Once you’ve found a place to start reading the Bible, the next step is to learn to read for detail. The best way to accomplish this, of course, is through repetition over the course of your life. I have read the Bible cover to cover many times at this point, and new stuff leaps out at me each time. A good starting point for reading for detail is to ask the same questions that drive journalism—the who, what, why, when, and where. Not every passage contains all five of these elements near at hand—many of the Psalms come to us with next to zero obvious clues about who specifically wrote them at what moment in time. However, taking a moment to consider what sort of person in general wrote it and how their time might differ from ours is still a useful exercise. For the stories of the Bible, these blanks are easier to fill; they usually have everything right there. Some parts of the Bible rely on an understanding of other parts of the Bible to decipher. Paul’s letters make much more sense with the events of Acts in mind. Many of the prophetic books (like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the 12 minor prophets) in the second half of the Old Testament make little sense without at least a cursory glance at the history books that come earlier. While you can follow the basic story of the Gospels easily enough in isolation, it’s easier to absorb more of what Jesus has to say after at least a cursory trip through the five books of Moses. Revelation is well-nigh indecipherable without Daniel and a number of other Old Testament books. This brings me to an important point: “A text without context is only a pretext.” If you are struggling to understand what you’re reading, try casting a wider net. Read the chapter before and after it. If you’re still stuck, read the whole book and come back to it. There are many things in the Bible which become clear when you read what’s next to them. Taking a single verse out of context is a great way to get the Bible to say whatever you want it to, rather than respecting what the text is actually trying to say. The greatest danger in reading Daniel and Revelation, for example, is to skip over the data in the text to jump to conclusions. I grow weary of hearing about all the different theories about the antichrist and the mark of the beast. The first time I read Revelation, I was struck by what a great story it was about Jesus vanquishing the forces of evil. So often when people study Bible prophecy, they miss the large arc of the story in their quest to validate their pet theories. The details you pick up on will largely be determined by your life experience so far. I’m glad I started reading the Bible early, because the older we get, the more preconceived notions we have about the Bible and its contents. Some of these come from sermons, some come from movies, some come from Sabbath school classes, and so much filters in from the general culture. When a child reads the Bible, they may not understand everything they read, but they’re bound to notice a few things many adults aren’t willing to admit are in the text. For example, the first time I read Song of Songs, I was in the 4th grade. I didn’t understand the majority of its details, but I could plainly see that it was a beautiful and passionate poem about romantic love. It kind of reminded me of Shakespeare’s sonnets, which I had also read for the first time that year. (I was a very precocious 4th grader.) Imagine my surprise when I revisited Song of Songs in college to work out some of the detail that had previously eluded me, only to discover that various commentators thought it was a drama, a funerary text, or an allegory. One woman at a camp meeting even tried to tell me it was about a unicorn hunt. She actually gave me a typewritten paper about her theory, which I now keep in one of my favorite Bibles as a reminder not to do the same sort of thing. There is value to looking at scripture from odd angles, but those cannot be safely explored until we actually look at the text. I am convinced that Song of Songs in particular suffers a good deal of abuse because people are uncomfortable with its plain meaning. It explores a side of human nature that many Christians are brought up not to see as beautiful and good, but shameful. The intense emotions of the poetic passages of the Bible challenge the idea of an exclusively intellectual, disembodied faith. Until we can accept the emotions of the passage as written, we have no business veering off into allegorical territory. Even if the comparison were valid (Jesus does actually use Song of Songs allegorically later on), it would have little to teach us once deprived of its emotional depth. The process of noticing details may be mostly a head thing, but over time, it changes our hearts because emotions are a part of the data. If you really want to get into the text, you intentionally engage with it emotionally. That is what we will discuss next week. However, you cannot skip this week’s process. If we take the Bible seriously as truth, it behooves us to make an effort to listen to the actual content of the words instead of skipping straight to the emotional part. There’s a reason why, in Hebrew, the word “know” was also used for intimacy; true love involves learning and familiarity far more than it involves pleasant feelings. Fortunately, the feelings tend to follow, and when they come from a place of knowledge, their roots run far deeper than a brief infatuation.
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As I wrap up this week’s focus on finances, I would like to share some tips for eating well on a budget. Food is probably the most elastic expense that exists—in New York, it is possible to pay either $2 or $2,000 for pizza, depending on where you look. In that case, the price difference has to do with ingredients (the $2,000 pizza contains truffle oil and flakes of gold), but more often it has to do with time.
Generally, there is a tradeoff between how much you pay for food and how long it takes you to prepare. I always laugh at the grocery store when I see pre-cut vegetables going for five times what they cost in their natural form, but I suppose that to some people, the tradeoff is worth it. If you are buying these things because you don’t actually know how to cut your favorite vegetables, it’s worth your time to learn. For example, if you buy baby carrots, you could be saving yourself a ridiculous amount of money by cutting your own carrot sticks from the enormous bags they sell. Contrary to popular opinion, there is no difference between baby carrots and ordinary ones other than the shape. Baby carrots are just ordinary carrots that have been turned on a lathe. You don’t need to tackle every fruit and vegetable in your diet right away, but start with whatever you eat most often and go from there. I would be in big trouble if I didn’t know what to do with tomatoes. I actually know what to do with a pineapple, but it’s a skill I only get to enjoy using once or twice a year. Another enormous savings is to learn how to make your own beans. Beans are a wonderful source of protein and other nutrients for vegetarians, and they are way less expensive to purchase dried than canned. They don’t even take that much active time to prepare—you put them in your slow cooker/pressure cooker/pot of boiling water with whatever spices you desire and voila! Without demanding much active attention, you have yourself some delicious homemade beans to enjoy. Making things from scratch isn’t always worth it, of course. The biggest exception I see to this rule is every kind of bread that requires yeast. Some people consider baking bread to be a relaxing hobby, but it is technique-driven enough and costs enough time that it’s really not worth doing for merely financial reasons. Flatbread, on the other hand, is so fast and easy to make that once you learn how to do it, you wonder how others get away with charging so much for it. I am not in a position to comment on the price of meat, but I can say from experience that meat substitutes are way more expensive than vegetarian protein sources that are closer to nature. Legumes and tofu simply do not cost nearly as much as Stripples, Grillers, breakfast patties, and a number of other delicious things my Adventist brethren are good at manufacturing. These are nice for special occasions, but they cost way more and aren’t as good for you as less-processed plants. I’m not a vegan, but I’m the first to admit that the highest-priced item on my regular shopping list is cheese. For that reason, even if you do enjoy dairy, it’s good for both your budget and your waistline to make it an accent, rather than the center of a meal. A sprinkling of cheese goes a long way if you do not make your diet cheese-centric. A balanced meal includes protein, fat, carbohydrates (yes, you actually need some of those), and a hearty does of micronutrients from fruits and vegetables. Letting any one of those groups take over entirely is bad for your health, so striving for balance puts cheese and other treats in their proper place. It’s helpful for both health and finance to retrain your appetite to crave empty calories less. A little bit of junk food won’t kill you, but every calorie (and dollar) you spend on soda, ice cream, or Pringles (love those) is space that’s not going to stuff you need from another category. The greatest waste of calories is undoubtedly alcohol, which doesn’t only fail to contribute much nutritionally, but also actively works as poison over time. More than anything, teaching yourself how to cook is your best bet for healthy, affordable eating. Weaning yourself off of eating out or premade microwave/oven goodies will save you money over time. Don’t be scared off by complex recipes with tons of ingredients: focus on basic cooking techniques that you can build on over time, such as knife work, boiling, roasting, baking, blending, and sautéing. Once you have those basics down, you can experiment with what you like until you’re making your own recipes from whatever you can find. The better you master the basics, the more you can try later. There are several great online resources for learning basic cooking techniques. When confronted with an ingredient I don’t know very well, I make great use of allrecipes.com, foodnetwork.com, and occasionally wikihow.com as well. These three sites have well-illustrated, easy-to-follow instructions for basic cooking techniques. If you want to get fancy with your plant-based cooking, https://westcovinahills.adventistfaith.org/recipes is a good resource with some truly delicious recipes that I am way too lazy to make myself, but have enjoyed when prepared by others. There are some great videos on various health topics there as well. Enjoy! No discussion of finances and frugality is complete without addressing the issue of the social mirror. The social mirror is how you perceive yourself in relationship to others. If everyone you know is at about your same level of income or just as frugal as you, it’s easier to live simply. You choose your priorities and focus on them. The season of my life in which I was making $1200 a month was rough, but I was humbled by the daily visual reminder that things could be worse: the family next door to us had three young children to care for on top of the same expenses we had. Many of my fellow graduate students were parenting with no stipend of any kind. On the other hand, if you are surrounded by people who are financially better off (or even just spendier) than you, things can get very frustrating very quickly. It is possible to be at the height of one’s earning power and creature comforts without being able to enjoy it because you feel poor compared to your friends. In high school, I enjoyed all kinds of pleasures I can’t afford now, but most of my friends came from better-off families. In my better moments, I could roll my eyes at the cash thrown at school banquets. Spending over $100 for a dress meant to be worn at just one banquet really is kind of silly, and I was proud of my ability to find equally gorgeous gowns at local thrift stores for ridiculously low prices. Other times. . . of course it bothered me. I’m only human, after all. I could easily sidetrack into a number of examples of this, but it’s not worth dwelling on because, at the end of the day, financial diversity is just a part of life. People are not good or bad based on their financial status, and why shouldn’t those who are better off enjoy what they have? Also, any accounting of those frustrations would distort the fact that having better-off friends gave me a number of enjoyable experiences I would not have had otherwise. The social mirror is like a fun house mirror: it can distort the real picture of how well you are (or aren’t) doing. If you constantly compare yourself to your better-off friends, you will not as easily enjoy what you do have. If you constantly compare yourself to your friends who are having a hard time financially, you may find yourself growing arrogant about your own financial skills and status. If you “keep your eyes on your own paper,” as your elementary teacher would say, you’re more likely to see and use your money well. Simplicity can be empowering because it gives you permission to remind yourself that your goals are more important than the social mirror. You are more important than the social mirror. You are no less of a person because you either can’t or choose not to spend money at the same rate as your peers. The more you discipline yourself in this kind of focus, the more you will be suited to enjoy money if and when you do have plenty. There are few things as satisfying as purchasing something you truly desire for yourself, knowing you can actually afford it because you made more disciplined choices earlier on. There’s more pleasure in enjoying something you actually waited for and earned than in something you mindlessly bought to keep up with others and will have to continue paying for over the course of time. Because I buy used cars to be able to pay in cash, I have never personally owned a new car. Would I like a nicer car? Sure! However, I take a great deal of joy from knowing that if I lose my car in an accident, I won’t be stuck making payments to a bank for a car that no longer exists. My fully owned Ford Fiesta is more precious in my sight than a Lamborghini with a loan the size of a small mortgage. Dave Ramsey is fond of saying in his Financial Peace University, “If you live like no one else, someday day you can live like no one else.” Living frugally around spendy people can feel strange, but having the discipline to live within your means around rich or spendy people now will put you on a better footing to enjoy more later on. It also gives you clearer vision with which to evaluate what you’re getting. Sometimes, the less expensive things are legitimately more enjoyable than their pricier counterparts, which only cost more because of cultural or social prejudices. One of the opportunities of our current situation is to practice building the financial habits you want without so many of those prejudices getting in the way. While we all mourn the social connection of all the activities we miss, this is a great time to figure out what actually matters and what you do only to appease others. A game night at someone’s house meets the same social needs as going out to a restaurant. Both are equally forbidden right now, but when quarantine breaks, you will get to decide which one is most worth it at its price. Having the clarity to evaluate and enjoy things on their own merits instead of their assigned value from the social mirror can give you a beautiful sort of peace that is entirely unrelated to your financial status. Money buys you options, but not all options are worth taking, even when you can afford them. Some of the best things in life cannot be purchased, and the ability to appreciate that is a priceless treasure. I briefly touched on the topic of frugal living in yesterday’s post, but truly, it is enough of a science to fill volumes. Whole blogs have been written solely on this particular topic. Instead of getting bogged down with the details, then, I would like to outline the guiding principle behind frugal living: simplicity.
Simplicity is the notion of spending no more or less than we have to in order to accomplish intentional goals. While this categorically forbids unbridled consumerism, there is a good deal of variation within the principle to allow for a wide range of income levels and lifestyles. At its core, simplicity is about being intentional with every aspect of one’s life. Because intentionality takes some real mental effort, sometimes it feels quite complicated. However, taking control of one’s life, including one’s finances, is a far preferable state of affairs to the complexities that arise from unintentional living. Failing to practice intentional simplicity leads to impulse buying, waste, and generally a greater number of financial emergencies. Not all financial emergencies stem from this—life is complicated, and there are many circumstances one can’t control. Being deliberate wherever possible, though, mitigates much of life’s unpredictability. Money is tied to emotions, and few things reveal values quite like a bank statement. It doesn’t give the entire picture, of course (schedules are often equally revealing, if not more so). The art of frugal living is, first and foremost, to draw distinctions between wants and needs—and then to focus vigorously on the needs as the first priority. For example, I need to eat. I want to eat out with friends, to try every random ingredient in the grocery store, and to try one of those fancy meal services that deliver to your door, but I don’t need any of those things. If I can afford to do so, there may be good reasons to pursue some of those wants from time to time, but they are unrelated to the legitimate biological need to eat to survive. Those wants are actually about other kinds of needs and desires, such as social connection, expressing creativity, and convenience—which may be possible to fulfill in another way. The easiest needs to start considering are the physical. As human beings, we need food, shelter, a little clothing, and some medical care to get by. We don’t need the last one all the time, but getting blindsided by a need in that area or failing to do preventative maintenance on our health can be way more costly in the long run than actually spending the money on some basic health insurance in the first place. This is also, incidentally, where the question of food can be complicated. Once upon a time, I was actually too poor to afford much in the way of fruits and vegetables. My meals were almost uniformly rice, pasta, Ramen, boxed Mac and Cheese, or something else of that nature. Aaaaand that’s how I gained the 90 pounds that I’m now working earnestly to shed. I’m young and still have the ability to bounce back from that, but decades of eating a poverty diet can do irreparable damage. With time and experience, I have learned low-cost ways to eat better than I did then, but there’s only so much you can do when you make $1200 a month and $750 of that is going into rent before you even consider other concerns like health insurance, a working phone, Wifi, or textbooks for your graduate school classes. One of the messiest struggles in striving for financial simplicity, then, is to ensure that you balance the financial concerns of the moment with those of the future. It’s easy, for example, to get really cheap clothing if you know where to look—but you may end up paying more in the long run, depending on what it is. I could still be wearing some of my 2-Euro shirts from 10 years ago if I hadn’t gained weight, but a cheap item I bought a few months ago from Walmart is already in appalling shape. The wardrobe items worth spending good money on are the workhorse items—the stuff you wear almost all the time. This means undergarments, basic pairs of pants, and the neutral pieces that can go with almost anything (like, say, a sturdy pair of black dress shoes). Yes, those things are boring compared to the colorful shirts, dresses, and accent pieces that can be easy to buy on impulse, but accent pieces don’t wear out as quickly as basics. If you crave more color, try thrifting or praying for a gift card. This hits on something that seriously affects the way most people get lured into breaking their commitment to frugality: the social mirror. Because this is a big enough topic on its own for its own piece, we will leave it for tomorrow. Meanwhile, the art of sifting wants from needs is to identify what you really can and cannot live without. When we learn to make that distinction, we are freed from the cycle of consumerism and can better appreciate the comforts we already enjoy. Frugality is less about self-denial than it is about living deliberately and spending money where it actually counts. Many have asked the question of whether the stay-at-home measures have been worth it, given their cost to the economy and to morale. I would unequivocally say “Yes, they are—human lives are always worth it.” However, I can’t deny the economic impact of this thing.
I’m no financial planner or accounting genius. I’m not even a certified financial educator of any kind. However, over the years I have picked up a few basics—some from David Ramsey’s Financial Peace University and some from trial and error—about how to get and keep one’s finances in line. These basic, commonsense things may not be enough to bail a person out of a truly dire situation like a job loss or a foreclosure, but applied over time, they can at least offer some skills with which to approach these things. The most basic, important part of the picture is deceptively simple: assess your current financial picture. How much is coming in? How much is going out? How much debt are you carrying? What do you have saved? This can be a very scary thing to do if it’s been a while. While I’ve never personally been farther than a month behind on a given bill (and never more than one at a time), I’ve seen others suffer the terror of staring down their pile of financial commitments with little idea of where to begin. I know that feeling: I get it every time I am asked to sort a bin of items from the garage. Remain calm. Take a deep breath; you can do this if you don’t panic. Start by looking at how much money you actually have readily available before doing anything as dire as cashing out your retirement, if you have it. If the number is frighteningly low, take another deep breath and drink a glass of water. Write the number down, since it is a major factor in what you do next. If the number is lower than $1,000, you definitely have a lot of work to do. Next, take a good look at your sources of income. This is easy if, like me, you’re salaried and your paychecks are relatively similar from one pay period to the next. If you are a gig worker, make note of the seasonal fluctuations you experience in income and try to find any patterns. If these numbers scare you a bit, take another deep breath and remind yourself not to panic. Write it all down. After this, add up the bare minimum expenses you need to pay to stay alive. By this I mean such things as food, shelter, clothing, health insurance, and transportation to whatever you do for work. In calculating this number, do not shoot for what it would take to live well in these categories, but for the bare minimum you need to stay alive. For example, food can be crazy cheap or crazy expensive depending on how you go about it, and the only clothing that belongs in this category is what keeps you from going naked, ragged, cold, overheated, or job-threateningly unprofessional. “Professional” is a subjective term relative to whatever your profession happens to be, but generally it means that your stuff doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb compared to whatever your colleagues happen to be wearing. Transportation at this level is the bare minimum it takes for you to obtain supplies and to arrive safely at your job. Shelter is more complicated. Because moving is expensive and the financial agreements surrounding housing are intricate pieces of work, jot down your expense for shelter as whatever your current mortgage payment or rent is. They include things like property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, or HOA fees for the property in which you live. If you own more than one property, you are at a level that likely doesn’t need such basic advice. Unfortunately, shelter is often irreducibly expensive and hard to change without such drastic measures as obtaining a roommate, waiting for a lease to end, selling your house, or forcibly being removed from your domicile. If, before even working on your debt or past bills, your most stripped-down survival number is higher than your income number, then you need more income. You need a higher paying job or you need an extra one. This is easier said than done, of course, but the attempt must be made. Dust off your resume, earnestly seek out listings, and apply everywhere. At this level, you likely qualify for some form of assistance from either the government or a local food pantry. Swallow your pride and take it; you will pay the system back when you get back on your feet. If you are one of my church members and you are at this level, please let us know about it privately so we can help you survive. Next comes the truly terrifying part: pull together all your loan documents and unopened bills to figure out what you owe. This number has the power to depress you a bit, but you need to know what it is to start attacking it. You cannot fight a monster you cannot see. Write down every debt, no matter how small and no matter how large. Write down their minimum payments and add that to the previous number. If what you get from that is higher than your income, you need more income on a consistent basis and you need to avoid contracting new loans at all costs. For the rest of it, there are shorter-term things you can do to get that number down. Sell everything you can think of to sell and use the proceeds to get rid of the smallest debts first. Why the smallest? Because it’s one less item collecting interest, thus freeing up more income to tackle the larger ones. Even if a payment on something is low, killing it frees up resources to take on the big things. This is the situation in which extra temp jobs and more gig work can be genuinely useful. If you can really put your nose to the grindstone for a season and intensely work at this, eventually you can reduce the number of payments coming out of your more regular income and even get out of basic survival mode. Once you’ve built it up, keep a buffer of at least $1,000 in your account, just in case you have an unforeseen emergency. After that, though, every spare dollar needs to go towards getting rid of as many debts as you can. When your only remaining debt is your mortgage, you can ease up a bit; while it’s good to try to pay it off early (even $20 extra a month can make a difference), you need to counterbalance that with quality of life issues and building a stronger emergency fund. In this economy, finding work, even on a temp basis, is easier said than done, of course, and the work that’s available right now comes with risks. Those risks are likely not worth it to chip away at debt, but if you’re not even meeting your basic survival expenses, it could be more than worth it. If you figure out where you stand now, you will be in a better position to take advantage of any opportunities you find from here on out, and you can be more intentional with your money in general. Hopefully, by now you’ve incorporated more enjoyment of the Bible into your Sabbath. Few things are so beautifully aligned with the purpose of the Sabbath as enjoying the Bible. It’s a great time to remember all of God’s good works in history and to enjoy the crazy stories the Bible tells. Once you have started to enjoy reading the Bible on your own, you might find yourself wanting to get more out of your time reading it. I’m not talking about the academic study of the Bible, important as that is. While that may be an enjoyable hobby for you to pursue on the Sabbath, for me it’s a part of my paid work and I avoid doing it on Sabbath. Commentaries, philosophy, histories of interpretation, and the original languages of the Bible all have their useful place, but I’m talking about how to get more out of staring at just the text in a comfortable translation without calling on such aids. The next few Fridays, we will discuss how to get the most enjoyment out of the time you spend with the Bible. For starters, find a translation that’s comfortable for you to read. The King James Version is an excellent translation—into Middle English, which we don’t speak anymore. English vocabulary and usage have changed a good deal since then, so when you read it, you’re not just dealing with the language barrier of reading a translation but with your own understanding of archaic English. This lovely translation has its uses in formal, ceremonial contexts, but if you’re trying to enjoy the Bible on your own, try going with a more comfortable translation, like NASB (which Ellen White used in her original manuscripts), NIV, NKJV, CEB, NLT, or even a paraphrase like the Message or the Living Bible. While the latter two aren’t great for serious academic study, they’re fine for devotional reading. Next, pick out where in the Bible you want to read. There are many different ways of choosing, but for someone who’s just starting out I would recommend taking note of texts you hear used in the real world and looking them up for yourself. For example, if your pastor preaches on a passage, check it out for yourself. If there’s a small group meeting virtually who’s going through a book, try out that book. Your personal study will enrich what you get out of these sources. For example, my church is currently going through the book of Acts at a rate of 19-21 verses each Thursday on Facebook. I wrote study guides for it and my senior pastor is giving the actual study, but you’ll get even more out of it if you look at it for yourself. The Sabbath School quarterlies for all ages are based on the Bible. It’s good to look up the texts mentioned in them on your own to evaluate whether you agree with what’s being said about those passages. What’s good about going in that direction is that it gives you more of a chance to evaluate what you hear. I’m not saying you should judge your local pastor’s every sentence; preaching is hard enough without facing word-by-word scrutiny. However, pastors are human and make mistakes. Reading on your own gives you a buffer for that. Also, everyone gets something different from the same passage. When you hear a sermon, you hear the preacher’s perspective, which generally has more study and preparation involved, but you may need to hear something different from that very passage than what the preacher has to say about it that particular week. Once you’re more comfortable reading the Bible on your own, you can tackle specific books or even go the whole hog and try to read the entire Bible in order. I do not recommend trying the latter on your own until you’ve gained some small victories in the form of reading a few books that interest you. Some great starter books are the four Gospels; the short but colorful books of Esther, Ruth, or Jonah; or Genesis with its familiar stories. One fun thing to try is to read a short book—perhaps one of the shorter letters from the New Testament or one of the Minor Prophets from the Old—every day for a month. You will notice new and different things each time. I spent a month in Nahum once and while I didn’t understand it very well until I got into commentaries, I found its imagery very striking. Another approach that’s worth doing once is to find a chronological Bible reading plan on YouVersion or elsewhere. As you may be aware, the Bible is not exactly arranged in the order in which events occurred. Genesis through 2 Chronicles is relatively straightforward that way, but after that things get strange. Jeremiah, for example, is nowhere near the sections of Kings and Chronicles that happen at the same time, and there is a wealth of material in Psalms and the other poetry books that make more sense if considered alongside the events of King David’s reign. Some of these reading plans are based on guesswork, but any plan that gets the poetry books closer to the events they’re written about can help clarify their meaning. Wherever you decide to begin, the main point is that you start and keep reading. You may have to move to something different if you discover that it’s not your speed, but what matters is consistent time with the Word of God. As you grow in your familiarity with the Bible, you will eventually get to the point where you can open the Bible up to any page and find something to enjoy. Until then, master what’s in your comfort zone until you can branch out. The beauty of the Bible is that a single chapter of it contains more than a lifetime’s worth of truth to learn. How do you dig for that stuff? We’ll talk more about it next week. |
AuthorJillian Lutes is the youth pastor at West Covina Hills Seventh-day Adventist Church. Archives
May 2020
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