Playing God

If you don't know who Warren Buffett is, (well first of all, where have you been?) he is the third.. or maybe second.. wealthiest person in the world. (Yes, Micah, wealth as measured by $$$ ! Not natural resources. :)

This is the greatest article ever. Read the thing in full and be very happy. Now I realize that he's not exactly giving sacrificially. The guy is a billionaire. But there's still something so inspiring about the article:

Buffett Gives Away 85% of his fortune ($37.5 Billion)

It's interesting that Buffett and Bill Gates are turning their attention to charitable matters. Part of me says that's so cool. The other part of me says, it's about time. Spending on yourself gets old pretty fast, "particularly," as he says in the article, "when 6 billion others have much poorer hands than we do in life." I mean, it really only takes a finite amount of money to take care of your own needs. Even your WANTS, in my opinion, have a finite cap to where if you pass it, it just gets ridiculous.

I just always assumed he was a stingy, insulated, crumpedy old man. In this case, I am sooo glad to be wrong.

I read a couple weeks ago that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation recently gave $5 million to IJM to fight sex trafficking. That is pretty cool.

Imagine being able to dole out huge amounts of resources like that... It's like playing God, right? When we say playing God, we usually mean tinkering with issues of life and death in ways that we have no right to. But when playing God means giving generously and extravagantly, in order to meet human need, and to give hope where there is only desperation and fear... now that's the kind of playing God I can get behind. Hah. That's the kind of expressing God that, to some degree, the Church is free to do.

And no, it's not about the money. While money is remarkably helpful, there's something we can give that's much better, believe it or not. I'll let you consider what that is for yourself.