The meeting for clearness regarding what to do with our kitchen (above) renovation money was held. I was surprised to find that my small group unanimously thought of giving some of our refinance money away to charity as "weird". Weird? Wow.
As I have mentioned before, Mark and I are contemplating a renovation of our house. But what began as a simple desire to open up our kitchen and dining space became increasingly elaborate. One night, I was looking at a stack of counter-top brochures I'd gathered from various kitchen-design stores and felt tortured by the choices. Silestone or granite? Corian or Cambria? Black or white? Veining or flat? Suddenly too much hinged on exactly what type of kitchen counter I chose. I worried about what my new counters would say about me; am I boring, gaudy, or some awful compromise like "interesting"? (Above is a picture of me with my brother Moges and friend Daire, leaning on the current countertop)
Since when does a kitchen counter define a person? Since never, dang it. I threw that stack of brochures away and considered things. It's not that these are pointless choices, I realize the value of choosing your kitchen surfaces with care. I do. It's just that it began to consume way to much of my time and energy. I started to think of the re-finance money as soul-killing. What else do you call what happens to a person who even knows what Cambria is? So that's really when this whole discussion of giving at least some of this money away began.
Enter my dear friend Alex. A few weeks ago she asked me why this issue troubled me so much. I gave her what I felt was a righteous but not sickening response about the responsibility of spending money on less fortunate people and so on. She listened and then laid it down for me. I would not be giving my money away. I would be giving the bank's money away. And even at a low interest rate of 4.25%, if I gave $5000 to charity, I would be giving way more than that away over the 30 year life of the loan - but to the bank, not charity. "Oh, yeah," I said. I guess I hadn't really thought about that. Her message; that money wasn't really mine to give away.
So my small group's response to the whole thing was striking because they essentially agreed with Alex. I expected them to tell me to go ahead and put my money where my mouth was, especially given what we've been talking about most recently (see pictures below of Richard Foster, and his book). But when John, an unusually diplomatic and sensitive speaker, called my plans "weird", it did turn the whole thing on its head a bit. There was my charitable notion, hanging like a pretty but empty pinata. I suppose more than anything, I felt I had been somewhat arrogant, and not a little silly. From my Christian point of view, my idea wasn't particularly generous spirited since the money is a loan, and from the point of view of someone like Alex, it isn't even an efficient expenditure, since for every $1000 I give away per year, I'm giving the bank $40.25.
In the end, after some discussion and silent contemplative prayer, the general consensus of my small group was that: a) this renovation wasn't some frivolous luxury that we could choose to do without for the sake of charity, and b) this renovation could be a small scale project, with a portion of the refinance money going right back to the bank as a pre-payment. Mark and I could then take money out of our own coffers, like sensible people, and give that to charity. One thousand dollars, if we like - or even better, one thousand and forty dollars and twenty-five cents.
I'm so glad my friends and spiritual mentors can be both honest and caring. Sometimes I wonder, as Alex does, why I even devote so much time to this question. I'm either over-simplifying the nature of giving or over-complicating it, not sure which (I honestly feel like an evangelical drama-queen sometimes). But I'm determined not to be ashamed. Because we all have to go down these spiritual paths every so often, if only to find that when we reach the point where we're losing more sleep over whether to install Cambria or Granite countertops than we are about how to most effectively give to those in need, it might be time to find another path.
