Should Christians Save for Retirement?
00:00:00.000 | Well, all of our money is God's money.
00:00:08.720 | And that profound reality raises all sorts of questions about stewardship, like this
00:00:12.940 | question from a podcast listener named Colin, who finds himself in a tricky spot as he considers
00:00:17.680 | a career in financial counseling.
00:00:20.000 | "Pastor John, what would you say to a young man or a young woman who is interested in
00:00:23.600 | pursuing a career as a financial advisor?
00:00:26.580 | Could a Christian serve others by helping them plan financially for retirement, or do
00:00:31.120 | you think this is promoting an ungodly waste of retirement?
00:00:35.040 | I want to help others steward their money for Christ's sake, but our society's warped
00:00:39.040 | perspective on retirement makes me think twice about entering this profession.
00:00:43.440 | Can a Christian serve others and help them plan for retirement, even a very typical American
00:00:48.080 | retirement, with a clear conscience?
00:00:50.480 | Is financial planning a worthy Christian vocation?"
00:00:54.360 | If I didn't believe that financial planning was a worthy Christian vocation, I would not
00:01:00.760 | have spoken to the annual gathering of the Kingdom Advisors—that's their name, Kingdom
00:01:06.120 | Advisors, that's the conference anyway—the Kingdom Advisors a few weeks ago.
00:01:11.440 | In fact, if Colin isn't familiar with the Ron Blue Institute that sponsors that event,
00:01:20.960 | encouraging Christian financial planning for the last 30 years or so, I'd encourage
00:01:25.480 | him and others to check it out, the Ron Blue Institute.
00:01:29.440 | He's been giving his life to this for decades.
00:01:31.600 | In fact, I sat beside him at a dinner just before I spoke, and I asked him, "Can you
00:01:37.520 | put in one sentence what you've been about for 30 years?"
00:01:41.160 | He didn't even hesitate.
00:01:42.800 | He said, "God owns it all."
00:01:45.080 | That's it.
00:01:46.160 | In other words, it's not yours.
00:01:50.680 | Your money is not yours, period, which puts you in a very, very precarious position.
00:01:56.880 | It's God's, and you got it in your bank, in your pocket.
00:02:00.000 | Watch out.
00:02:01.000 | You might become a thief or a mismanager.
00:02:07.020 | God has given you the ability to obtain it, to be sure.
00:02:10.800 | That's why we make mistakes and think it's ours.
00:02:13.640 | And he's calling you to be a steward, a manager of it, not an owner.
00:02:19.500 | For his purposes, not your own private purposes.
00:02:22.960 | Money is currency, right?
00:02:26.240 | Meaning it's a culturally accepted medium of exchange for what you value.
00:02:33.840 | You don't want paper.
00:02:34.840 | I mean, what good is that?
00:02:36.160 | You can't eat it.
00:02:37.160 | You can't eat the metal in your pocket called coins.
00:02:40.040 | You can't eat the bytes on the internet that's supposedly what you got in the bank.
00:02:47.080 | I hope it's there anyway.
00:02:49.080 | Everything is done by online banking now.
00:02:52.520 | What is money anyway?
00:02:54.200 | It's just paper, it's metal, it's internet bytes.
00:02:59.320 | But how you move it around, what you trade it for signifies what you value.
00:03:07.240 | And therefore, money becomes a means of worship and witness and love or selfishness.
00:03:17.360 | So we can put out of our minds any thoughts that money intrinsically is evil.
00:03:24.440 | It is intrinsically dangerous because Jesus said it's hard for the rich to get into
00:03:29.840 | the kingdom of heaven.
00:03:31.200 | Money exerts a tremendous power to try to enslave us to this world.
00:03:37.240 | But if we are born again with new values, new preferences, new things that we cherish
00:03:45.560 | and treasure, if we're born again, money can become an instrument with which we show
00:03:51.680 | how we value God more than money and do much good for people in relation to God.
00:03:59.960 | Being a financial planner should mean, I think, for a Christian, that you have seen these
00:04:06.880 | things in the Bible and you want to help other people see them and act on them.
00:04:13.520 | But you really need convictional clarity if you're going to do this because you will
00:04:19.840 | get a lot of blowback.
00:04:22.880 | You say, Colin, our society's warped perspective on retirement makes me think twice about entering
00:04:29.440 | this profession.
00:04:30.440 | Well, good.
00:04:31.440 | I'm glad you think twice.
00:04:32.600 | I hope that you think a hundred times about it and that with every thought you turn to
00:04:37.360 | your Bible for wisdom and guidance.
00:04:39.920 | And I would suggest that you think of it this way.
00:04:42.320 | The very fact that there is a warped perspective on retirement, even among Christians, is a
00:04:47.640 | reason to become a financial planner, a Christian, a Bible-saturated financial planner, rather
00:04:56.680 | than a reason not to become one, unless you don't have any conviction or backbone.
00:05:02.280 | People need help.
00:05:04.320 | Rich people need help.
00:05:05.640 | They look powerful.
00:05:06.640 | They need help.
00:05:07.640 | They need to be shaken loose from the assumptions of our culture.
00:05:12.320 | And you can be a great help in that regard if you have the courage to speak to very wealthy
00:05:18.600 | people about what they should do with their money.
00:05:21.720 | And you need to settle it early.
00:05:24.720 | You won't be a typical financial planner who simply finds out the goals of his client and
00:05:30.120 | then helps him make that happen.
00:05:33.000 | You will want to shape those goals.
00:05:35.560 | If that's not what you want to do, then you won't be a Christian financial planner.
00:05:38.800 | You'll just be a jellyfish in the current of culture.
00:05:43.400 | If you don't have the courage to do this with very powerful people, then don't go into this
00:05:49.280 | field.
00:05:50.280 | You want to be a dolphin, not a jellyfish, when you're talking to the rich.
00:05:56.560 | I think a Christian financial planner should try to help people cast a vision for what
00:06:03.880 | retirement can be from a Christian view of the world and life.
00:06:11.080 | There is no such thing as retirement from ministry in the Bible.
00:06:15.680 | And everybody who's a Christian is a minister, that is serving people's needs by whatever
00:06:20.760 | gifts you have.
00:06:22.480 | You may stop doing one paid vocation.
00:06:25.520 | Our culture calls that retirement.
00:06:27.540 | Not a good word.
00:06:29.060 | But you never retire from active service in a world like ours that is so broken, so needy.
00:06:39.400 | I just read the story of George Mueller yesterday, who'd been pouring his life out for the needy,
00:06:48.560 | for orphans in particular, for about 30 years, no, about 50 years.
00:06:54.200 | So he turned 70.
00:06:56.220 | And for the next 20 years, he did what he wanted to do.
00:07:00.200 | He traveled 49 nations of the world preaching the gospel.
00:07:05.280 | And then he turned 95 and he came home and took up the pastorate again, no, I think at
00:07:10.200 | 90, and then he died at 95.
00:07:12.680 | What a crazy, wonderful, beautiful, countercultural vision of so-called retirement.
00:07:18.720 | So Colin, when you close by asking, "Can a Christian serve others and help them plan
00:07:25.960 | for retirement, even a very typical American retirement with a clear conscience?"
00:07:33.960 | My answer is no, no, no.
00:07:37.000 | No.
00:07:38.000 | Your aim is not to counsel a typical American retirement.
00:07:43.240 | You want people to break free from that.
00:07:45.680 | You will encourage people not to prioritize playing and leisure, but to prioritize serving
00:07:54.520 | and ministry.
00:07:56.760 | You will become a specialist, and I could use your help.
00:08:01.040 | Any could, a specialist in helping people know ways to use their money wisely to maximize
00:08:10.680 | that kind of active ministry-oriented end-of-life season.
00:08:17.120 | You had me going there for a moment talking about internet bites.
00:08:19.720 | I thought you were about to drop a Bitcoin mention and talk cryptocurrency.
00:08:24.000 | I don't even know enough about that to talk about it.
00:08:26.800 | Right.
00:08:27.800 | Okay, I figured not.
00:08:28.800 | Thank you, Pastor John.
00:08:30.040 | And thanks for listening to us today.
00:08:31.640 | We appreciate all of you that listen along each week.
00:08:34.320 | This is our 13th episode now on money, and you can find all of those past episodes on
00:08:39.000 | money in our podcast archive at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:08:43.680 | There you can explore all of our now 1,200 past episodes.
00:08:47.760 | You can scan through a list of our most popular episodes and read full transcripts, even send
00:08:52.040 | us a question of your own there at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.
00:08:57.880 | And of course, to get new episodes delivered to you three times per week, subscribe to
00:09:01.240 | Ask Pastor John and your favorite podcast player.
00:09:04.000 | Well, what counsel do we have for Christians who live under a perpetual fear of death?
00:09:09.120 | And I'm not talking about those with terminal illness, but Christians who struggle with
00:09:13.440 | this fear on a daily basis.
00:09:16.240 | The struggle is real for many Christians out there.
00:09:19.120 | We get a lot of emails from you, and that's up next on the podcast.
00:09:23.120 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke, and on behalf of John Piper, we'll see you on Wednesday.
00:09:27.400 | Thanks for listening.
00:09:28.400 | [END]
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