It Feels Good to Be Rich

My friend Brad is giddy after visiting a Chinese ATM in 2006.

I didn't win the lottery. I haven't come into an inheritance. I'm still working as a reporter. But it feels good to know that I'm rich.

I've got a $20 bill in my wallet. It has been there for weeks. I rarely use cash, so I don't remember when I got it out of the ATM or for what purpose. Maybe it was a yard-sale stash or feed for the parking meters around Atlanta. Maybe it was left over from paying a friend back for Braves tickets. In any case, it still lingers behind receipts, coupons and business cards, just waiting for a chance to be broken.

I was sifting through the ads in the newspaper this morning. I usually only glance at a few nowadays. I took a brief look at the digital cameras, then moved on. It's not that I don't like gadgets, but looking is pretty much pointless. I already have anything that could come close to qualifying as a necessity for work or play.

A Three-Book Course on Evading the Status Quo

I've always been a bit of a cheapskate. It's not that I don't like luxury. I enjoy sheets that are soft enough to polish your sunglasses with and food that looks too pretty to eat just as much as the next guy (ask my wife).

I don't hate luxury. It's just the luxury, by definition, is not practical. It rushes beyond utility and tops it with the whipped cream and cherry of outlandish comfort. When I experience lavishness, I appreciate it, but I rarely expend my resources to achieve it.*

There are just too many useful things to spend money on. In essence, I try to prod myself with the same argument your mom used when you were little. You know, the thing about the starving kids in Ethiopia who would've loved a bite of that spaghetti you didn't finish or those Brussels sprouts you couldn't stomach.

So I walk the line between staying frugal and becoming miserly. In America, frugality is an anomaly, looked upon as old-fashioned and quaint as the world whizzes by - on your computer monitor and TV screen, in your magazine - with the latest in fashion and gadgetry. I love gadgets, so it's easy to get caught up in consumerism's storm.

But as I've gotten older and seen how much responsibility costs, I've learned that the people with the toys aren't always the ones with the real wealth. In fact, they're usually compensating for some emotional shortfall. I see this in myself sometimes. We want approval, love, affection, value, and we buy the lies that lead us to buy the things we're told will fulfill these needs.

To many people, money is an adversary, something they fight with daily, work for constantly, desire incessantly and in some cases, idolize. Not that I've achieved freedom from worry about it, but I've resolved that I'll do everything I can to make money a tool, something I master so that it works for me, not the other way around.

I'm a long way from doing this, so please don't hear arrogance in what I'm saying. I'm only 24 years old, so maybe I'm a bit naive, still blinded to bitter reality by the lingering euphoria of a steady paycheck even two years out of college.

My goal, though, is that money will not be a hindrance to my desire to live out my faith and life in a way that goes beyond the status quo, the humdrum monotony we all find ourselves resigning to if we let daily life erode our resistence to it.

Three books I've read in the last few months create a sort of rough guide to doing this. Interestingly enough, though they're books that have to do almost entirely with what Christians would call "secular" concerns, they've impacted the way I look at faith in the context of American life and have stoked the embers of adventure in my heart:

1. Embrace the millionaire paradox - According to The Millionaire Next Door, you don't need to have a trust fund to break into the exclusive top class of wealthy Americans. You need to be innovative, dedicated, hard-working, and have an instinct that is paradoxical in our society: You must be willing to relinquish present luxury for future security. In the words of money guru Dave Ramsey, that means living like no one else so you can live like no one else. If you cut back now, you'll be riding high later, while everyone around you is digging out of the pit they created.

2. Boost your productivity and utilize the mobility and potential for wealth creation that the 21st-century world provides - One of my favorite things about The 4-Hour Workweek is that author Tim Ferriss doesn't set out to make you a member of what he calls the "new rich" solely so you can lounge beside the ocean somewhere and drink mai tais. His ideal is activity - enjoyable and useful activity. He seeks to remove the time constraints and monetary hindrances that keep us from living the lives we want. His solution? Using carefully laid out techniques, you can boost productivity, automate income, escape 9-5 labor, and spend time on what makes you happy and the world a better place.

3. Protect what you've achieved from impending calamity - Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life is hot off the presses. It's purveyed as author Neil Strauss' all-around guide to getting a second citizenship and creating a sort of offshore backup life to protect yourself from the calamity that befall you or your assets in the world of Y2k, ethnic conflict, terrorism, nuclear launch buttons, failing banks and shrinking civil liberties. I'm halfway through it (220 pages in one day), and I now realize that it's more of a personal narrative of how Strauss did this, which is better than a guide, in my opinion. In addition to being well written and very entertaining, the book brings up a lot of issues about America and how we're perceived around the world. Even those of us who aren't paranoid yet can learn a lot about preparation from reading it.

And there you have it, a three-book course on evading the status quo, mostly with regard to money, the tool that makes the world go 'round.

*By this I mean, beyond the luxuries and conveniences that are incumbent in American life. By no means am I taking these for granted.

The Colombian

He didn’t want to talk about the specifics. All the Colombian would say--and that through implication-- is that his experience with rebel soldiers in his home country was traumatic enough to make him want to leave and never look back. A civil engineer by trade who sometimes worked with the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, the Colombian stopped in one day to ask America for political asylum. Just nine days later, he was dropped in Georgia.

Without any English skills, he wasn’t able to find an engineering job, so he settled for the next best thing for a refugee—using a local connection to land a job as a menial laborer, scrubbing dumpsters at an apartment complex near Atlanta. The work was hard but nothing to get upset about. This was just an obstacle, and he could endure a few setbacks if by them he could escape his past.

He began studying English, and after a few years the owner of the apartment complex recognized his work ethic and asked if he’d like to become a painter. It wallowing in trash all day, so he jumped at the chance, even though he had little-to-no experience with a brush and roller. A few more years gone and his English much improved, the same boss asked if the Colombian would like to sell apartments to Spanish-speaking families.

Two years removed from that promotion, the Colombian now sells apartments to everyday clientele. His Hispanic accent is evident but winsome, and he’s extremely courteous without coming off as fake. He vigorously holds onto this job, which he says has its pros and cons. Just the other day, he had to tell a rowdy tenant to turn his movie down so a pregnant woman could get some sleep, and he’s been refereeing a group of unruly students who treat the complex like it’s the dorm for the college they cross the street to attend.

The Colombian represents an odd twist on the American dream, having come here by an odd confluence of desire and necessity. After eight years in America, he loves his new life, and he says he never even thinks about returning to civil engineering. He could care less that “sales manager” doesn’t have particularly prestigious connotations. To be honest, he’s just too busy reading about Colombian politics or helping customers retrieve their packages that were too big to fit in their tiny mailboxes.

When I ask him what he thinks about Americans who were born here but continually complain about the government even as they rely on it for sustenance, he replies with a pointed but non-judgmental response: “I think that we have so much here and we are accustomed to so much, that if one thing gets taken away, we complain about it.” The flipside is implied in his polite and grateful tone: If you’ve gone from nothing to something, you’ll appreciate all opportunities and the turns of fate and time that afforded them to you.

Photo: The jungle of Panama, the closest I've ever been to Colombia. Copyright 2006, Trevor Williams

Plastic Elvis - The Joy of Commercial Christmas

Let the fact that this product is actually manufactured and sold attest to the frivolity of the Christmas season in America.

At least in theory, the holiday celebrating the advent of Christ should be a time of reflection. Our hearts should be overflowing with joy for our abundant blessings, and we should be straining our minds to figure out how to share such abundance with those for whom we care.

Most of the time, this theory is put into action, but the reality it creates somewhat distorts the meaning of the season. Our blessings get quantified, and we’re thankful. But we often count them in dollars, not in the amount of determined steps we’ve made on our spiritual journey. Our joy overflows, and we share it. But we do so by racking our brains to find gifts for those who already have everything they could possibly need.

Although it’s good for our country’s economy, this pursuit of newness and the fact that it’s often impossible to find something our friends and family actually need is one of the gravest symptoms of prosperity. When we no longer need anything but feel like we deserve to get something, only a few different scenarios can occur, none of which are particularly edifying.

First, when our wants are the end, our needs are trivialized and we become more susceptible to materialism. A second possibility is that people buy presents out of obligation rather than appreciation. Such a gesture nullifies the sincerity of the gift and often results in a lot of wasted money. (Think of how many things you’ve re-gifted over the years.) The third, and I think only acceptable scenario, is when caring people come up with gift ideas that don’t qualify as necessities but are both creative and sincere enough to express sincere appreciation and justify their cost.

The latter is what happens in my family, and I’m grateful that gift-giving among my relatives is not just a mindless swapping of cash flow.

Sadly though, people desperate to placate their relatives will fall for any sort of gadget. The plastic, animatronic Elvis is the epitome of America’s Christmas waste. Another product high on my hit list is the digital photo frame. The standard-size frames were bad enough, but now they have digital frames squeezed onto Christmas ornaments and key chains. (The one pictured here costs $40 on clearance at Target!)

This Christmas, let us begin and end with the joy that comes with the thought that Christ is alive. No matter how real his hair looks or how he moves and sings, robotic Elvis ($150 on sale at Macy's. Regular price: $400) is not.

Remember the Volvo

Willa the Wagon had seen better days. My old, wrecked Volvo had survived almost an entire year with a no headlights, no a/c and a crinkled hood tethered to the front bumper with bungee cords. Engine sputtering, breaks squealing and grill snarling, Willa made the trek from Athens to Columbus numerous times (during daylight hours only), lasting me months after a wreck that I thought would end her life for good. It’s amazing how the lack of cash gives rise to resolve and innovation.

The burgundy behemoth was around just long enough to join the ranks of Allie the Alero and Addie the Audi, other family cars that had received cutesy, alliterative names from Katy. But with a new job providing ample income and with daylight savings time approaching, it seemed more reasonable to put a down payment on a new vehicle than to give Willa’s jacked-up face a makeover. With that decision, a Honda Civic—Cecelia is her current name, but it’s always subject to change—stepped in as Willa’s prettier, more dependable replacement.

In the days before we bought the new car, I told Katy that if we were going to be spending the money, I wanted to find a way to use the car for God. Something this expensive should be a tool, not just an object for our enjoyment.

The next day, I was talking to a Chinese friend on the Internet, and somehow the new car entered the conversation. When he acted impressed, I was quick to tell him about Willa and how my newfound blessing was the result of my perseverance with my previous junk heap. If I hadn’t been patient and willing to suffer for awhile, I probably wouldn’t have had the money to put up for the new car. There’s a spiritual lesson in that statement alone, but our conversation went deeper.

I then told him my strategy for the car, how I wanted to use it as a tool for God’s work. As if on cue, we struck up a conversation about the poisonous influence of money in our lives, especially as it relates to spiritual things. By telling him some of Jesus’ parables about money, I was able weave the Gospel into our conversation. As the discussion concluded, I realized that the car had started the entire thing. A tool indeed.

Throughout our wealth talk, I wondered what the Chinese word for “miser,” or “cheapskate” is. What my friend, who had also been my Chinese teacher, told me reiterated my love for the vivid imagery of Chinese words and really brought some of Jesus’ parables to mind. Here are two Chinese words to describe a person who hoards wealth:

小氣鬼-Xiao qi gui – literally, xiao means “small,” qi means “internal or life force/energy” and gui conjures the image of a “ghost, devil or spirit.” Put together, at least in my eyes, they paint the picture of a hollow shell or faint image of a person with little magnanimity; someone whose love for wealth has robbed them of the capacity for compassion and life.

守財奴 -Shou cai nu – Lit. keep, wealth, slave, respectively. Someone who is enslaved by their desire to keep wealth; a miser who, as my teacher puts it, is controlled by money.

Jesus recommended storing our treasures in heaven and not putting so much stock in what have here on earth. If we can use our talents as tools, maybe we won’t end up like the wicked servant thrown out into the darkness, or like the arrogant man whose life was demanded of him after he built bigger and bigger barns but was “not rich toward God.” Don’t become a ghost or a slave for a little cash, or even a car.

Remember the Volvo, Trevor. Always remember the Volvo.

Spring Broke

So, it's spring break again. For the fourth time in my college career. The set of dates hasn't changed. My laziness leading up to the break wasn't any different. But an important detail is not the same: Trevor Williams is staying in the country.

For the past three years, spring break has held the promise of international adventure. My freshman year, I took a free journalism trip to Jordan, the oft-forgotten "other" Holy Land. Sophomore year, I toured Southeast Asia, visiting Thailand and Laos en route to a VCD-bombing mission in southern China. Last year, I trekked across Coiba, a massive island off Panama's Pacific coast that served as a prison colony until a few years ago.

So what about this year? I have traded the exotic for the mundane, adventure for practicality. I will be painting an office building. The upside? This time I'll be putting money into my bank account rather than emptying it. The downside? I had to watch as all my roommates packed their bags for mission trips in Central and South America and the Caribbean, scolding myself as I coveted their adventures.

But God has something for me this spring break, and I don't just mean a few hundred bucks. Through working, waiting and praying for my friends on mission, God's going to teach me discipline. I can't go abroad all the time, but I can do God's work right where I am. Learning to be faithful to him is the greatest adventure we can ask for.