What is real wealth?  That’s a question that I’ve always wanted an answer for.  Earlier this month I attended the monthly City In Focus breakfast and the speaker, who is a Christian financial planner, gave an insightful answer.

As part of his testimony, he gave his definition of real wealth.  Real wealth (RW) is a product of a number of attributes, including personal fulfillment (PF), family harmony (FM), financial contentment (FC), and social contribution (SC).

Putting into a formula, it would look like this:

RW = PF x FM x FC x SC

He explained each attribute as follows:

-           Personal Fulfillment is a measure of our satisfaction with what we have done in life.

-           Family Harmony is a measure of harmony within our family – how well we get along with our family members.  The family that prays together stays together.

-           Financial Contentment measures how content we are with what we have - our material possessions.

-           Social Contribution measures what we have contributed back to the society, to the world.  In this world, we need to contribute at least as much as we receive, otherwise the world will be worse off.

When he was asked why the formula is a multiplication instead of a summation, he pointed out that it is to place a greater emphasis on the need to do well in all the attributes, not just one or two.

Try working out your real wealth.  Use a scale of 1 to 5 for each attribute, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest.  See what you get?  Make some adjustments in any one that is low and see how your score changes.

I thought his concept was quite interesting.  So, what is real wealth to you?

Happy Easter!  We celebrate a risen Lord!

Bill Wong, Vancouver, BC

A Christian friend shared with me about a time when his boss gave him a tongue-lashing in a meeting in front of his peers.  To make matters worse, he wasn’t even given the opportunity to give his perspective to clarify the issues.  He felt so humiliated that he almost quit.  However, later on, God spoke to his heart and through the experience, God pointed out to him that he needed to learn how to serve, even though he felt greatly humiliated and embarrassed.

I want to give a balanced perspective here.  I’m not saying that we shouldn’t speak out on injustice or allow people to mistreat us.  I don’t think it’s necessarily biblical humility to allow people to walk on us, to mistreat us, or to pour out injustice on us.  There’s a time to speak up, a time to clarify issues, and a time to set the record straight.  However, humility is an essential character quality of every follower of Christ, even in the marketplace.

Sooner or later, God will allow us to go through humiliation in order to burn humility into our character.  Humility is not a theoretical character quality – there’s no such thing.  Character qualities are burned in us through the crucible of experience, and it’s impossible to experience humility without going through some humiliation.

Based on 1 Peter 5:6 (“Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that He may lift you up in due time.”), I think there are three perspectives that we can maintain when we’re going through a broken experience or when confronted with humiliation.
-         Don’t sulk or turn against God when you’re feeling crushed.  He’s doing something in your life.
-         Remain faithful to your calling.  Don’t allow the momentary humiliation to cause you to back away from whatever God is calling you to do.
-         Ask God to help you to view any humiliation as ultimately a positive experience.  It’s not easy, but think about how this humiliation is making your character more Christ-like.  Turn your humiliation into humility.

Bill Wong, Vancouver