Part 1. Wealth breakers
He who loves pleasure will be a poor man; He who loves wine and oil will not be rich. (Proverbs 21:17 NKJV)
The love for pleasure and the love for status will erode any chance of building substantial wealth. Wealth is gathered through hard work, only to be washed away by pursuit of pleasure and status. There are many things that are obstacles or hindrances in creating and attaining wealth. Fortunately these things are self inflicted and can be corrected with application of correct financial principles. Many people live their financial lives like a man gathering water with a leaking bucket. The sad thing is that he knows where to gather water, but because the bucket is leaking, he has nothing to show for his gathering effort.
Negative effects of pleasure
Pleasure is extremely detrimental to building wealth because it can not be satisfied. For example, no matter how much you party, you can still party more. Therefore the pursuit of pleasure is limitless and bottomless. The problem is that your financial resources are not limitless. Therefore your are pursuing something infinite in nature with finite resources. For me that is a recipe for disaster.
If you love pleasure to an extent that you can not do without it, you will surely be poor. The problem is that we live in a time where we major on the minor, and minor on the major. We got our priorities twisted. We live for pleasure, instead of using pleasure to recreate so that we are refreshed to pursue important things.
We commit huge financial resource to parties and recreation but we don't have money to invest in our development, goals or families. We spent a lot of time and energy on pleasure to an extent that we have to use working hours to recover from our fun activities. We have the whole thing in reverse, and it shows in the bank balance.
Negative effects of status
However, most of us as Christians, we actually do not have much of a problem with excessive use of pleasure and wine. But what ruins our wealth is rather the love for status. We want people to see that we have 'arrived', so we announce this through flashy cars, clothes and other possessions. The sad thing is that all these are funded through debt. Secondly, big percentage of your income is committed to consumption and not building wealth.
The bible cautions about the pride of life in 1 John 2 v 16: '“For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world.” The pride of life is the outcome of being puffed up because of what you achieve, what you drive and where you stay. This is the root cause of cliques and factions, where the rich do not associate with the poor. This is worldly and not Godly. The result of the pride of life is that people will spend their last penny so that they can belong to a particular clique. This drives people to live way beyond their means because they want to belong.
The advent and proliferation of the prosperity preaching in the church has exasperated the matter. People are eager to show that they are blessed by financing their lifestyle with debt. The main problem is that people owe everything and own nothing. People are happy to drive the latest sedan from Germany but when you look at their net worth it is negative. The pursuit for status and pleasure has taken its toll, people are leaving beyond their means, people are deep in debt, and unfortunately poverty will be the result.
Deception of status
The great deception of status is that it gives you the appearance of riches while in fact you are poor and to be pitied. Like pleasure, status is an unending pursuit that wreaks wealth creation. This is another vicious cycle that leads only to poverty, because with status you always have to be current and fashionable. You have to drive the latest cars, use the latest smartphones, etc, otherwise you won't measure up and you might lose the status.
All of the above result in people living beyond their means and dabbling in excessive credit. Even though people achieve the look of being rich, they are in essence very poor. Instead of saving and investing to earn interest and dividends, we borrow and we pay the interest. Instead of investing a portion of our past and current earnings, we borrow from our future earnings. It is impossible to build wealth when you have already used money you have not yet earned. By the time you earn that money, the product you have purchased is either finished, broken, outdated, depreciated and/or worthless. At this time you have to buy another product with credit, which is the money you have not yet earned. This cycle continues until the future catches up with you and the reality will be unpleasant. Most Christians know how to overcome sin but they do not know how to overcome debt.
No comments:
Post a Comment