The Ant, the Grasshopper, and the Financial Planner’s Daughter
When I was growing up, my father had an interesting method for getting my sister and me to read something he found interesting. In our bathroom, directly in front of the toilet, was a step stool/chair. He would leave articles and books (yes, I guess we were in there for a long time) on the step stool, and we would read them while we went about our business. It really was our seat of higher learning.
I’m not sure how that got started. Or why we ever thought the bathroom was a comfortable place to read. I don’t even remember Dad ever telling us that we were to read whatever he left there. But we did.
Dad no longer has access to my bathroom. He does have my email address though. So he routinely fills my in-box with jokes, advice, lectures, reminders, and anything he thinks I should be informed of these days. His most recent forwarded email was the old fable of, “The Ant and the Grasshopper” followed by its modern version. It goes like this:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well-fed. The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
The Ant and the Grasshopper (A Modern Version)
The ant works hard in the withering heat and the rain all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well-fed while he is cold and starving.
CBS, NBC, ABC and CNN show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast. How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so? Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, “It’s Not Easy Being Green.”
ACORN stages a demonstration in front of the ant’s house where the news stations film the group singing, “We Shall Overcome.” Then the Rev. Jeremiah Wright has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.
President Obama condemns the ant and blames President Bush, President Reagan, Christopher Columbus, and the Pope for the grasshopper’s plight. Nancy Pelosi & Harry Reid exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share. Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the Government Green Czar and given to the grasshopper. The story ends as we see the grasshopper and his free-loading friends finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which, as you recall, just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around them because the grasshopper doesn’t maintain it. The ant has disappeared in the snow, never to be seen again.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug-related incident, and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the ramshackle (once prosperous and peaceful) neighborhood. The entire country collapses bringing the rest of the free world with it.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful who you vote for in 2010.
These were the bedtime stories I heard growing up as the daughter of a Republican, pulled-myself-up-by-my-own-bootstraps certified financial planner. And I understand it. I really do. Study hard. Work hard. Save. Live on less than you make. Plan ahead. Practice delayed gratification. And, in fact, I hope I manage to convey these same values to my own children….but perhaps with a somewhat augmented perspective.
After nearly 17 years working in a Christian, poverty-focused charity, I have a different lens on the grasshopper and the ant fable.
For one thing, many “grasshoppers” don’t laugh and dance and play the summer away. Too many of them are born into dire circumstances that they will never be able to escape from regardless of how hard they work or try to get ahead. I have met bright, industrious children in countries around the world who are unable to afford the mandatory uniforms and fees to attend school. I know the stories of children who rise at dawn to spend their entire day at the garbage dump looking for recycled goods and items that can help them earn money for their family. I have seen very young girls (the age of my own daughters) who are sold by their own destitute families into prostitution in Thailand.
I’m not going to make excuses for the poor in our own country who may seem to squander opportunities and assistance. Nor will I get into a discussion of whether the responsibility lies with private individuals or governments. I just recognize the complexity of being born into poverty. The odds are seriously stacked against you if you are born to say, a low-income, uneducated, teenage single mom.
My father would say he landed in the United States with very little money and worked hard to be the person he is today. And he did. But it would be foolish to overlook the built-in advantages my father had even without hard cash to start his journey. He won the “birth lottery,” as the president of my organization would call it. He was born to parents with modest means who could provide a stable home life conducive to future success. He grew up with parents who placed a heavy emphasis on education and achievement. His father was a school teacher. His parents helped instill in him considerable so-called soft skills of determination, sociability, and a strong work ethic that would help launch his career. Dad had the good fortune of access to a democratic country with an economic system that gives people the opportunity to improve their financial standing. And he received a number of other opportunities that he was able to take advantage of. Others are not so fortunate.
Too many “ants” that I know believe they have earned all that is theirs and have a right to do with it as they please, never acknowledging two critical factors. First, everything we have is from God. Sure we may have worked hard to get an education. We might have worked and sacrificed to build a secure financial portfolio. But our brains, our health, our abilities and talents are all provided by God. We haven’t so much “earned” our right to prosperity as we’ve been incredibly lucky to have had the breaks and opportunities and bestowed birthrights to access riches.
Second, ant people tend to forget that God has not relinquished His ownership of His resources. My father will appreciate the analogy of humans as God’s money managers. He gives each of us talents and money to use on his behalf and asks us to invest these for Him to accomplish His purposes and mission. A good money manager would never presume to think the client’s money was his own. His job is to invest the client’s wealth in the things the client desires. The money manager is accountable to the client to demonstrate how the money was used to grow his kingdom. And Christ has been very clear in the Bible about where His priorities are: Care for the sick, the orphans and the widows. Loosen the chains of injustice. Show mercy. Walk humbly.
I cringe a bit when I hear people tell stories like the modern version of the ant and the grasshopper story. Not because they don’t ring true–we all know stories of people who don’t seem to “deserve” our help. They don’t work hard. They squander opportunities. They seem incapable of becoming “successful” as we would define it. I cringe because too often these stories are told as a way of letting us off the hook. “I’d give, but how do I know that this person/this organization is deserving?” Or, “I don’t mind helping those who help themselves.”
Absolutely. Check things out and be sure to give to credible charities and causes. We have limited time and talents and money, so I believe God wants us to be wise with how we invest these resources for him. But we need to be cautious of sharing stories about “undeserving people” as a way to sidestep a personal commitment to the poor.
I also wonder at the whole concept of only giving to those who deserve our help. While we were yet sinners, the Bible says, Christ came and died for us. Certainly we are all undeserving and yet Jesus gave his life for us anyway. When you think about it, there is this God in heaven who has all the riches of the universe and yet He asks us to give to and care for others. Makes me sort of suspect that perhaps the act of giving is for my benefit rather than because God needs my donation. People say God is the owner and giver of every good thing in life. I don’t think that’s there to make us say, “Hey God, you’re SO rich and powerful.” I rather believe that knowing who owns everything and is ultimately responsible for the world, frees us. It frees us much the way that living in an apartment used to be less work than being a home owner. It wasn’t up to me to fix everything!
And knowing that God is ultimately in control helps me loosen the grip that money can have in my life. Money gives people the illusion of power and status and control. We begin to rely on the things that money can attain for us rather than in the only One who can actually save us. In the end, I think God asks us to give because He longs for us to develop caring hearts, and He wants us to have the opportunity to experience what it’s like to be Him. We can extend grace–even to those who may not deserve it–and experience the joy and blessing that comes no other way.
A note of acknowledgement. My thoughts on this topic have been shaped by a number of writers/speakers through the years:
“Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger” by Ron Sider.
“A Hole in Our Gospel” by Rich Stearns.
Almost anything by Tony Campolo
The analogy of us as God’s money managers comes from Tim Keller’s sermon, “The Gospel and Your Wealth.”
Purposeful Happiness
It’s June—the month of weekends commandeered by weddings and graduation celebrations. My baby, Katie, graduated from pre-school last week. She marched across the stage, picked up her “diploma,” and marched on. She seemed to march right out of infancy and her toddler years at warp speed compared to the glacial pace of life with my oldest daughter.
The first couple of months of life with our first baby, otherwise known as our new sleep deprivation unit, seemed like they would never end. Would I ever sleep for longer than one-hour increments of time again? When I wasn’t exhausted from feedings and burpings and washing mini loads of spit-up-ladened laundry in special enzyme-free baby detergent, I waited for everything: Her first smile. Her first tooth. Her first word.
Parenthood is like that the first time around. You read every volume of the “What to Expect” series and still don’t know what to expect. Richard Ferber tells you to put your baby on a feeding schedule and teach him to self-soothe himself to sleep in his crib. T. Berry Brazelton advises mothers to feed a baby “on-demand,” and William Sears advocates for the family bed in order to engender secure attachments for children.
If there was a mood to motherhood in my generation, columnist Judith Warner may have succinctly captured it with her book title, Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety.
We looked at every decision (Pacifier: rubber or silicone? Wrong! No pacifier at all!) and knew that the very destiny of our child hung in the balance. Parent wisely, and our kids might not use up their college savings on therapy. Make some careless mistake, such as, say, allow your child prodigy to skip a grade in school, and you might just have the next Unabomber on your hands.
Last week, the New York Times magazine, the cultural barometer of social trends, announced that the era of over-parenting is, well, over. Whew. Just in time for Katie to grow up under-parented!
Anxiety-parenting? Laissez-faire parenting? Maybe neither of them. Sociologist Tony Campolo once talked about interviewing parents about what they most wanted for their children and the answers generally boiled down to a single sentiment: I just want my child to be happy!
Sweet, but most modern parents go about this the wrong way, Campolo believed. Who are the happiest children? The ones whose parents lavished them with things, carefully built up their self-esteem and shielded them from unpleasant situations? No, those kids grew up self-absorbed, ill-prepared for life’s realities and generally unhappy as a result.
Happiness, Campolo believes, grows out of giving children a sense of purpose and place in the family structure and in society. Healthy self-esteem grows out of hard work to achieve something and the satisfaction of accomplishment. And true joy in life grows out of service to others—the family unit, the community and to the good of others over the focus on self. Want to be happy? Lose yourself in loving and serving others.
I’ve thought about Campolo’s philosophy a lot as I’ve raised my kids. And I believe he’s got a point. I want to raise happy kids… which is why Katie is graduating not only to the esteemed halls of kindergarten, but to more responsibilities and chores at home as well. I’m starting her on laundry duty in the morning.
