We heard the other day someone talking about whether it was more pious for a rich person to donate a small amount that didn’t matter to them, or for a poor person to donate everything they had. With the proposed conclusion that it was better for the poor person to donate everything they had because it was more important to them. We thought about this for a little bit and realized that it’s wrong. If you give everything you have and leave nothing for yourself, you make the problem larger. It’s a great thing to want to help others, there is nothing nobler than to try and help people and make the world a better place, but if you give everything and leave nothing for yourself, you can’t keep going. This example is talking about money, but it works the same as with time or attention, or many other things in our lives.
If you give all your money away to help friends and relatives and keep them for yourself, you’ll find that you’re looking around for others to help you because you can no longer help yourself. The most important thing you need to do is take care of yourself first. If you giving away the money that you would use for good clothing to look respectable for a job, or they would use for a car that you would need for job, or for the rent for a place to stay, you’ll find that you won’t be able to work and that you have no money left to exist. You need to take care of yourself first, prepare your life and get that job, and they take a workable percentage of your money to help others. It’s perfectly fine to help others with money you have that you’re going to spend on unimportant things, but it is not okay to help others with money that you need to exist keep your job. You need to take care of yourself first before you can help others.
To give an example of this using time, you could spend all your time working, or even playing a hobby, and spend none of that time with your family or friends. That time has value. If you have a small child, just ask them how important the time you spend with them is to them. Time has more value than money more often than not. If you spend all your time in one pursuit and do not balance it around for the rest of your life you will find nothing but heartache in the long run. So again, to put this in perspective, imagine you’re doing wonderful charitable deeds, and helping out the poor, and working for the church, and helping the homeless. Imagine that this is taking all of your time up, and you have no time for your friends or family. After a while you will have no friends and family, your life will become worse, and you will find that you can no longer help as you did. The very thing you want to do becomes a thing that ruins your life. You need to balance that time in your life with things that make you who you are and a better person. You need to keep yourself emotionally stable and happy.
It may seem strange for us to tell you to be selfish, but we don’t need to close your heart, we mean to use your tools and your gifts to the fullest extent so you can be more helpful and more giving than you ever could before. The best thing you can do is make a budget, and all the expenses that you need to exist and to live should be taken out of whatever money you earn first, so your secure. After that, you can use whatever is leftover in any way you want. If you don’t take care of yourself first, you will only be able to help others for a short period, and then you will be the one in need. So if you want to make the world a better place, a more fantastic place, then you have to be a little bit selfish and take care of yourself first so you can take care of the world later.
