Why These 9
We often live in this strange dilemma of wanting to have simple explanations and knowing things are complex. Simplicity helps ease our travels in this world on one level and yet we don’t often get very far before encountering something that runs against our original simplicity. It can be super helpful to simply say “he’s a jerk!” and move on. Even though the most “jerky” people probably aren’t a jerk 100% of the time and they probably have people that love them dearly.
Money is no different than the “jerk” we used to date or currently work with. We can say it’s “the root of all evil” or “a necessary evil” but it sure is fun to have a bonus or some extra in our pockets. These types of dynamics are some of the most challenging to articulate and account for and that is why I have found what Paul wrote to be so compelling.
In order to grasp how these nine are so important and helpful in understanding our relationship to money, we must unpack the dynamic a bit. There is a singular nature of the nine. 1=9 and 9=1. Right there brains explode and we went deep real fast. This took me a long time to see but I think it is helpful.
Paul wrote the term fruit in the singular. He did not say fruits in the plural in reference to these nine things. Those that read the letters Paul wrote will quickly see that he is fond of lists. Historians will know that Paul is also not to be considered a religious quack but a true and respected philosophical giant of the first century that chose words carefully. The intention of this is to present a type of self-defining dynamic to express a greater reality of what is going on.
That may be philosophically complex so a couple examples are probably helpful. Most of us probably know someone that is very disciplined or self-controlled in some area of life - perhaps diet or excercize. We also probably have that friend that absolutely takes great joy in it. It’s fun to run 5 miles and is life giving. We also have that friend that seems absolutely miserable in their discipline. Something is not quite right with having self-control with no joy.
“Nice” people may be those that are kind and yet they may be missing goodness and love. A marriage that has faithfulness and self-control but no love, joy, peace is a type of relational hell or recipe for divorce. Each of these without the other eight presents a substandard or less than desirable version of the original. They each magnify each other and create a fullness that each word on their own cannot express.
In terms of the spirit of money, things are no different. How easy is it for someone that is anxious about money to have joy and be generous with what they have? Think about those that have all kinds of joy but no self-control with money. That doesn’t work out well either. We want to be “good” with money and from all my study and work with clients, that looks something like being smart and disciplined, living life, being generous, taking care of what’s most important, not worrying about the future … pretty soon you have basically said that you want to be love, joy, peace and so on.
The dynamic is both complete and fullness.