{"id":41648,"date":"2013-12-20T02:44:14","date_gmt":"2013-12-20T02:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/site\/2017\/2\/1985\/ct_interviews_craig_blomberg-the_scary_truth_about_christian_giving\/"},"modified":"2013-12-20T02:44:14","modified_gmt":"2013-12-20T02:44:14","slug":"ct_interviews_craig_blomberg-the_scary_truth_about_christian_giving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=41648","title":{"rendered":"CT Interviews Craig Blomberg&#8211;The Scary Truth About Christian Giving"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><b>Is materialism competing with God for the hearts of his people?<\/b><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Book of James famously says that faith without works is dead. What James adds to the key passage (2:18\u201d\u201c26) comes immediately before it, in verses 14\u201d\u201c17, which illustrate what a workless faith looks like. If a brother or sister needs food and clothing, and someone says &#8220;keep warm and well fed&#8221; but does nothing to help, James asks, &#8220;Can such faith save them?&#8221; The Greek terms he uses imply a negative answer.<\/p>\n<p>The scary statistic is that 20 percent of self-identified evangelical churchgoers give nothing. It is reasonable to question their faith. If idolatry is what a person who claims belief in God actually gives allegiance to, does anything have greater idolatrous potential than material possessions?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><b>How well are churches modeling sacrificial giving?<\/b><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Churches need to apply to their own revenue streams the same principles that they encourage among members&#8230;.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.christianitytoday.com\/ct\/2013\/december\/blomberg-scary-truth-about-christian-giving.html\">Read it all<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is materialism competing with God for the hearts of his people? The Book of James famously says that faith without works is dead. What James adds to the key passage (2:18\u201d\u201c26) comes immediately before it, in verses 14\u201d\u201c17, which illustrate<span class=\"ellipsis\">&hellip;<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"read-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/?p=41648\">Read more &#8250;<\/a><\/div>\n<p><!-- end of .read-more --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":794,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,39,40,175,582,589,149,168,437,435,184,129,108,441,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-life-church-life","category-culture-watch","category-economics-politics","category-anthropology","category-consumerconsumer-spending","category-corporationscorporate-life","category-economy","category-ethics-moral-theology","category-ministry-of-the-laity","category-ministry-of-the-ordained","category-parish-ministry","category-psychology","category-religion-culture","category-stewardship","category-theology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/794"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=41648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=41648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=41648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kendallharmon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=41648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}