will eat the fruit of your labor; blessings and prosperity will be yours.” (well, ours). [Psalm 128]

There exist a large number of people (hard to give exact numbers, but at minimum 1 billion) that live under some form of opression that cannot provide for themselves, and who will certainly die if intervention is not made by people who have plenty. This could be because of wars, lack of proper healthcare, oppressive governments, acts of generations before them, drought, crime, etc. [not going to find a reference on this, trust me for the sake of the argument]

At very minimum, people changed by God who are aware of these facts have a responsibility to at least try to alleviate the suffering of aforementioned people.[ Pr. 22:9, all of 2 Corinthians chaper 8 and 9.]

Among one of the easiest ways we can help these people is through giving financially. Yes, there are other ways for us to give by time or talent, and those are just as important, but our topic is of economic excess at the moment.

In my understanding from the above, spending more on luxuries for ourselves than giving to these peoples is selfish. This is the conclusion. There’s no WHAMMY verse I can pull out of the air that proves this. Believe it or don’t.

If’ve you have read this far, I’m happy. Now the real fun begins. So, let’s just assume that what I said above is true. Well, then you might ask, “Eric, what exactly is a luxury, then?” or you might ask, “Eric, what about people who give more than they spend on luxuries, but have a heart of ice and hate who they give to?”, or “Eric, what about if God tells me not to give anything away, does that mean you or God is wrong?”, or “How does the prompting of the Holy Spirit fit into all this?”

And I would tell you… I don’t have a clue. I do have some honest thoughts about these kind of questions, and that’s gonna have to be the topic of tomorrow’s post.

In the meantime, what conclusions do you draw from this stuff?

FL: All the types of animals you can dress up as using only items from a sporting goods store.