Stewards, Not Owners

I have to confess something: I have a hard time not feeling like I own and deserve what I earn. Getting into medical school, then a competitive specialty, then completing training took twelve years of hard work—research labs instead of the beach; Friday nights in college libraries; countless exams and sleepless nights on call and scut work on hospital floors. In medicine there is probably the biggest salary hike of any field, when you go from being a resident who earns less than minimum wage if you factor in how many hours are worked, to a doctor in private practice, and it’s hard not to feel like you deserve it.

So why does God own everything? A brief search through the Bible reveals at least four reasons: one, because he created it. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein, for he has founded it upon the seas and established it upon the rivers” (Psalm 24:1-2). This is perhaps the most fundamental of all reasons: we may feel like we have power over something because we acquired it, but that is delusional and meaningless compared with the power that God has because he created it, and he created all things.

Secondly, we see that God owns everything because he can take it away at any time. This is a lesson I hope I’ll never have to learn, but anyone who has lost something probably feels this. There was gold and other treasures in Eden, but Adam and Eve took nothing with them when they left: it had all belonged to God, and he could take it away. Job 1:21 says, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.”

Thirdly, God owns everything because we can’t take it with us when we die: “For we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world” (1 Timothy 6:7). Most of us don’t think much about death, so this can be hard to see: but imagine if you got to go on a one-hour shopping spree at your favorite store at no cost (I’ve spent considerable time debating which store I’d pick). You go through the aisles grabbing everything and stuffing it all in your car, but on the way home you get hit by a truck and die. That’s what a condensed version of our lives can look like: we’re so obsessed with acquiring material goods, but in the end, and certainly compared to eternity, it’s all so temporary and meaningless, because we can take none of it with us.

Fourthly, God owns everything because he enables us to earn any money we have. Deuteronomy 8:17-18 says, “Beware lest you say in your heart, ‘My power and the might of my hand have gotten me this wealth.’ You shall remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth.” God gave me my mind, my affinity for biology, my ability to do detailed work with my hands. It’s because of God that I was born in the twentieth century instead of the seventeenth, when women could not be doctors, and into a supportive family environment. And I could go on.

There are lots of interesting things that happen when I realize that I do not own what I have, but steward what belongs to God. I can actually be more content with what I have, because I know God picked it out for me, and he is a God who knows me and what I need better than I know it myself. I don’t have to worry that I need more, or compare what I have with others. I can actually enjoy what I have more, because I know it comes from a God who delights in me, and I actually feel his delight when I enjoy what he has given me. It’s a freeing, guiltless, pure kind of delight, that is quite different from the shallower, temporary pleasure I get when I greedily hoard or obtain something for myself. I am free from anxiety, because while I want to manage what he gave me wisely, I recognize that I can’t and don’t need to control my money as a means to security. I can actually be generous from the heart, because I know none of it is mine anyway; I can give willingly because it comes from God and I see that I only have it because of his grace.

The truth that God owns everything, that I am entitled to none of it, has been slowly seeping into my heart the last few years. And it’s not a grudging, bitter truth: it’s a sweet, freeing one. I see that who I am, and all the things I have in this life, are expressions of a loving, completely powerful God, before whom I bow, to whom I am deeply thankful, through whom I delight in myself and give to others. Romans 11:36 sums it up best: “For from him and through him and to him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen.”