Building Bigger Barns

Stewardship vs. Ownership

Photo by Laura Ohlman on Unsplash

Pop quiz: if you added up all of the items in your home, how many items do you think you own? I don’t know your specific answer (because that would be creepy), but the national average of a US household is 300,000 items. I don’t know who is gathering this data, but it sounds exhausting.

300,000 items. No wonder I can never find my socks.

So, what do we actually own? And how should we think about the idea of ownership from a biblical perspective? I am drawn to Luke 12 for the answer. Jesus is approached by a man who is asking him to settle a family dispute. Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me. Jesus does not seem interested in acting as a judge, but immediately goes for the heart—

Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions. -Luke 12:15

And as he would often do, Jesus tells a parable to develop his point further.

The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, “What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.”

Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”

But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” -Luke 12:16-20

Certainly Jesus told this parable to speak against greed, and the pursuit of a life defined by the abundance of possessions. I remember a bumper sticker from when I was younger that read, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” This parable is for the person who would put that sticker on their fancy car. But underneath the parable is also the question of ownership.

If I am the owner of something, I may be tempted to believe that I have full control and rights over whatever that thing is. My mindset is “It’s mine. I earned it and I can use it as I choose.” I am the owner, controller, and ruler.

But what about stewardship? It is not a very exciting word, but the idea seems to be all over the pages of Scripture. If “the earth is the Lord’s and everything in it” (as Psalm 24:1 claims), then God is the owner. That makes me a steward. If I am a steward of something, I am managing it on behalf of someone else. Yes, I make very important decisions, but in the end, it is not mine. My mindset becomes, “This is not mine. I am taking care of it for someone else.” I am the caretaker or manager.

Back to the parable. Let’s consider this parable through the lens of ownership and stewardship. This man has a field and his harvest is “abundant.” It is a good year. He has so many crops that he doesn’t have anywhere to put them. Well, actually he does. He has a barn. The problem however, is that the barn is not big enough for the abundant harvest. He has too many cars for his garage or too many shoes for his closet—if you get what I’m saying.

Now, if this man has an ownership mentality (“This is mine. I earned it and I can use it as I choose.”), then what is he going to do? Exactly what the parable says. He knocks down his barn, not because it is not functional—because it is too small. His reasoning? A stockpile in my bigger barns will allow me to take life easy and no longer have to work. This makes sense with an ownership mentality.

But what if the man saw himself not as an owner, but as a steward? “This is God’s and I am in charge of it.” What might he have done? Fill his barn and give the rest to the poor? Check in on his neighbor whose field was hit hard by drought? Care for the widow or the elderly who have no field at all? We can imagine many expressions of stewardship, but I highly doubt any of them would look like the man in the parable.

Now Jesus being a master storyteller puts the punch right at the end.

This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God. -Luke 12:21

Rich toward God. What a fascinating phrase. And a little confusing. Paul’s words to Timothy seem to expand on this idea—

Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. -1 Timothy 6:17-18

To be rich toward God is to be rich in what matters to God. Do good. Be rich in good deeds. Be generous. Have a heart aligned with the heart of God. This only becomes possible when we have encountered the gospel and become rich in God. When we have an ownership mentality, being generous becomes difficult because I am giving up what I see as rightfully mine. But for the steward, giving actually can be a joyful act (worshipful even!) because I am deciding how best to use God’s resources that have been entrusted to me.

This is not an indictment against the wealthy. The reality is, the majority of us who live in the US are rich according to the world’s standards. Rather, this is a question of how we view what we have been given, and ultimately where our hope lies. For the man in Jesus’ parable, the building of bigger barns gave him the hope he needed for the good life. Hope resided in a bigger barn. But in the end he was not rich toward God, which is ultimately the only kind of wealth that actually lasts.

What are we called to steward? What has God entrusted us with on his behalf? It will certainly change for each of us at different times and in different ways, but a simple list may be helpful. We steward our money, our possessions, our bodies (this is a countercultural idea), our time, our gifts and abilities, our spaces (think house, room, office, land), and our relationships.

In each of these (and more), if I have the perspective that I own it and it is mine—

I will fight to keep what I have. Other people are a threat or competition. I will seek to accumulate more. Other people are in the way of my goals. Or worse, they are a way for me to get to my goals. I will despair and become angry when I lose any. My world comes crashing down when what I own slips through my hands. I will live white-knuckled, desperately clinging with all my might because I’m so scared to lose it.

However, if I have the perspective that I am a steward of what God owns and I have been entrusted to care and manage it—

I will live with open hands. What I have becomes God’s, and he has asked me to make good choices with it. A good choice might be for me to give it away. I will think about how what I’m stewarding can be used to love my neighbor. I may even be able to say with Job (an extreme case), “The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

As a steward, my hope in God has little to do with what I have.

When David was providing resources for the building of the Temple in Jerusalem, he said—

But who am I, and who are my people, that we should be able to give as generously as this? Everything comes from you, and we have given you only what comes from your hand. We are foreigners and strangers in your sight, as were all our ancestors. Our days on earth are like a shadow, without hope. Lord our God, all this abundance that we have provided for building you a temple for your Holy Name comes from your hand, and all of it belongs to you. -1 Chronicles 19:14-16

What if this was our mindset? God- all that we can give to others and to you, it ultimately comes from your hand in the first place. All of it belongs to you.

So why did Jesus warn about greed and the abundance of possessions? Because, as he taught elsewhere, the heart will follow what you treasure. Both owners and stewards can still become overly obsessed with stuff. And we can take good things (richly provided for our enjoyment, as Paul said above) and make them into ultimate things, and now they have become idols.

I desperately want to be rich toward God, but if I’m honest, I think too much about my bank account. I compare what I don’t have with what others have, and feel cheated. I easily slip into an “I deserve this” mentality, rather than seeing God as a good Father who knows how to give good gifts.

Maybe you can relate.

Whether it is one of our 300,000 household items or the very breath in our lungs, all of it belongs to God. The sooner we learn this, the sooner our white-knuckled fists can loosen into open hands, generously sharing what was never ours in the first place. And maybe we can imagine the hopeful inverse of Jesus’ parable…how it will be for anyone who doesn’t store up treasures for themselves, but is rich toward God.