It’s New Year’s resolution season which, in our home at least, has brought up the discussion of becoming a more generous person. If you’ve got kids, this is probably something you want to instill in them but the challenge is, how do you teach being generous? I know the best way to teach anything to your kids is to model it in your own lives so, yes, we’ve sought to do that, but when it comes to generosity, the whole “Don’t let your left hand know what the right hand is up to” (Matt. 6:3) teaching makes this somewhat tricky. We’re not supposed to go around telling the world how generous we are. This leaves me with one tried and true method of teaching generosity: shame. That’s right, I default to making them feeling like garbage for being too selfish with their money. I reason that if I can make my kids feel awful for being Budget Bills or Stingy Scrooges or Tightwad Tims (side note: this alliteration game is fun. Try it!), then *somehow* they’ll start to give on their volition from a cheerful heart. Go ahead, ask me how effective you think this approach has been in instilling generosity. (Answer: not at all).

So what am I left with?

To be fair, I’m not exactly the Mother Teresa of generosity myself but Rhonda and I have, throughout our marriage, practiced a discipline of giving regularly both to our own church and to charities and causes that speak to us and, we believe, align with God’s Kingdom work being done on earth. There’s certainly room for improvement on this front, but that’s not what I wanted to focus on here. Rather, I was thinking about how this value was instilled in us growing up and why we practice it today and I came up with 3 observations that, maybe, hopefully, will have a positive impact on our kids’ attitude and practice toward giving. 

The first and perhaps most overrated reason is because of the culture of giving and generosity we were immersed in. The 90s evangelical church, for all its missteps, certainly understood generosity. Tithing was what you did. It was the expectation that if you went to church, you gave 10% of your earnings, no question. Was it prescriptive? Yes. Was it guilt-induced? Undoubtedly often. Was it always done out of a cheerful heart? Mmmm… likely not. But did it work in getting folks to give regularly? Yup, it sure did. The culture of generosity within the church was ubiquitous. We still see this at work in more conservative leaning evangelical communities. Frankly, I don’t know what to do with this. On the surface, it’s obviously problematic to force generosity. No one wants to be guilted or coerced into it. Yet on the other hand, it was in part because of immersion into that world that I have sought to be generous today. Maybe I’m the exception but I’m not so sure. Anecdotally, I look around at peers who grew up in this same world and most of them (all?) have aspired toward becoming generous in their adulthood – not out of obligation but because they’ve seen the value of a life given away and want to be a part of that.

This leads to my second thought which is that the rationality of generosity was taught to us through its inversion in society. You don’t have to be a Christian to be generous; that should be obvious. That said, the world is FULL of examples of selfish, greedy people who live lives that are entirely consumed with expanding and growing their own kingdoms at the exploitation of the world around them. The end of these stories is so cliche at this point – from Howard Hughes to Scrooge McDuck, they all end the same. Greed and self-centredness typically end in loneliness and depression, or worse. Hollywood knows this plotline well, despite the fact it remains one of the most greedy and selfish industries around. So when, growing up, you see this kind of thing over and over and, at the same time you’re open to an alternative framework vying for your allegiance, a framework that implicitly expects its adherents to be generous for the sake of God’s kingdom, it’s admittedly a bit easier to become more generous. At least I think it is.

And then the third reason is that instilling generosity did come from our own parents’ modeling of it, but not as an in-your-face self-aggrandizing way of giving. No, neither sets of parents shouted it from the rooftop whenever they gave but there was, at times, a subtle ‘tell’ that a financial need within our social sphere had been met through my parents or we’d see my folks pay for a friends’ meal at a dinner outing or even just watching them give a few bucks to strangers on the street in need of a hand. We were smart enough to put 2 and 2 together with these things and concluded that, in both family contexts, hoarding all of our earnings was just not something you did. Again, it was never to brag but equally, I’m sure, our folks were aware their kids were watching and, hopefully, learning what generosity as a lifestyle might look like.

I think at the end of the day, the main reason I desire generosity to become as natural as breathing for my kids is because the very act of separating ourselves from our money, especially without knowledge of how it might be spent or toward what end it could be used, is an act of relinquishing money’s power over us. It boldly declares “you are not my master.” In a world of rampant consumerism and Amazon Prime deliveries, it’s really easy to become enslaved to money and its allure. A discipline of giving at least contributes toward keeping this in check and reminding us that there’s more to life than money and accumulation of stuff.

I’m still looking for answers here so let me ask you–especially those who have kids who have grown into adulthood and who are notoriously generous–what was your secret? Your strategy? Your approach? How did you instill generosity in the next generation? Please share with the rest of us any insights or thoughts in the comments below! Thanks friends!