Pembirdie

Tag: jesus

  • When good advice can be bad, and other thoughts

    I am haphazardly reading through the Bible and have just started the book of Job. I find Job to be a challenging read. Today, I read the first reply of Eliphaz the Temanite, who has the dubious distinction of being the first of Job’s three friends to open his mouth. Despite being with Job for the explicit purpose of comforting him, his words are far from comforting. He implies Job is whining, wonders why Job is having so much trouble dealing with his problems considering that he’s given advice to people in bad positions in the past, suggests that Job must have done something worthy of punishment and deserved what happened to him, and ends by saying if Job simply repents and learns his lesson God will forgive him and bless him more than he did before.

    Yeah, no, if you have a friend going through hard times, this would not be the speech to emulate.

    However, despite Eliphaz being utterly wrong about things – the narrative has told us repeatedly that Job is a righteous man who has done absolutely nothing to deserve what has happened to him – he says a lot of things that are, at face value, true. For instance, in Job 5:17 he says, “Blessed is the one whom God corrects; so do not despise the discipline of the Almighty.” This is echoed in Proverbs 3:11: “My son, do not despise the LORD’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke,” which is itself quoted in Hebrews 12:5.

    My dad taught us a saying about proverbs, which is not original to him: “Proverbs are principles, not promises.” Proverbs teach us about how the world works, the principles of how God has set things up. Most of the time, they accurately describe what life is like. Life, however, cannot be reduced to formulas. I think that is intentional. God wants us to live by faith and trust him. He intend for us to manipulate and control our lives through promises that work like magic spells.

    While Eliphaz was factually correct in saying God’s discipline is good, and we should welcome it into our lives, he applied this truth wrongly to Job’s life. He demonstrated knowledge of how life works, but not wisdom in applying this knowledge. Jesus does not do this. Solomon may have been the wisest man on earth, but he has nothing on Jesus, who knew Proverbs as well as anyone and also wisely interpreted the Law.

    On a broader level, how do we deal with situations where something is true on its own, but made false in context? In the above situation, many of Eliphaz’s statements were true, but they added up to a false argument for Job’s guilt when taken altogether. Would it still be ok to pull out the truths and use them, divorced of their context? I have never read Marx or Nietzsche, but I’ve certainly read a lot of quotes from their works and some of them ring true. Overall, I reject their overall arguments (or, what I understand their arguments to be, never having read them). But is it acceptable to pull out the parts I agree with and say, This is true? To do this, must I include a disclaimer explaining the context? Or is the “truth” irrevocably damaged by the part it plays in their larger arguments?

    Stretching the questions a little further, what if the stated truth is untainted by the context of the argument, but rather by the person making the argument? Attacking an argument by attacking the person making it is a logical fallacy, an ad hominem attack. You’re not supposed to do that. And yet, Jesus didn’t allow demons to address him as Lord. Is a shirt that says, “Jesus is Lord – Demon” going to convince anybody? Wouldn’t it do the opposite?

    I’ve read a few articles discussing this question, including one from The Gospel Coalition on Jonathan Edwards. Edwards still has a large influence on Protestant Christians today, and he was a slave owner. How does that influence how we interpret his writings? Does it?

    Although the context is different, there are similar questions about truth and its context in the medical field. In medical school, we learned about Wegener’s granulomatosis. But we don’t call it that anymore, our professor said, we call it granulomatosis with polyangiitis, because Wegener was a Nazi. On a more serious level, the scientific community didn’t know what to do with the discoveries made by Nazi scientists who experimented on people in concentration camps. Many of these findings cannot be duplicated because they were blatantly evil and unethical. But there have been blatantly unethical experiments run in the United States as well. Sometimes they resulted in knowledge that could improve people’s health. Is it ethical to use knowledge obtained through unethical means?

    I don’t have answers to these questions, and I’ve gotten pretty far away from Job’s friend’s words. Well, I’ll end on a piece of good advice. As Thumper’s father said, If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.

    SDG

  • How much to save?

    The White Coat Investor and most other reasonable personal finance blogs for physicians recommend saving 20% of gross income for retirement. (People who aren’t physicians usually do fine with saving 15% because they start the process earlier and benefit from more years of compounding.) If you are aiming to retire early, you need to increase that percentage.

    With my current job, I am technically employed by two different organizations, the result being I get two salaries and can contribute to both a 403(b) and a 457(b). But wait, there’s more! One organization provides a 501(c) with a mandatory 5.5% employee contribution and 8% employer contribution, and the other organization contributes an extra 9% of my salary to a different account (I have no idea what numbers go along with that one).

    All together, if I max out my 403(b) and 457(b), and all personal finance sites recommend maxing out tax-advantaged space, taking into account the forced 501(c) contribution and employer contributions, I’m saving 25% of my gross income. And we haven’t even considered the backdoor Roth IRA! We could save another $15,000!

    This begs the question, do we want to do this? Would I ever consider saving less?

    What if, instead of going for a 25% percent retirement savings rate, I went for 20%? This would involve me not maxing out one of my retirement funds, which would feel weird after reading so much about the importance of doing so. It seems like everyone is doing it. (This is probably not true.) Does that mean I’d fall behind? Would I be missing out?

    What would we do with an extra 5%? Would we save it up for something big, like a bathroom renovation, a new business venture, adopting a child? Would we just inflate our lifestyle by eating out more, going on more trips (my husband would hate that) and upgrading our stuff? Would we give it away, as gifts, family assistance or support to organizations we believe are making difference?

    I have, of course, a few thoughts. The first is that, the extra 9% from one of my employers comes with golden handcuffs, meaning if I leave my job before I’ve worked there for three years, I forfeit the money. I don’t plan on leaving my job, but life does weird things sometimes, so in the spirit of not-counting-my-chickens-before-they-hatch I’m not going to include the extra 9% in my savings calculations until I’m past the three year mark. Taking everything else together, and including a little extra that goes into a taxable account, we’re saving right at 20%. Meaning, we can kick this decision down the road for another two years.

    The second thought is that there are a lot of warnings in the Bible about putting too much faith in money. A wise man in Proverbs asks God to avoid giving him too much wealth, lest he put his faith in his riches and not in God. The rich man in Jesus’ parable is foolish for building up his possessions and not putting any thought to the fact he could die any moment and that he has an eternal future on the other side of death. Jesus teaches that our hearts follow our treasure. James castigates rich people for mouthing platitudes while ignoring the poverty of their brothers and sisters. The Bible also teaches that wealth is not a bad thing, but the implication is that it comes with the responsibility to use it wisely.

    I know that I am tempted to derive security from the money I’ve saved up – that’s just I am. Because of that propensity, I believe it will be wise to avoid going beyond 20% retirement savings in the future. Instead of hedging my bets by stashing away another five percent or more, I can ask God to use what we save to provide for our needs. My husband and I will need to have more discussions about it, but I’d prefer to use the money we’d otherwise be saving for the benefit of others. One can make the argument that by saving more now, there will be more to give in the future… but the future is uncertain. I don’t want to wait for a mythical tomorrow that isn’t guaranteed.

    SDG