<img src="{filedir_1}creation-principles.jpg" style="border: 0;" alt="image" width="160" height="242" class="floatright" />I wonder if I have taught my young adult children what they need to know to navigate the financial issues they’ll face as adults. Have I given them biblical foundations so they can teach their children and grandchildren as well? So I’ve been re-reading Scripture and thinking about how the story of man’s relationship to finance and material things unfolded in biblical history. In other words, how did the generation led by Joshua and Caleb learn the principles Moses wrote down for them in the Pentateuch?  

Before the fall, in creation order, and in biblical/financial terminology, man is endowed with: 
<ul>
<li><i>Capital</i> – human capital including knowledge, skills and labor, as well as business capital in the form of land, garden crops, forests and livestock;
<li><i>Relationships</i> – community relationships but particularly family relationships;
<li><i>Creation responsibilities</i> – as God’s image-bearer and steward of the capital and relationships entrusted to him.
</ul> 

Even after the fall of Genesis 3 and Christ’s redemption, we are to continue to live out our responsibilities in relationship with the living God of creation, despite a world of sin, curses, enmity, pain, thorns, thistles, sweat, and dust.  

Like an Israelite father 2,400 years ago talking to an adult child who envisions things we can hardly imagine, we today want our children to know the foundational principles. Then with prayer and encouragement from us, they can figure out how to apply them in their generation, and how to pass principles on to the generation that follows after them.

The foundational principles of finances from the first three chapters of Genesis, which I have tried to teach my children, are as follows:
<ol>
<li><i>Value all mankind.</i> We are all made in God’s image. We must value as image-bearers both rich and poor, both foreigners and family, both the extraordinarily gifted and the disabled.</li>
<li><i>Care for others.</i> We have had this responsibility for taking care of each other... family and community... from the beginning.</li>  
<li><i>Manage God’s provision.</i> Save for winter and for seasons of drought and disaster. Spend less than you earn and there will always be food enough to share, and “seed to plantâ€ come spring.</li>
<li><i>Invest in the future.</i> The stresses families feel about finances have been around since Genesis. Our dependence and security lies in God’s grace.</li> 
</ol>

I think if these four principles were more central in our thinking, we would find ourselves more generous people, delighting to share the grace which has blessed even us in Christ. In the assurance Christ’s Spirit gives, we would also sleep more soundly, confidently ready to face tomorrow, despite the thorns and thistles in the day’s work. 

For a print version of the entire fall 2010 Stones of Remembrance, 
<a href="{filedir_1}SOR_ForWeb.pdf">download the pdf</a>.