Eric Folkerth

When Dennise and I moved back to into our house, we realized we needed to downsize, since it was one-room smaller than where we had been living. So, before we boxed up anything, we designated a room to store (dump, really) everything we might want to give away.

After a month or so of stashing stuff, we took stock. And we were horrified to find we had gathered up enough possessions to furnish an entire one-bedroom apartment.
I mean, EVERYTHING you could need…and more…

Bed…desk…dresser…full closet-worth of clothes…sheets, blankets, towels…dishes…kitchen utensils, plates/cups…bathroom supplies.

This was “stuff” we’d clearly accumulated, over time. Stuff we, once-upon-a-time, told ourselves we really needed. And yet stuff we could, clearly, do without.

We literally gave away enough “stuff” for an entire human to live on.

And now, almost a decade later, I can still say: We never missed a single item from that room.

Without the sudden death at the end, that’s basically the point of Jesus’ parable of the “Rich Fool;” who, instead of giving away the riches he has accumulated, decides to “build bigger barns” instead.

Read it here.

He has a decision-point, and in Jesus’ telling, talks it over in his head:
Give away to others?
Or “build bigger barns?”

He chooses the latter. And, that very night, he dies.

“You can’t take it with you,” as the trite expression goes.

Or, as Jesus says it in the “moral” the parable:

"And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’….So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

After every disaster —like our recent Hill Country floods— there are dozens of appeals for funds, and dozens of scammers who suggest ways to “help.” Parallel, in every era, there are scads of Christian preachers telling you that the way to “get salvation” is to send all your money to them.

We should most definitely try to avoid being scammed, as we can.
But, we should also understand a hard point I often repeat:

If we are truly generous with the resources God has given us, from time to time we WILL be taken advantage of.
But….give, anyway.

My own view is that America’s charitable giving often falls victim to a market-based approach that creates its own kind of negative “scarcity” mentality. To avoid the feeling that our charitable gifts are being misused, we can become hyper-vigilant with the giving of grants we make, collectively and individually.

We pile on the requirements for poor little non-profits who desperately need just need cash.
Politicians add needless requirements to public sector social services, in an effort to save the taxpayer money, or justify their own jobs.

In these two last sentences, I am thinking much about Ezra Klein’s recent book on “Abundance.”1 He is mostly writing about the excessive burden of government regulations that slows, really almost stops, things such housing density.

But the same mindset is found in the charitable world too.

To me, this all begins by placing market-based framework on top of a non-profit or charitable world. In the past fifty years, it’s become the assumed way almost all charitable giving happens.

What I’m trying to point out today, is a corrosive effect at the heart of all this, and connect it to that poor, rich, dead man with bigger barns full of stuff he’ll never get to use.

Our Western economic system is built on a market-based approach. I doubt anyone would argue with that sentence. But parallel to this, and reinforcing it, is the so-called “Protestant Work Ethic,” that preaches at everyone —at all levels of the economy— that hard work is always rewarded, and that the blessings of material wealth should go to those who “work hard” and therefore “deserve” them.

Again, there is no doubt the coupling of this economic system with this moral framework has been wildly successful at generating wealth, and even bringing masses of humanity out of poverty and to a greater standard of living.

What I’m suggesting, however, is that at the personal level of our lives…our own economic and charitable choices…the model often breaks down.

Not every rich person worked hard for what they have.
Not every poor person is poor because they didn’t.

In fact, increasingly, everybody feels “the system is rigged,” even if we differ on how.

Rich and poor, we’ve endured decades of fear-mongering that convince us we are all being taken advantage or, by some elusive set of “others” who are stealing what, should be, “rightfully ours.”

Take the performative theater of Elon Musk and “DOGE” as perhaps the ultimate example of this…

DOGE was a predictable outcome of decades of the incessant message that Americans are being taken advantage of by “welfare queens” (not true), or immigrants stealing jobs, healthcare and education for free (also, not true), or homeless who just aren’t trying hard enough. Or some pretend do-gooder, somewhere, who is actually pocketing “your hard earned money,” instead of doing any good. (Sometimes true, but rarely so, on average, among respected charities…)

It’s a foolish thought that just because Musk was blessed with billions (much of it from taxpayers!) that he is better suited to cut waste out of government.

But! I’m saying this also mirrors what often happens in the non-profit world…where those who have learned how to sell “widgets” in the private sector, turn every charitable transaction into a business one.

My .02 cents is that, in the long run this doesn’t insure the accountability it promises…but it definitely DOES increase the exhaustion of those who run non-profits, and simultaneously increase the distrust of donors.

If all you hear are repeated stories of “waste, fraud, and abuse,” then you reason: maybe the safest choice is a bigger barn for your stuff. So nobody will steal it or scam you.

But human beings are NOT widgets. Nor is the environment. Nor are givers. “Philanthropy,” is the fancy name for “giving;” and its core it comes from a human desire that predates our modern markets, and our modern “work ethic” by several millenia.

Humans were giving, successfully, way before capitalism….way before protestantism. And we will continue to have that human desire long after both these vanish of the earth.

My view is that this assumed and dominant market-based approach to charitable giving will always drive our best philanthropic impulses toward the worst parts of our “free market system.”

We can also see the foolishness of layering the “wisdom of the marketplace” onto philantropy, through the more recent movement of “Effective Altruists.”

These are often wonky, Silicon Valley types who somehow convinced themselves, through logic and algorithms, that they can solve societal problems that nobody has solved for thousands of years.

Their solution: Give to more “effective” charities and causes that do the most good. Choose greater “long term” goods, even if it means greater short term pain.2

Sam Bankman Freed (one of those names you can’t make up) is perhaps their now best-known, and most infamous, example. He went to prison because he eventually got sucked so far inside his own logic that he could no longer see how breaking finance rules (so that he could make tons of money, and save the world) wasn’t a legitimately reasonable trade off. Although, from the “Effective Altruist” logic, it makes exactly the same kind of logical sense that the “eugenics movement” no doubt did, a hundred years ago.

He literally stole from investors (causing harm) in order to save the world (avoiding harm). This logic is only possible when those who are making their charitable choices are so removed from the actual, real world that they no longer prioritize real human need.

In other words: They really need to get out more.

In their most rarified and ridiculous forms, Effective Altruists have suggested we should only be concerned about saving “future generations” of potential human beings.

“Potential human beings” are not actual human beings.3
And there are plenty of actual, suffering, humans to serve, right now.

These folks too often are like a modern-day Priest in the “Parable of Good Samaritan.” Maybe they are trying to do some good for some “future down the road,” but there are plenty of bleeding bodies by the sides of the actual roads, in our actual world.

To me, all of this overtrust in the the market is looking in the wrong place, anyway.

Traditional capitalists assume traditional market-placed, corporate policies easily overlay into the world of philanthropy.

Effective Altruists seem convinced they’re solved both the Conservative complaint that shrieks about “waste, fraud, and abuse,” and also the Liberal mindset that complains we too selfishly hoard.

I’m increasingly convinced, neither business-based approach creates what it promises.

What’s the solution, then?

Just GIVE, friends. Just GIVE.
Give of what you have.
Give with a free and open heart.
Don’t overthink it.
Don’t over-feel it.

Make the choice the “Rich Fool” did not. Don’t store up “build bigger barns,” beyond what you need for security.

Know that there is no way to insure that either your tax dollars or your charitable giving can ever be 100% effective. Some will be wasted. Sure, we should avoid “waste, fraud, and abuse,” as we can. But, I’m increasingly convinced much of the pursuit of “waste, fraud, and abuse” —especially when it comes from business-world mouths— is mostly their own attempt to maintain control.

And….know this. That if you are always “pursuing happiness,” you will never find it. If you’re always pursuing your own future safety, or the imaginary future safety of the planet, you’ll never find that either.

There will never be a “barn” you can build that will be big enough.
There will never an algorithm smart enough to respond to all human need.
There will never a government “cost cutting measure” that will prevent all waste.

Therefore…as Jesus seems to says in the parable…give, anyway.

Because for every story of medicare fraud, there are millions of lives saved through medicare payments.

For every charity that wastes funds, there are hundreds of thousands more who are working hard every day to make the world better, and doing remarkably effective work with little or no recognition, and never enough resources.

Sure, make sure you the charity you choose is credible.
And then, JUST GIVE.

Let is go.
Without the strings.
Without condition.
Freely, and cheerfully.

I know how foolish and illogical this sounds. But friends, we Christians must recall how Paul calls us to be “Fools for Christ.”

That means that when you really, truly, give…feeling foolish might even be the clue that “you’re doing it RIGHT.”

This all sounds foolish to us right now, because we have a “quid pro quo” President who is currently trying to impress you with the “deals” he is making with other countries. I’m not even going to get into the performative theater of all of this.

For him, and for all business-driven folks like him who live deep into the model that combines Capitalism with the “Protestant Work Ethic,” Everything is transactional.

But, this ultimately makes everything, even human lives and the life of the planet, transactional too. And this is why the world feels so harsh, right now.

It leads to truly irrational decisions…like incinerating food that could go to feed the children of Gaza…

Like indiscriminately rounding up all “Brown people,” to avoid being cheated by migrants…
(Again: Nobody’s cheating you. Promise)

We should be asking an entirely different set questions:

Can we now, or do we ever, experience the JOY of giving freely?
Can we trust in God’s grace?
Can we truly have the faith to believe in “our daily bread?”
Can we trust that, as we give, we will get back the joy of giving?
Can we trust that God is not yet done giving to us, which is why we don’t need hoard in the first place?
Can we trust that this eliminates the need of a barn full of junk..or billions in the bank?
Can we trust there will be bread for tomorrow?

When I was a young man, we lived next to an actual hoarder. I know that now. But I didn’t know to call them that, back then.

I can no longer remember why, but one day, I went next door to visit my neighbor. (Maybe to borrow some sugar, or something?) Anyway, they invited me into their house. And once inside the door, the scene took my breath away…

Floor-to-ceiling old newspapers…boxes of possession…food containers. Stuff stack up so high, lining every hallway beyond eye-level, such that you could no longer see the actual interior walls of any room in the house.

The “walls” were now “walls of stuff.” The hallways were now narrow paths…just slightly larger than the human body…through which I could barely fit, as if through a narrow canyon.

My first thought?

“My God…what fire hazard.”

One match, and their house, and likely ours nextdoor, would be consumed.

I have since come to believe that both the billionaire and the hoarder-next-door suffer from the same spiritual disease. It’s the disease of the Rich Man in Jesus’ parable too.

I mean, really, nobody needs a billion.
Just as, really, nobody needs all those stacks of boxes that the hoarder keeps.
And, no, really, the man didn’t need that bigger barn.

But time and again, our culture, our ever-elusive pursuit of material “happiness,” leads us to fearfully-driven safety instead…and eventually to a life consumed by ordering our ever growing supply of “possessions.” Meanwhile, billions of actual humans suffer from poverty and neglect.

The hoarder and the billionaire are both “possessed by their possessions.” I mean that literally, because at heart this is a spiritual issue.

The word “possession” really only has two common meanings:

1. Stuff we own.

2. Demonic forces of control.

Meditate deeply on the way those two meanings connect together.

When Dennise and I delivered the final loads of all those excess possessions, we felt shockingly FREE…lighter…more joyful. We knew that we wouldn’t miss any of that “stuff,” and that some of it would/could be deeply helpful to somebody else.

America is built on the “pursuit of happiness,” a concept that virtually guarantees we will always be yearning for “more,” and never be satisfied with “enough.”

It guarantees, as they sing in “Hamilton,” that “we can never be satisfied,” because there’s always going to be a “more” to “pursue.” I believe it’s only through the eye of the Spirit that we can see another path.

Right now, almost nobody feels safe. The world feels truly chaotic. Our national leaders are emotionally reactive in ways that destabilize everything. And that too can cause us to hedge. To give less. Distrust or fear, leads us to the desire to stash up more in our barns.

But it seems to me that finding a way to name that fear, and still give anyway, is a path through these difficult times.

Can we truly trust in the abundance of God?

This is faith-question, a spiritual question, and not an accounting one. And it’s a question that each and every one of us must answer from the inner core of our being. Nobody else can answer it for us.

I know this: When I find ways to be generous, I feel lighter, more joyful, and more connected to God and other people.

When we gave away that entire apartment-full of “stuff,” once I got past the initial horror, I realized the joy of giving away…the freedom of living without “bigger barns.”

Again, nobody can do this for you.
This is a move you can only do for yourself, through the grace of God.
But it’s one of the primary spiritual issues of our society and age.

Whenever you have the chance to talk to yourself —as that rich man did that night— chose to GIVE, not to hoard.

Because there is true joy in not being possessed by the pursuit of more possessions.