“God gives a man riches, property and wealth so that he lacks nothing that his heart desires, yet God does not enable him to enjoy the fruit of his labor.  Instead, someone else enjoys it!” Ecclesiastes 6:2
My first reaction to the “Giving Pledge” by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates was mixed. On the one hand I was encouraged to see so many who had spent their lives accumulating wealth  power and influence making pledges to give the majority of their assets to philanthropy in their lifetime.
I don’t know if it was a reaction to the wild media response or the sheer flamboyance of the venture that gave me qualms. Probably there is just something in me that distrusts those blowing loud trumpets about giving.
After Sunday night”s “60 Minutes” segment on “The Golden Age of Philanthropy” with Charlie Rose doing interviews with several of those who have made the pledge I decided to read the letters of those who pledged and not make judgments based on my own sensitivities.
There are extraordinary stories of commitment sacrifice service and honest intentions to do good in those letters. Many of them are inspiring and we would be well-served to follow the same exercise ourselves. For a number it was the first time they had seriously reflected on their giving. For others they had been planning for years to make this step and had simply joined to encourage others to do the same. For some the motivation was closer to achieving immortality than philanthropy but for many others it was a serious and commendable desire to give back to a world that had rewarded them richly.
It is hard to argue with Warren Buffett”s answer to Charlie Rose’s question about the continuing accumulation of wealth. “Incremental wealth by adding to the wealth they have now has no real utility to them but that wealth has incredible utility to other people. It can educate children. It can vaccinate children. It can do all kinds of things.”
Still as I read I felt a growing sadness around their common discovery that there were only so many cars houses and pleasures money could buy. Many had come to philanthropy as a final place to search for satisfaction. As well many of the letters were filled with echoes of Warren Buffett”s conclusion that “fate’s distribution of long straws is wildly capricious” and their advantage ultimately was a mixture of luck and winning the ovarian lottery.
That’s not our best hope as believers is it? It is not what we desire to say at the end of our lives is it? We don’t come to giving as a last resort to find meaning or to fix the imbalance of the ovarian lottery.
Instead we come to giving out of gratitude for a God who has loved us intentionally and from all eternity. We come out of joy in response to a promise. And that’s better than a pledge.