Coping with a Down Economy

Date Published: 04/27/2009

From the business pages with investment columns to the society pages with advice columns, plenty of people have advice on how to cope with the down economy. From how to handle your retirement account to managing your daily budget, from dealing with anxiety and depression to how to talk to a friend who just lost a job (or how to tell a friend that you lost your job), everyone wants to be an expert on what to do in a down economy.

I have no economic expertise, and very little psychological expertise, but I’m not going let that stop me from contributing my idea for coping with a down economy. Someone might call it pastoral, spiritual or theological, but I’m only going to claim to be passing along my own insight without trying to put on a label to boost credibility. You’ll just have to read and decide if it makes sense to you.

Extravagant generosity is the most effective way to cope with a down economy.

I’m not really thinking about how much money to give away but about an attitude that looks for ways to help other people with whatever economic or emotional challenges they may be facing. This attitude gets your mind off of your own problems. It shifts your mental energy from fretting over the negative into how to contribute something positive. It promotes the creativity of figuring out how to make limited resources accomplish more. It give the satisfaction of knowing you have done someone some good.

I’m not just thinking of how helping someone else might actually help me but that extravagant generosity actually builds community. It bonds people to each other. It encourages working together. In such a community individuals find their value in contributing to the whole – cooperation over competition. Everyone has something to give and something they can receive, so resources and energy are deployed for maximum effectiveness.

Because I am a pastor, my mind naturally turns to biblical examples of extravagant generosity in economic distress. But I am reluctant to name one lest it be construed as some sort of proof that my insights are biblically validated and thus beyond critique. Nevertheless, I’ll risk identifying the Macedonian Christians who “during a severe ordeal of affliction, their abundant joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For, as I [the Apostle Paul] can testify, they voluntarily gave according to their means, and even beyond their means, begging us earnestly for the privilege of sharing in this ministry to the saints.” (2 Corinthians 8:2-4)