[00:00:00] Speaker A: This is why I say you're hurting them. You don't realize that you're stripping them of their dignity. And they may know how to play the game. They may know how to tell you everything you want to hear. But inside their soul, something not good is happening.
[00:00:16] Speaker B: Run your home and your dough like a biblical boss. Let me throw a scenario out to you, which is probably pretty common if you're a city dweller like me.
You are strolling down the street, maybe downtown, maybe at a shopping area, maybe in an intersection. Your coffee's in your hand and you spot a guy with a sign who's asking for spare change and your heart tugged at you.
And you think to yourself, what is the more Christian thing for me to do right now? It's probably to dig into my wallet and not to keep walking.
We've all been there right at that moment of decision.
What if I told you that the Bible might have a more boss level approach to generosity than just throwing a couple of bills at a stranger? Welcome back to Abraham's Wallet, where we equip you to run your home and your dough like a biblical boss. My name is Steven Manual. I am not joined today by my normal co host, Mark Parrott. I'm going to be talking to my old buddy Justin Wolfenberg, who I'm thrilled to have joining us. And Justin is a thinker who's not afraid to go countercultural and he's going to be drawing straight from scriptures to show us why simply handing out money without expectations might not align with biblical principles. We're going to be diving into charity today, into a way that might flip your script and challenge how we steward our resources for real kingdom impact.
So buckle up.
I can guarantee this conversation is going to stir the pot and inspire you to level up your generosity games. Justin, you are out in the real world being a man somewhere. Where, where are you right now?
[00:02:05] Speaker A: I'm in my work truck. We're building an addition. I've got a bunch of 19 year olds in there working hard, jacking up a floor that sunk because the termites ate away the foundation sill plate. So pretty exciting day.
[00:02:18] Speaker B: I always appreciate the fact that Justin kind of comes into any gathering. It's a men's midrash or whatever it is, looking like you've got cowboy hands. You look weather beaten, toughened by, by life. And you're, you're. I like my dudes that are like living masculine lives and you're out there doing it, so I appreciate that. I'll also say one more Thing. And I was going to say this in the introduction, but I'll say right to your face, because I want to affirm you. And that is, Justin, you represent two things I truly love.
One, wouldn't you say that your primary gifting is as a teacher?
[00:02:56] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:02:58] Speaker B: Okay.
So that means that this is my. You can correct me if I'm wrong, but when I know that someone's a teacher, I know they kind of like the people that they teach, but what they're devoted to is the truth, loving the truth. So I love that very much about you, Justin, that you're devoted to the truth. And as an expression of that, you are. You read the scriptures.
You want to apply them. I don't care how weird it looks. I don't care if nobody's doing this. I don't care how countercultural it is. I want to live the truth. So, you know, you were one of the first people I knew that was taking the idea of Sukkot seriously and going like, this is for God's people. It doesn't make us Christians, whether we do it or not, but it's one of God's ways to teach us. So I don't.
And you look weird, by the way, doing that. And I see those kind of things that you are constantly willing to challenge. Not just obviously, we're going to challenge the world around us, and they're totally bankrupt belief systems, but you're also willing to challenge normalized Christianity, which I really appreciate. And I. Over the decades and decades that I've been involved in that world, and you and I have both done church work, there comes a kind of healthy skepticism to maybe the. Maybe normalized Christianity doesn't have that great of a track record, so we can push against it, especially where the scriptures tell us to. So I appreciate that about you.
[00:04:35] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: We're ready for you to provoke us, and I know that you would. You tell me how you came to this subject of rethinking charity and rethinking our relationship with the poor. And then before we get into the content, I want to know, like, how did you come across this subject and what have you done with it since? Like, why am I looking at. I have a list of, like, 10 passages printed out in front of me. Where did this list come from?
[00:05:02] Speaker A: Yeah, so it came from the Bible, basically. But if I were to summarize this statement, we've had this experience as Christians. We drive by the guy holding the sign up, and internally, you have this sense of guilt. Should I be doing something? Should I Not the Bible is incredibly crystal clear. We should be helping the poor.
And that sentiment has actually changed culture. Post Jesus, we did not think about the poor the same way we do before Jesus came.
But what I have realized is we lack the wisdom on how to help the poor. The Bible, we don't need to have a discussion of should we help the poor or not. That is super clear. Don't even need to be smart to understand that where we are missing in our culture is we lack the wisdom on how to do it. So this sentence, I would say, is the provocative sentence would be, what if giving money to the homeless guy on the street violates our Christian values and principles?
And you, by doing it, you might be doing more harm than good.
And again, who cares what I think? But that's why we have the Bible here. This is crystal clear in the Bible.
[00:06:18] Speaker B: Okay, well, by all means, let's go.
[00:06:22] Speaker A: So this first one is one example of just one of many, how God says, help the poor. So read that and I'll just share. This is how I got started in this movement.
[00:06:32] Speaker B: All right, all right. So I've got this list of scriptures. Justin's going to prompt me, I'm going to read them, and then he's going to do his commentary, whatever he's going to do. Here's Luke 14:12 through 14.
He said also to the man who had invited him, when you give a dinner or a banquet, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or your rich neighbors, lest they also invite you in return and you be repaid. It's funny, he kind of says that as a warning. You wouldn't want to be repaid. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed because they cannot repay you, for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the just wonderful.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: Okay, So I read that verse many, many years ago, probably 15 years ago, and with a group of people, and we said, well, let's just do it. Let's try it. So we went down right near our home. There was a community of five homeless guys living under a bridge.
So we walked down there with my kids. I think Henry might've been 3, 4, 5 years old. And I said, why don't you guys come over for dinner tomorrow night? And they all agreed. So the next night, my small group at the time, my friends and I, we made a dinner for all of them. We all brought our families and our kids, and we had a dinner and we just made a principle. We're like, we're not gonna give them any money. We're gonna have just a relationship time with them.
And we did, and we had this unbelievable sit. We actually sat down and had a meal and conversation. We were talking about the Bengals. The.
It was a very normal but beautiful time. The kids were up playing soccer with one of the guys.
And on the drive home, I said, guys, how was that for you? And they said, incredible. We get food all the time, but a conversation was a gift. And one of the guys in the back was like, man, he goes, just playing with your kids ministered to my heart in a way. It was unbelievable. You're not.
So that kicked off this whole relationship I had with these five guys. I was like, how can I help these guys? Can I do something to help the poor?
And so we formed a relationship. I was leading a youth group at the time, so I'd bring my whole youth group down, and we'd have nights in my house where everyone shared their life stories.
And these rich teenagers from Mason were crying with this homeless community. And, like, they came to our super bowl party, and I made them pay dollars to buy their super bowl square. And we formed, like, a rich, meaningful relationship with them. We even spoke at Mason High School. I went up there and brought John and Patricia with me, and we spoke at their little tent camp meeting, you know, so there was lots of different interactions. And one of the guys says, hey, will you type up my resume? He had written out a resume and said, will you type that up for me? And he goes, I also need you to mail this letter for me. And I said, yeah, sure, no problem. And so we started to engage. We started to help. We started to see, like, could this work? And then things took a turn. One morning, I got up. I heard this deep pounding on my door at 8am and I opened the front door, and on my front porch were five federal marshals with their guns pulled. And I was like, oh, my gosh, what's happening here? And I was like, I'm pretty sure I haven't done anything this bad. So open the door. And they hand me this paper. The paper. Do you know this guy or do you know John Turner? I said, no, I've never heard of him. He shows me the picture. I said, oh, yeah, that's David down. You know, one of the homeless guys. And he was like, oh, yeah, he's an escaped federal inmate. And I was like, oh. They're like, we need you to walk down there and show us where he is. And they almost barged the Door down. Because they're like, if you're harboring him in here, we are going to, like, you'll go to jail. I'm like, I promise you, he's not here. I mean, they pretty much could tell by the white panic sheet face, like, I was telling the truth. Like, you could like, I'm not lying there. I promise he's not here. Then they were like, you got it? You gotta help us find him. You just walk over there and we'll follow you into camp. I'm like, I'm not doing that.
And so we negotiated a little bit, and they said, well, you call him. He had a cell phone and tell him, you know, I got these papers for him. Will you get them? And so I got in the car, I put this ball cap on. They called me the CI. We're driving around, like, I got to be like, in a movie like scene. It was just crazy. And the last thing I remember is like, David was surrounded. He came walking out into the gas station parking lot surrounded by five federal marshals. They jumped on him, took them away. And that really was obviously pretty intense for me. I was like, wow, what did I just do? What did I get my family into? I had just a lot of unresolved emotions that took me a while to kind of walk through.
And then what was super interesting was a year and a half later, David shows up back on my front door. And I'm like, well, I hope he's not too mad at me. But I opened the door and he's like, I just want to apologize for getting you in this mess. And so what he had done was he mailed that letter from my house. And they were monitoring the mail somehow, wherever that letter went. So that's how I got involved in the whole thing. And he was actually just stealing semis. He would go into a truck stop and steal a semi across state lines. That's why it was like a federal crime.
He was just a crazy criminal, all in all in this whole thing. So that awoke my heart to, like, you know, I stepped out there and it was beautiful.
And there was a couple things that I learned through this whole process, all five of these guys. And it was transient, so we met other people as well. All of them said, justin, we have family who are willing to help us. We are just not ready to get help.
So that was like a data point where I was like, oh, okay, that's interesting. And they said something else that was really fascinating. They said, we know exactly what to say to the Christians to stoke Their goodwill. We know how to make them feel self righteous and do whatever we, we play the tape, we know how to cry when they come and pray for us. We make them feel like they're the only people that do this. They really care for us.
You know, they would talk about on Thanksgiving, Christmas, they would get like eight to 10 turkey dinners brought to them, and they would make each one feel like they were special.
And I realized a whole lot there. One, they weren't really ready to receive help. They did not, they had pathways for it, but did not actually want to walk down that. And it was a game that was being played and there was some manipulation happening where we go down and we feel like, oh, we're the one guy that didn't pass Lazarus. And they know how to play into that. So we walk away feeling self righteous and they play on us with their pity.
And it's a sick game that's happening way below the surface. We actually think we're helping and we're actually not. I got to know them. I'd watch the drug dealers pull in with the money someone just gave them, and their drug dealers would come out, shoot them up. You know, it was like this thing where we thought we were doing good and we weren't. And so that led me now to study the Bible on a little bit deeper level. So the first question I was wrestling with was, who is poor?
What does the Bible define as poor? Because that's actually going to be really helpful.
And so if you read the next One, the Deuteronomy 24:1, that would be good.
[00:13:45] Speaker B: When you reap your harvest in your field and you forget a sheaf in the field, you shall not go back to get it. It shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless and the widow, that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands. When you beat your olive trees, you shall not go over them again. And it shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, you shall not strip it. Afterward, it shall be for the sojourner, the fatherless and the widow. I sense a pattern.
[00:14:19] Speaker A: Yes, the Bible had a terrible copy editor or the repetition is important.
And so it defines the poor. And this happens all over the place.
This is how the poor is defined in three categories. The sojourner, which is the more one we can relate to the least. That's a traveler. Back in the biblical days, if you were traveling into another town, there were no hotels like you were at the mercy of that town and you were incredibly vulnerable. Or the fatherless, which is an orphan. We can all kind of understand that. And a widow.
So the million dollar question is, who is not on that list?
An abled body man. Okay.
And so now that narrows this down. You could say the principle of this is someone who's very vulnerable. And I could go there. But you could also take a very literal. Like our efforts to help the poor are widows. That means they have no husband or fatherless. They have no. I mean, they are on their own completely. And a sojourner is not necessarily something we interact with in America.
Other places, yes, I've had a few small examples of that, but very few.
So if that's the definition, that changes a whole category of who we would engage with.
And so now the Next one in Ruth 2, this is such a neat story.
This is an example on how to help your. This one, like the up above, it was talking about one of the ways you'll help your poor. And then Ruth is enacting this scripture here. So if you'd read Ruth 2, that would be great.
[00:15:57] Speaker B: Okay, yeah, yeah. So this is a guy who's going to obey Deuteronomy 24. Naomi had a relative of her husband's, a worthy man of the clan of Elimelech, whose name was Boaz.
And Ruth the Moabite said to Naomi, let me go to the field and glean among the ears of grain after him, in whose sight I shall find favor. And she said to her, go, my daughter.
So she gleaned in the field until evening. Then she beat out what she had gleaned. And it was about an ephah of barley. And she took it up and went into the city. Her mother in law saw what she had gleaned.
[00:16:32] Speaker A: Wonderful. Okay, so now does Ruth fit the definition of someone who is poor?
I think so. Right. Is she a sojourner? Yeah. Is she a widow? Can she have a father protecting her? She actually fits all three categories. I don't think you need to fit all three, but she does.
So now you can just forecast. Okay, we just. We end up in this. This woman ends up a widow. What do we do? We're going to raise a GoFundMe page. We're going to do whatever we can to make that person not have to work. We take the opposite approach.
What does the Bible do? And the more important question is why? Why would you take this widow, this sojourner, who's just been through a terrible experience, and say, you need to go work all Day until evening. Beat it out. You had to work hard, she had to work hard. And she did this more than one day. She had to go work for her food.
You contrast that to a soup kitchen, right? It's a very different deal.
So the million dollar question is, why in the world would God say, go work for your food?
One it just put her out in the market. You know, Boaz was like, dang, look at that girl work. She's marketable material, right? So she's out there.
But the biggest thing that our strategies with helping the poor don't see and get is we strip people of their dignity.
And so if we give someone food that they didn't work for, and I'm not talking about like someone starving or, you know, there's obviously exceptions to this, but I'm just saying in general, repeated efforts with the poor, if we give someone food they didn't work for, for over periods of time, like a chronic scenario, we are stripping them of their dignity.
And you will see this principle repeated over and over and over again. And so that's the big why of when we engage with the poor. We want to preserve somebody's dignity.
And that's really, really valuable to a person. Dignity is a sense of self worth and value. Like when I'm on a team, I don't want to be handed the game ball for doing nothing. I want a jersey that gets dirty. Right? That's kind of all of our desire.
And if we take that away from somebody, if they don't work for their food and that you strip someone's dignity chronically over time.
This is what the welfare system has done to the African American male. It has stripped them of their dignity. And the problem is the intent was so good, right? The intent was to help people, but because we're doing it without wisdom. And I'm not saying there's a simple answer to this, but our principles of giving people dignity while we help them changes who they think about themselves, how they feel about it, opens the door.
The welfare system puts people in perpetual poverty because they have no dignity.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: Yeah, if I can just put that into a.
That might sound arbitrary to people when you talk about dignity, but if I can just put that into a biblical worldview. Another way of talking about dignity would be that we are trying to preserve or restore their sense of self. That gets them closer to the Creator's opinion of them. God doesn't think that you're nothing and that you can't, don't have a contribution and that there's nothing that you can do to help yourself or help others. God sees you as this image bearer who not only can take care of yourself, but you could creatively take care of others. And if anybody ever comes to the conclusion that I have no value and that I'm just here to. To soak off of the efforts of others, their con. They're. They're God concept in themselves. Themselves as the. The image bearer has been reversed. It's been turned upside down. So that makes a lot of sense.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: Yeah, it's. We say statements that aren't biblical, like, my identity is not connected to my work. And I know why we say that, because we're trying to get out of this performance mindset.
[00:20:47] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:20:47] Speaker A: But the other cliff of that is not true. Like, if I don't work, it does affect my identity. Like, if I meet with men and they're out of work, they've lost their job, and they're like, I feel depressed. I'm like, you should. You haven't done anything for two weeks.
What do you want me to do? Like this. A natural experience for not working.
And.
And so we have to rethink how we. We do all of this. And so again, just. Just so this is. I. This idea is not just Old Testament. Will you read second Thessalonians for us?
[00:21:23] Speaker B: Sure. Paul says, we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you receive from us. For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, nor did we eat anyone's bread without paying for it. But with toil and labor, we worked day and night that we might not be a burden to any of you. So it was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. For even when we were with you, we would give you this command, if anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: Yes. So lots of people use this verse or critique this verse because it sounds so uncaring. Oh, my gosh. How can you just go up to the homeless person and yell at them to get a job? Right. Which is probably not an effective strategy. But what they don't see, there's actually a heart of love behind this verse, which is like, it would feel so good. This applies to parenting. Like, if you ever see a lazy kid, you're like, I don't want you to be unworthy to sit at my table tonight. This Helps motivate me as a father with my children. Like, I want you to be worthy to sit at my table. I want you to have a sense of being, dignity and self worth. Because I love you.
Right? My heart is love. My heart is love. And when I started to learn about this, I started to apply this differently. I was working on one of my rental properties and I was demoing. There was a big mess out in front of the house and this homeless guy walked up and he was like, can I have some money? And I said, yes, if you help me sweep this whole pile up, I'll give you 10 bucks, you know, and he was like, kind of looked at me weird, but then it's like, okay, I'll do it. He swept the whole pile up. He did a good job. I gave him his 10 bucks. He walked on his way.
The next day he shows up, he goes, dude, you don't know. I felt great last night. I felt so good about myself. It was like God telling me like, oh, this is actually true, you know, and he was like, do you have another job for him? Like, yeah, you can do this job here. But then the next third day he got arrested for stealing. And then I never saw him, but you know, the, you know, but you know, but anyway, it was like a short principle of dignity. Like he told me, he was like, I felt great and all and I loved it. I was like, good. This, this is true. I love when the Lord just when I'm wrestling with something, he goes, I'm going to teach you this is true. I'm going to just show you, give you a story to tell you this is true.
And so that value, if you connect dignity and work and value, the most loving act we can do is give somebody a purpose. This is why I can't go to the soup kitchens in the way that we do.
But I used to go to them and the people would just hold their heads in shame because I had no value there. And we thought we just needed to preach the gospel and give them the self esteem talk.
What we really needed to do was give them a job. If we did a soup. If you took me to a soup kitchen where I worked alongside preparing the meal with the people who needed the food or you know, we all cleaned up the dishes together afterwards, that would be a very different experience. And they would be like, well, I earned that meal. I came in early, I helped the church do this, that or the other.
And then they would walk out with their dignity versus having to hold their head in shame. And what you're doing is stripping them. This is why I say you're hurting them. You don't realize that you're stripping them of their dignity. And they may know how to play the game. They may know how to tell you everything you want to hear, but inside their soul, something not good is happening.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: You know, I've served in those soup kitchens before, like you, Justin, and. And you feel that in this transaction, you feel something's wrong. You want to go over to the other side. Because it's so clear in that setup, I am the giver, provider, and you are the taker. And all that you have to contribute to this is taking. And even if I go like, well, I'm going to sit down with them and eat with them, we all know where this food came from. We all know that you just straggled in.
And there's, There's. There is an up and down kind of relationship there. That's not right. I mean, it's worse than the divide between an employer and an employee, because there. Because if we're all on the same team, we. We feel that. But there is a divide that happens in that kind of scenario that plays up what you're describing. I've. I have felt the same thing in giving money to a beggar and then praying for that beggar and feel like, what? This is. This is weird. Like there is not.
There's not a friendship that can develop there. There's not a. There's not a commonality of relationship. Anyways. I'm just repeating what you're already saying.
[00:26:08] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah. And what's beautiful, this keeps going. There's so many different examples. This one kind of expands what we can do if you read the next one in Leviticus.
[00:26:21] Speaker B: All right. Leviticus 25:35. If your brother becomes poor and cannot maintain himself with you, you shall support him as though he were a stranger and a sojourner, and he shall live with you. Whoops. Take no interest from him or profit, but fear your God that your brother may live beside you. You shall not lend him your money at interest, nor give him your food for profit.
I am Jehovah, your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God. If your brother becomes poor beside you and sells himself to you, you shall not make him serve as a slave. He shall be with you as a hired worker and as a sojourner. He shall serve with you until the year of jubilee. Then he shall go out from you. He and his children with him and go back to his own clan and return to the possession of his fathers. Really interesting passage.
[00:27:20] Speaker A: Yeah. So again, there is a clear warning, which I don't think we need in our culture. But don't exploit someone who's vulnerable. Like, do not take advantage of them.
But that to me isn't the most powerful piece in here. The most powerful piece is if your brother becomes poor.
You lend them money. Here's the first scenarios. You lend them money at no interest.
They didn't say, give them a handout.
Lend money, which means you. They give the money back to you.
And again, it's the same answer. Why, why not just, hey, your brother blew his business up and did something stupid. Why not just we can go fund me and give them a bunch of money and support them. Why not do that?
Why not just give them the money? Why give them a loan?
Same answer. Because when that, no matter what you were describing, it creates a power dynamic. If you were to give me a loan of, if you were to give me $20,000.
I don't care what I say, I don't care what you say. I now owe you a debt and our relationship, the power is going to be off. We are not going to be brothers. You are going to be, you know, it's like the mafia. They could do all these favors for you. Not because they care about you, because they're going to have power over you. And so that creates an unhealthy long term dynamic. Now if I blew up my life and I need a $20,000 loan and I came to you, Steven, and I said, I'm a brother and you would be like, my guess is you'd be like, you need $20,000. Why do you need $20,000? What did you do? It would provoke a conversation. It would provoke a relationship. It would provoke. You would get into my life and be like, you'd start sniffing around. Why? What happened? What is the problem? What do you need to repent of? What do you need wisdom on how can I help you? It would create a relation. You are wise enough not to just fork over 20 grand.
You, you would want to, you would wisely. And I would encourage anyone to get involved in that person's life and start discipling them. They just didn't blow up their life by accident.
Most likely they've done something and they need that coaching. And then you get in my life and you're go talk to this person. You need to get this in order. I get my life in order. Okay. And then I pay you back. How do I feel?
[00:29:43] Speaker B: Good.
[00:29:44] Speaker A: Thankful, whole. You got it. And how do you feel?
Good. You helped me get my life back together. Thank you. You were like, I helped him. Look, he's doing better.
It's a win, win, win, win. The way God has this whole system designed, we just don't realize how much harm we're doing in the Christian world when we give out handouts like we do.
And so it's so powerful. And even in the second passage of that Leviticus, it says, you know, if your brother becomes totally derails his life, he should move in with you.
Okay. And again, don't exploit him, but put him in your household and put him to work.
What's going to happen when someone moves in with you? Are you going to let them lay all day and watch tv? No, you're not. You're going to be like, dude, get up. When you're, I know you're, you're, you're. It's going to force this beautiful collision of a much needed discipleship, fathering, brothering.
And you just see the wisdom in this. And they're going to bring their kids around and they're like going to see, oh, there's some order and some rhythm in this home. And everyone's going to be.
And then you see the beauty of it and says at the end, right? You know, at some point, the year of jubilee, now you're going to release him. You're not going to make him a permanent slave. That's not your goal. It's a temporary assignment where they're going to get their life in order and you're going to help them and you're going to teach them and you're going to see every little thing about their life.
And we experienced this as a family. My dad, who's just a beautiful visionary, had this idea of building a cabin on a land and it happened right during COVID So everything was crazy shut down. And leading up to this, my brother was on very rough times. The previous two years he did suicide attempts and we loved him. We did everything we could, including handouts, getting him doctors, doing whatever we could. And nothing was changing.
And so we were like, you know, Adam, we're going to build this catam. You want to come with us? And I think he spent about a year and a half sitting on the couch, eating pizza and drinking pop.
Overweight.
Where was his self esteem? About literally low enough that he's willing to take his life. He came out, we lived in about 600 square feet my family, six kids, his family, four kids. Where was two rooms and one bathroom. Okay, like you can just imagine what this was like.
[00:32:17] Speaker B: But it was an.
[00:32:18] Speaker A: Every day we got up and we walked over to the job site and worked on this cabin. My dad, my brother in law and I and my kids and everybody else and my wife and his wife interacted and they, they were fantastic people. Like with, I just, everybody said, okay, we normally live this way, let's all submit to this living together thing.
And after three months, this was in 2020, now we're in 2025. He's since gone back, got his master's degree and has not had anywhere near those same problems. And all that changed was, you know, he helped build this cabin and now he builds stuff in his house. He'll send me pictures. Look what I did. You know, he had, we get like, you know, all the therapies in medicine, which again I'm not opposed to. They are, they can be super helpful. Don't over extreme what I'm saying, but start at the basics, like give a sense of purpose and a dignity. He was vital. We could not have built this cabin without him. And he learned all these skills. Again, it wasn't charity. Like he was a team member, a valuable team member.
And it changed his life. And I tell my dad all the time, I remind him, I said, dad, your vision and your willingness to let me, which I had never built a new house at that point. It was the first time ever. This is how you learn stuff in business. Your dad's like, I, I'll trust you and some teenagers and your brother, like, cool, you know what an act of love. It changed my life. It opened up doors for me to do stuff in business I couldn't do before. It just changed so much life. One father's vision and his willingness to do that.
It's such a powerful tool. Again, the point is this wisdom is in the Bible.
[00:33:59] Speaker B: You pointed out that it says he shall live with you.
And one of the things that I think about is how easy it is for us to just sprinkle a couple of bucks at people who are begging. And we feel that we have checked a box in our hearts that says I have dealt with the poor.
But the, the biblical requirement for dealing with the poor is much higher. It's much more demanding and it actually implicates your family brings your, the culture that you have curated as a father has to come into collision with, with the needy somehow. And I always remember Keith Green said, the only thing that's easier to give than money is nothing. I like the idea that we could get involved some way. I'll just speak for myself that since hearing you talk about the stuff and being convinced this is in the scriptures, I don't get. I don't do handouts anymore. But every time I come across a hand, a handout person, I always think to myself, God, would you reveal to me the truly poor that are in my life? And I mean widows, I mean fatherless men help me see who they are so I can really lay my life out for the poor that can come into the kingdom and know your heart because of the way that I interact with them. So there's these kind of, I don't know, we've come across.
I'm now thinking differently about the person that has, that wants a handout. And they, they almost have air quotes around them. To me, I walk by them. This is poor person. Like okay, I know they're posing as, as poor in some way and I know that they probably have needs for sure. But the way that I'm going to help them isn't by just throwing a dollar at them, et cetera.
[00:35:43] Speaker A: It makes it hard. But I also want to point out too, it says if your brother goes down, both of these verses are saying brother and I don't also, which is brother means there's a level of submission and agreement and things that go on. You are not going to bring chaos into your home of an unrepentant person. I don't want people doing that.
Like they have to be willing to submit to the lordship of Jesus. Right? Like and they, I mean you're not. This is why this takes a lot. This is way more costly. We can't swing this pendulum and bring chaos in our home. It's got to be someone who is soft hearted. Great point there. And this is not anybody and a brother. You do things differently for family. And that is, it implies a lot. It implies that they are willing to bend and give and change as well.
And that helps narrow down this. And we're going to get into this. It's like if we read the Bible, we're going to be let off the hook tremendously about who we have to actually help. Like so for example, if you read first Timothy here, it is a one of those verses, what the heck do you do with kind of verse first.
[00:36:57] Speaker B: Timothy 5 starting with verse 3, it's a longer passage, honor widows who are truly widows.
But if a widow has children or grandchildren, let them first learn to show godliness to their own household and to make some return to their parents, for this is pleasing in the sight of God. She who is truly a widow, left all alone, has set her hope on God and continues in supplications and prayers, night and day. But she who is self indulgent is dead even while she lives.
Command these things as well, so that they may be without reproach. But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever wife.
Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than 60 years of age, having been the wife of one husband and having a reputation for good works. If she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work. That's a pretty strict definition.
But refuse to enroll younger widows, for when their passions draw them away from Christ, they desire to marry and so incur condemnation for having abandoned their former faith.
Besides that, they learn to be idlers, going about from house to house. And not only idlers, but also gossips and busybodies, saying what they should not. So I would have younger widows marry, bear children, manage their households, and give the adversary no occasion for slander. For some have already strayed after Satan.
If any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her care for them. Let the church not be burdened so that it may care for those who are truly widows.
[00:38:54] Speaker A: Yeah, so a whole lot there.
Verse one, Love. He doesn't let women off the hook. They need to stay busy with their mission of being a wife and a mom and not being idle. So it's same principle for man or woman. Here. Here's another way we hurt. Like, if we want to be the hero. And this person who's asking for help has a family that's willing to help them. And we're like, no, no, no. Oh, they're like, but my dad is mean to me. Or my. Whatever this. They give you the sob story, like, oh, I understand. Let me help you.
What are you doing?
You're one God has created in order. No, no, you're. You should be like, how can I help you get back to your family? Because they are designed to help you. Because I don't want to be responsible for making your family worse than unbelievers.
I mean, seriously, think about that. If I go and rescue someone who has a family that's willing to help them, I'm putting shame on that family and I'm stepping out of God's order. God's like, do it this way. This is the way. There will be fruit involved in this whole thing. And so we want to take people and say, how do I push you back to your family? You know, again, there's always exceptions where the family is not safe. All these. There's always exceptions. And, you know, extremes in general. The principle, how do we get you back to your family so they can help you?
And again, I'm telling you, the poor and the homeless are very good at telling you the story that makes you feel like the hero. So inside of you, I know this. I've got a codependent personality. I like rescuing people. This is a dangerous trap to follow in here. They've seen this with missionaries too, and mission trips. That's why it's so hard for me wanting to go on mission trips now, because I'm like, gosh, am I hurting more than I'm helping?
And they found this. There's when helping hurts. If you read that book, they don't go into any of these verses, which was disappointing. But they understand this principle. And they tell stories of this garbage dump where people live. And these Christian missionaries have been going there for 50 years. And guess what? It's worse than when they started because they're just stripping people of their dignity and they're not giving them up. They're not creating opportunities for dignity and real systemic change.
And it's just hurting people.
So it is.
This is not one we walk away with, unfortunately, simple answers. This is one like what I would encourage people to do. Stevie, you could publish this list and you could midrash this with your community and let it soak in. You don't take your and I's discussion for it. Sit in front of the word. I've done this with many groups and it's always super enlightening, like, sit with this word here.
Let this shape you. Not my opinion, not Stephen's opinion. Let the word shape you, because then your foundation, you'll fall in love with the Bible because you're like, why is this. This is right in front of me, the wisdom. And again, I just have a sample of verses. This is throughout the whole Bible. These principles are consistent how they walk through here.
So it implies for us, and we've seen this in our community, there's been many examples where we have done this wrong and hurt people. And you and I have been involved personally in some of these where we gave handouts without requirements of work and it's destroyed people. And so it's changing the way we think about how we engage with this stuff.
[00:42:11] Speaker B: Well, may we be made wise by the Word. And I'm especially concerned about the things that we do in the name of compassion or having our heartstrings pulled by empathy and then actually doing something that is not godly as a response to it. So man, I I really like your encouragement to for people to we will put these in the show notes, all these passages and let people sit with them and midrash them and and ask the Lord, how do I how do I do charity in a way that builds the kingdom instead of destroying people? It's great stuff.
I told you Justin was going to confront some of your old held beliefs that we call Christian about what it means to give. I'm certainly challenged, as I said, by this way of thinking and I want to be somebody that invites people into dignified work, real relationship and actually builds them up in a way that they can rejoin or start building their own families in a way that that reflects God's heart for mercy.
So as family leaders, this challenges us to rethink how we give.
So dads, I'm just encouraging you to prayerfully audit your giving habits and ask God if there's a way to shift from a kind of handout mindset. Maybe you're supposed to mentor a young guy in need or you're supposed you're supposed to support programs that teach skills. I don't know. But we're we we want to be about building kingdom strong homes and that starts with stewarding our dough wisely.
If this episode hits a spark in you, I want you to join our crew of bros who are running hard after the kingdom. We'd love for you to subscribe, rate us on your podcast app, and share this with a dad who's ready to level up. If you have have thoughts on biblical giving or the way charity is supposed to work, we'd love for you to drop them in the comments or come talk to us over at ur, which is our forum for discussion.
By the way, I can't go without saying that sign ups for the Abrahamic Blueprint retreat are in full swing. So we want you to sign up and get a spot before those spots are gone. We want to see see you the weekend of November 21st through 23rd right here in Cincinnati, Ohio. I'm going to be there. Mark Parrott's going to be there. Our good gray beard friend David Sheldon is going to be there. He's available for friendship and prayer and he said great pastoral presence. I like to have some gray beards around.
We've also added somebody to the weekend named James Linhoff. If you don't know James, he lives in the Cincinnati area.
He's a founder of a, of a, of a financial firm called Wealth Quest, and he's the author of a book called Living a Rich Life. And he's going to be speaking to us about the value of failure.
The reason he's talking to us, by the way, is because he and I had a conversation this week and I was so turned on by what he said, like, you think you could come to the retreat? And he said, I do think think I could come. So that's going to be great.
I'm going to be talking about weight loss and blood tests and developing kids who can handle wealth and the, the kind of handoff that happens in the high school years with family and all sorts of interesting stuff.
Best of all, if you come to the Abrahamic Blueprint Retreat, best of all, you're going to be surrounded by Abrahams like you who are struggling just like you toward the high calling of building kingdom families for the glory of God. It's going to be a great weekend, so I'd love for you to sign up for
[email protected] retreat. Just go to that page, sign up right there. Bring a friend with you. Why not have your crew of two or three or four guys all come together? That'd be great.
Very grateful again to Justin Wolfenberg for giving us some bold truths. Until next time, run your home and your dough like a biblical boss.
