Thoughts on economic mercy

I've been enjoying the discourse on a young friend's FB post. Here are some thoughts they've inspired which are not intended to rebut anything anyone has said there, but are merely where I am as a result of their wonderful sharing. I have struggled of late with my inner longing to make radically different decisions than those which it seems my bride and I often choose.

God blesses us with many gifts in a variety of forms, and we take each one out of perspective and make it into something other than God intends. This certainly includes the gifts of personal responsibility and financial success.

• One way we misuse these is as an excuse to judge others' perceived shortcomings, to provide them with answers that "worked for us" that also just happen to be less demanding of us than living according to the grace and generosity of the Gospel. We tend to think that others are like ourselves, and that is largely true and very misleading, because there are many reasons why others may be unable to apply the answers that worked for us. 
• Another misuse of these gifts of God is to apply them to a different end than God intends, to a different goal than living our own lives in the grace and generosity of the Gospel. It is shortsighted, we say, to not build up our 401K to our target goal for our retirement, to not make our home down payment fund a high priority, to fail to invest in our future. We might even couch these decisions in terms of stewarding God's gifts - a valid approach when we're being accurate about that - when we're really making some of these goals into golden calves. Sometimes our approach to stewardship is too closely rooted in attempting to provide for our own security, as we gather more than our day's supply of manna. Of course, for Shabbat it's two days' supply, but we have lots of things which we rationalize are more important reasons than Shabbat for hoarding more than our daily bread. 
• One other abuse of God's gifts is to try to force them on others, especially those who have not accepted that they are God's beloved ones. Dare I try to legally force everyone to be generous to the poor in the name of economic justice? I must be generous, and must call others to be generous, but when I compel their generosity by force of law I rob them both financially and spiritually. This tendency has the same roots as every other overreach of power throughout history: even when primarily rooted in good-hearted desire for our brother, there is another root drawing malnourishment from our lack of humility and insistence that we will impose on others what we are convinced is best. So:
  • To what degree do we who believe in the scriptural mandate to care for the poor have a responsibility to compel our fellow citizens to do so through our legal institutions?
  • Is it right to ensconce in law those loving actions which God in his grace blesses us with the freedom to choose for ourselves in his Spirit or to reject?
  • When I make the government into the provider of people's needs, do I undermine the Gospel?
  (Those questions could inform another lengthy post.)

I know that I cannot share the Gospel with a starving person except first in the form of bread, and I have no bread to offer lest I appropriately steward it according to God's desires. But the purpose of my stewardship is not to fill up my storehouse so that I can be generous from it later.

Jesus never said, "Blessed are the rich, so strive to be like them." I don't care what 5 or 50 things rich people do that I don't, even rich Christians who are trying to help me be as successful as them. The rich have no corner on either generosity or (by any means) divine wisdom.

Now, the Holy Spirit? There is the One for me to heed, with regard to both my own decisions and my encouragement of others.