In a couple of weeks I will be leading worship in one of the most beautiful landscapes in California, Zephyr Cove. The mountains and waters there always take my breath away. They invite me to see the world with a fresh kind of openness that Paul Ricoeur once called a "second naïveté." After we pass through doubt, complexity, and disillusionment, he says we can once again listen to the symbols of faith with openness, without giving up criticism.
It is the capacity to look at reality honestly, yet still choose wonder, gratitude, and hope instead of cynicism. (Spoiler alert: that is one of the topics of the retreat.) And to make it even better, I will be doing it with my wife and son.
That call has been on my mind lately as I reflect on something that feels less inspiring but deeply important: how we steward what God has given us, and how our choices ripple outward into society. Economists measure some of those ripples through the Gini index, which tracks inequality.
The United States has one of the highest levels of inequality among developed nations. For me this reality hits harder because Uruguay, the country where I was born, consistently has one of the lowest Gini scores in Latin America. The comparison reminds me that inequality is not an unchangeable fate. It is the result of decisions, policies, and values. It reflects what a society loves and what it neglects.
We often hear that what matters most is making the pie bigger (who doesn't love a bigger slice of pie, specially lemon pie if you ask me!). But a bigger pie can still have hard lines, where slices stay the same, the wealthy climb higher while others cannot, and some even bleed when the slice is cut. Jesus' parable of the talents reminds us that what we do with what is entrusted to us matters. To bury it in the ground or to leave it in the bank is to preserve the status quo, to keep things safe but unchanged. Faithful stewardship calls us to risk, to create, to multiply blessing.
I can't help but asking how many church leaders (me on top of the list as usual... both my first and last name start with A, so I'm used to it) operate under the paradigm of this guy who just yields interest to the master and never makes a change for good... kinda sad, isn't it?
The philosopher Immanuel Kant pressed this same question into the moral realm with his categorical imperative — the idea that you should only act in ways you'd be willing to see turned into a universal law for everyone.
Or in simpler terms: what if everyone did what I do? If my stewardship only maintains my comfort, what kind of society would that create? If my stewardship multiplies blessing, what kind of society could that inspire?
John Mark Comer, in his work on simplicity and justice, warns that the pursuit of more without limits leads to a cycle where we end up buying things we don't need, with money we don't have, to impress people we don't even know.
The Jesus' way (we love to sing it) cuts against this current. It is a call to contentment, generosity, and justice, not accumulation. To live differently in a culture of consumerism is already a prophetic act.
Christian orthodoxy has always insisted that justice is not a side project but central to the character of God. The prophets speak with one voice:
Worship without justice is just noise.
Isaiah declares that true fasting is to loose the chains of injustice, untie the cords of the yoke, set the oppressed free, and break every yoke. Amos thunders that God does not want festivals or songs without rivers of justice and righteousness. James in the New Testament reminds us that "pure religion" cares for the widow and orphan in their distress.
The Gini index will never appear in Scripture, of course, but what it reveals should not be ignored by people of faith. It is a thermometer of social health. And if the measure shows that prosperity is concentrated in ways that crush the vulnerable, we cannot shrug and say it is only economics. It is a discipleship issue.
I do not claim to have the answers. I am not an economist. What I have is an invitation. An invitation to join me in using the extra talents God places in our hands to change the metrics Jesus would likely disagree with. An invitation to live with a second naïveté that resists cynicism. An invitation to take Kant's challenge seriously: what if everyone did what I do? An invitation to embrace Comer's vision of simplicity and justice, where our lives bear witness that enough is actually enough.
As I prepare to sing in the beauty of Tahoe, with my wife and son at my side, my prayer is that we would remember that faithful stewardship is not only financial but also relational and spiritual. And that by living differently, by refusing cynicism, by choosing to multiply blessing rather than bury it, we would embody the justice of God and contribute to a better story together. Because in the end, I'll say it again in case you missed it: worship without justice is just noise.
What can we do tomorrow in our sphere of influence to change the metrics?