Many things worth doing are hard, and everything you do should not kick you in the teeth. This is the basic tension you have to navigate in all areas of your life, including your finances.
Bono describes his attempt to navigate this tension in his memoir. He and some of the other members of U2 had been a part of a Christian movement in Dublin called “Shalom,” a movement that largely eschewed the owning of possessions and which was energetic in its efforts to proselytize others. When U2 started to get famous (and had some money to rub together), Bono started to feel the dissonance between what he felt was the goodness of Shalom while also the goodness of making music he believed in (and earning some money along the way).
I don’t know that Bono ever neatly resolved the tension (certainly he is an incredibly wealthy person by any financial measure, so that’s something), and I don’t know that the tension is meant to be solved. Jesus and his early followers lived radically different lives than we do in a capitalistic society in 2024. There are no neat, direct, translations of those lives to lives we ought to live now. And yet Christians must wrestle with the degree of difference, must allow the tension of that radical simplicity vs. our radical consumption to be felt fully.
Saving aggressively can be uncomfortable. It’s something you should probably do when you can. But it’s not all you should do. Giving radically can be uncomfortable. For those inclined or compelled by faith to try, it’s worth doing. But that doesn’t mean you have to take a vow of poverty.
There are oceans of grace to swim in this tension of comfort and discomfort. But you have to swim.
Meaningful Returns 