“You Didn’t Buy A Big Enough House”

At The High Calling, Sam Van Eman looks at one of the barriers to the integration of faith and work: money.

As a young professional working in a law firm, one of the older partners said, “Carl, you didn’t buy a big enough house.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Well,” the partner replied, “I want you to have a nice big mortgage so that you’ll have to work hard for us.”

Notice where the visionary businessman unites with the unshackled fisherman. Carl had been guided by advice a mentor gave him years before, who said, “Always live beneath your means. If you don’t, you’ll never have the freedom to walk away.” With the low mortgage, Carl was able to do just that: leave the firm—at a very significant pay cut—to join a company that he believed in.

Carl has lived by this motto for years. “I don’t want to just live below my means so that I can give more, but also to live with the freedom to make choices.”

Read the whole thing here.