Two things I ask of you;
deny them not to me before I die:
Remove far from me falsehood and lying;
give me neither poverty nor riches;
feed me with the food that is needful for me,
lest I be full and deny you
and say, “Who is the Lord?”
or lest I be poor and steal
and profane the name of my God (Prov 30:7-9, ESV)
On the drive back from the Eco-Realism Consultation, my co-organizer John and I stopped for lunch in Princeton, NJ, home of a university who notoriously has enough, but seemingly never enough. The contrast to our discussions about the economic collapse and financial needs of climate change was unsettling.
The consultation was called “The Old Future is Gone: Eco-Realism and Re-imagined Faith for the New Future” and featured a term that John helped coin, eco-realism:
The stage on which the human drama is played out is in doubt in ways unimagined since the Black Death of the fourteenth century or the General Crisis of the seventeenth. I begin by positing a terrible, forbidden truth: For much of humanity and the interconnected web of planetary life, it is now, in fact, too late for life as remembered in the Holocene – that hospitable epoch that nurtured human civilization. This terrible truth I name “eco-realism.” (in Paper #1)
In other words, despite our faithful efforts at mobilizing for climate mitigation and adaptation, we must now also prepare for the collapses, catastrophes, and extinctions that are already baked into our future. Mammon has always signified in climate action. We’ve challenged the fossil fuel companies with their record profit-taking. We’ve rallied for climate finance and adaptation funds to be fully funded. As climate NGOs, we are always struggling to raise the donations to pay our bills. But now with the scope, speed, and severity of climate impacts, we are also faced with more personal implications. What is our relationship to money (and to God) in the face of economic downturns and food insecurity?
Princeton University was a beautiful stop for John and I, a chance to stretch our legs as we walked among the ivy-covered buildings. This is an important place, graduating future presidents, senators, justices. Princeton Theological Seminary has shaped the North American church. But I couldn’t shake the critique by writer Malcolm Gladwell that I had recently heard on his podcast Revisionist History. Gladwell says,
After a stellar year in 2021, Princeton University has an endowment of $37.7 billion. Over the past 20 years, the average annual return for the endowment has been 11.2 percent. Let us give Princeton the benefit of the doubt and assume that at least some of that was luck and maybe unsustainable, and that a more reasonable prediction going forward would be that Princeton can average a return on its investments of an even 10 percent a year. That puts Princeton’s endowment return next year at roughly $3.77 billion. Now—what is Princeton’s annual operating budget? $1.86 billion. The arithmetic here is not hard. $3.77 billion in investment income minus $1.86 billion in operating expenses leaves you with $1.91 billion. Princeton could let in every student for free. The university administrators could tell the U.S. government and all of its funding agencies, “It’s cool. We got this.” They could take out the cash registers in the cafeteria, hand out free parking to all visitors, give away Princeton sweatshirts on Nassau Street, and fire their entire accounts receivable staff and their entire fundraising staff tomorrow.
Wow, it’s hard not be jealous and judgemental. What the Climate Finance Fund could do with a $1.91 billion donation?! What my own Eden Vigil Institute could do?! And yet, Gladwell’s point is about the breakdown of rationality when it comes to money. At this point, the people who benefit the most from this Princeton’s endowment are its hedge fund money managers. Why don’t Princeton alumni shift their donations to other global challenges? Why does Princeton keep forcing their students into student loan debt in order to pay tuition?
When Agur the oracle of Proverbs 31 poetically asks two things of God before he dies, he begins with a request applicable to our Eco-Realism Consultation: may we always live in honesty and clarity. The second request—“give me neither poverty nor riches; give me just enough to satisfy my needs” (NLT)—is surely a classic statement of living harmoniously and contentedly. It is a model of balance. But it is also a model for right and honest thinking about money. We dare not proceed into the climate crisis denying either our need for God nor questioning his lordship over our finances. We dare not proceed into the climate crisis so desperate, so triggered, that we steal from our neighbors and profane God’s name as a result. Having too much money or having too little sets us up for these temptations.
I imagine Agur like the land buyer or merchant in Jesus’s parable who encounter the hidden treasure and pearl-of-great-price (Matt 13:44-45). They sell all that they have in order to purchase what ends up being metaphors for the Kingdom of Heaven. Similarly, Agur is “all in” for wisdom. If having neither too much money nor too little money is the “sweet spot” for wisdom, that’s the real estate where Agur wants to live. For me, the most intriguing part of Agur’s stance is that he bothered to make it a request of God. I mean, I have certainly prayed that I would not have “too little money” for either my family bank account, my Institute budget, or for the Climate Finance Fund—but when is the last time that I (or you) prayed: “God, don’t give me too much money”? That one prayer alone is the signifier to our own timid souls: we DO want to be “all in” on wisdom. Wisdom will be the most stable currency in the climate crisis.
On behalf of the Climate Intercessors Leadership Team,
You are very dear to God,
Lowell Bliss
