J. Timothy King’s Blog

Overcoming Your Fear of Poverty

Pam Slim, author of the excellent Escape from Cubicle Nation blog and founder of Ganas Consulting, also publishes a free eZine called “Get a Life!” And in the latest issue, she discusses fear about money.

Fear about money creates stress, disturbs focus, saps innovation and productivity, and makes work miserable. The answer, says Pam, is to change the way you treat money, emotionally and spiritually. She gives examples of how she and Darryl (her husband) achieve this. The specific religious symbols and rituals will be different for each of us. But the bottom line is the same.

In U.S. spiritual culture, we don’t talk about money until we’re desperate. If you lose your job and you’re at the end of rope, you can find lots of people to pray for you and even to donate money to you. In my old circles, we called this a “Pentecostal handshake.” Regardless, many churches have benevolance funds for just this purpose. Of course, others just accept poverty as the will of God, or even admire poverty. But once you start praying to become rich, you’re seen as a money-grubber. And any religious leader who talks about praying for money is seen as a name-it-and-claim-it scam-artist televangelist. “Just send me a generous donation, and I promise I will pray over it, and the Holy Spirit will come down and multiply it in your purse! The bigger the donation, the bigger the mult-i-pli-ca-tion!”

However, money is part of our daily need. And even Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer taught us to pray for “our daily bread.” Money must be a positive part of our spritual lives, or we will act out of fear and experience all the negative effects of fear.

Sign up for Pam’s Get a Life! eZine, and read the July issue: “Money really does grow on trees, the $186 temple, three legged frogs and other tricks to improve your relationship with money.”

-TimK