The science and theology of generosity

A couple days ago two young couples came over to our house for some Bible study—nothing too profound. Each time we’ll be together we’ll read through the Proverb that corresponds to the day of the month (in this case Proverbs 3) followed by the study we’ve done on the parables of Jesus (in this case the parable of the sower). Earlier that day I came across an article from the New York Times called “Why fund-raising is fun.” The short article is totally worth the time to read but here’s what Arthur C. Brooks wrote:

In 2003, while working on a book about charitable giving, I stumbled across a strange pattern in my data. Paradoxically, I was finding that donors ended up with more income after making their gifts. This was more than correlation; I found solid evidence that giving stimulated prosperity. I viewed my results as implausible, though, and filed them away. After all, data patterns never “prove” anything, they simply provide evidence for or against a hypothesis.

But when I mentioned my weird findings to a colleague, he told me that they were fairly unsurprising. Psychologists, I learned, have long found that donating and volunteering bring a host of benefits to those who give. In one typical study, researchers from Harvard and the University of British Columbia confirmed that, in terms of quantifying “happiness,” spending money on oneself barely moves the needle, but spending on others causes a significant increase.

Now back to Proverbs 3:

Honor the Lord with your wealth,

with the firstfruits of all your crops;

then your barns will be filled to overflowing,

and your vats with new wine

Here’s the way I think the science / theology works. There are so many broken things in the world that God cares about and (my conjecture here) so he looks for people through whom he can bless others. He singles out those who give first rather than give out of their surplus and he makes sure the pipeline stays full so the cycle of generosity can continue. The more we give the more God supplies so we can keep giving. God seems to have little respect for person or their religious persuasion. He would rather supply a generous Samaritan than a stingy, small-hearted Priest or Levite (Luke 10:25-37). So I suspect that even folks who lay no claim to faith, like Bill and Melinda Gates…who have given away billions, will continue to generate huge new sources of income. Jesus put it this way, “Give and it shall be given unto you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap” Luke 6:38