Your Money or Your Life: A New Look at Jesus' View of Wealth and Power

By John F. Alexander

A Book for Everyone Who Wants to Take Jesus Seriously I used to say that Christians spend half their time explaining why Jesus couldn't possibly have meant what he clearly said, but I'm afraid I was mistaken. We Christians don't have to explain away what Jesus said; we don't notice it in the first place. Jesus talked about loving God with your whole being (which is beyond imagining) and loving your neighbor as yourself. He talked about taking up your cross, about giving your cloak as well as your coat, about going a second mile, and about loaning to those who ask. He told us to exchange for a pearl of great price, and leave concern for our food and clothing to God. But we just carry on.... In short, Christians operate mostly in the pragmatic realm of money and power. If we want to lead a full life, we expect to spend a lot of money. If we want to reform the world, we try to do it by using money and power. It does not occur to us that the realm of darkness could better be resisted by the weapons of another realm - by servanthood, weakness, prayer, and truth. For we fight not against flesh and blood. But we modern people are not resisting darkness or fighting evil; we are working for progress, and we will do so comfortably, negotiating from strength. The suffering servant is a religious oddity, from another realm. So we reject that realm, thereby choosing shallowness and perpetuating hollowness. But for people concerned for the world or themselves, for people who sense the inadequacy of our pragmatic efforts at improvement, wisdom from another realm deserves to be explored - at least by Christians. Encouraging that exploration is what this book is about.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 159752106X
• ISBN13: 9781597521062
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: Wipf & Stock Publishers
• Length: 261 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.0" x 8.6"

Customer Reviews

Not to be confused with...

The first edition of this excellent book I believe pre-dated the better known book called "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, and is not related to that book in any way, although I would call both worthwhile. I have read the earlier version of Alexander's book more than once (unusual for me), because I thoroughly enjoyed his writing style and found the book extremely thought provoking. Alexander neither condemns nor condones money, as a matter of fact, he keeps saying that we are asking the wrong questions, and has a way of changing the context to questions larger than "how much should I have?" or other typical "mother may I" questions that get asked in the Christian culture about money. He also weaves in soul-baring financial confessions about what he spends his own money on, and the values he must weigh out to reach those decisions. This is neither a "how to" book or a Bible study. It is a very worthwhile and hard-to-put down conversation about the role of money and power in our lives. Alexander reaches some provoking conclusions, such as observing "power" in societal roles that we would normally not describe that way, and noting our ignorance and failure to rescue the starving poor as a way of maintaining our sanity. If we had a constant awareness of the suffering of our brothers and sisters and did not help them we would be monsters. And so we block the suffering from our conscious mind so that we can live with ourselves, because, after all, we are "nice" people... aren't we?