As Christians, have you ever why God calls us to give? We all have plenty of bills that need our attention. We have home projects, car repairs, gas to buy, groceries to spend on, that all require our hard-earned money. To understand why giving has always been an integral part of the Christian life, we must return to the Book of Genesis. In the Garden of Eden the cunning serpent, we’re told, begins to temp our mother Eve: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Cf. Genesis 3:1-6).  This Forbidden Fruit was “good to eat, and was desirable to the eyes.” In other words, the devil entices us to attach our hearts to the endless pursuit of bodily pleasure and allure of material possessions.  Henceforth, each of us now reduces our happiness to the ever-exhausting, relentless uphill treadmill, and bottomless pit of more more and more.  We wrongly think the answers to life’s most pressing question will be found in better jobs, bigger houses, and beautiful bodies.

And we will stop at nothing to achieve it. The next chapter of Genesis after the Fall of Adam and Eve, we hear about the famous story of Cain and Abel. God required of them to offer a percentage of their income back to him but Cain holds back. He’s fallen into the mindset that we all battle with: keep it for yourself. As a result, God looked more favorable upon the offering of his  brother Abel. This infuriated Cain, so much so, he conspired to kill his own flesh and blood. The first murder of human history occurred here — All because of money (Cf. Genesis 4:1-8).

God knows the depths of our hearts. He sees we are too easily swayed and intoxicated by pleasure and things. To help remedy this, he asks his followers, you and I, to be lavish with our generosity. Give until it stings. That pain we should feel when we give a percentage of our money back to God and the poor  are the death throes of a dying ego.