Unleash the Power of Character Over Charisma Every Time

Posted on September 28, 2020November 19, 2020 by richabbaholyabba

‘Dad, if you could have one superpower, which would you rather have; flight or invisibility?’ This has become one of my son’s favorite games in recent months. Every week, I get posed with some random binary choice. The other day, he posed a rather more interesting question.

‘Dad, would you rather be rich with no friends or a poor but a good person?’

I smelled a teaching opportunity.

The answer is obvious. God is more concerned with who we are and our relationship with him than with what we have, and so should we be.

A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold.
Proverbs 22:1

My son’s question, though rather simplistic, boils down to one of character. In the context, he meant financial riches but this could equally be applied to other contexts including:

Charisma
Talent
Abilities or
Skills

Character beats charisma. In life, and in business, I will choose character over any one of the above traits every time. Character has more value in business, in ministry and in life.

Money, charisma, talent and abilities; these are all things we, as people, have to a greater or lesser degree. But character goes to who we are!

By way of example, as a business owner, the most talented employee in the world is worthless to your company if they can’t be bothered to show up at the office and do a day’s work.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.
Colossians 3:23-24

I have seen the most talented and charismatic employees ruin a company because they missed appointments, showed up drunk for work or simply because they had no work ethic. Sadly, these talented people are often natural leaders. This only makes things worse. The rot spreads quickly as less talented employees begin to follow their talented co-worker’s lead. If you don’t take things in hand, you will quickly end up with an unproductive workforce that has zero work-ethic.

Character Beats Charisma

And what about the individuals themselves? It breaks my heart to see people with all the charisma, skills and ability in the world wasting their lives simply because they have no strength of character. People who could be anything they want; only to end up broken, bitter and frustrated all because they had no strength of character.

Character beats charisma every time!

Sure, charisma and talent are the things that catch our eyes and captivate our hearts and minds. But character is where true strength lies. This often goes unseen. It is found in the hours of dedication and effort we put into the things that are important, when nobody is watching. It is in the grit and determination we show to keep going when others might quit. It reveals itself when life presents us with an easy choice, versus the right choice. Character always makes the right choice, especially when it is hard.

I even use this as the last line of defense when my children ask me why they should bother with a particular aspect of their school-work.

‘Why do I need to learn this William Shakespeare stuff? When am I ever going to use it in the real world?’ they wail.

In truth, I don’t have a good answer. I asked the same question when I was their age. And, if I’m honest, I have never needed to reference Shakespeare’s work in my career and am none the poorer for it.

However, I have learned that sometimes life requires us to do things we don’t want to do. Things that are, perhaps, tedious and don’t necessarily make sense to us. People of strong character dig deep and do what is needed, even when they don’t want to. If that is all my children learn from those subjects they hate most in school, I’ll take the win.

This is called work-ethic and it shows strength of character.

So, to answer my son’s question, when it comes to a choice between money, talent, charisma or ability versus Godly character, I choose character – and I pray that, as he grows, he learns to do the same.

Character beats charisma. God seeks people of character. These are the people that quietly make the world a better place . I aim to teach my children this value at an early age and I will seek out every opportunity to do so.

The Best Way To Understand Wealth Vs Riches

Posted on September 21, 2020November 18, 2020 by richabbaholyabba

A Tale of Two Citizens.

Mike manages the production line at a local factory where he earns $2,500 per month. His days vary depending on which shift he is assigned.

The day-shift generally starts at 06h00 and finishes at 15h00 with standard lunch and coffee breaks in between. Night-shift starts at 15h00 and finishes at midnight, along with similar dinner and coffee breaks. Mike generally works three days on day-shift, has one rest-day, then three days on night-shift, followed by another rest-day.

He gets the standard ten days of paid annual leave which he usually takes over the summer with his wife and two children. God-willing, Mike plans to retire at age seventy by which time his house should be paid off and he will be in a position to live off his retirement income.

Lucy is a single mom who earns $2,300 per month as a freelance writer. Her routine varies depending on the demands of her two children. Her son is enrolled at a good college, however her daughter is still in high-school and living at home.

Lucy usually starts writing or research after doing the school run in the morning. She usually works from home or at her favorite coffee-shop which has a good wi-fi connection. Because she is a night-owl, she often uses the afternoons to go shopping with her daughter or to visit friends – and then works later on in the evenings.

When her son returns home over the summer, she sometimes rents a camper-van for a road-trip or uses a friend’s cabin up at the lake. As she can work from pretty much anywhere, she generally spends the entire summer break from June to mid August on holiday with her children. Same goes for holidays around Christmas and Easter.

Next year, her daughter heads off to college as well. With both children soon to be more independent, Lucy has plans to sub-let her apartment and travel for six months. She is thinking of renting a place in the South of France. Or maybe in Fiji. She hasn’t decided yet.

Retirement is not something she thinks about very often as she loves what she does and, God-willing, she should be able to continue writing for as long as she chooses to do so. Not that she isn’t planning for retirement; she is. It’s just that, when she retires, she doesn’t expect her routine to change very much.

Mike and Lucy illustrate the difference between riches and wealth.

In the above story, Lucy actually earns $200 a month less than Mike. Technically, that makes Mike richer. But who is the wealthier individual here? Lucy has the freedom to move and live wherever she chooses. She also has the freedom to work whenever she chooses.

Riches are the measure of a bank balance. Wealth is the measure of freedom and choice.
Rich Abba, Holy Abba

Most people would trade Mike’s pay-check for Lucy’s freedom in a heartbeat. This is true wealth; the freedom to choose how we spend our time and where we get to spend it.

In my post, Jesus said this, we studied the scripture that says it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. I believe Matthew 19:25 challenges us to consider that we are richer than we like to admit. This is a tough pill to swallow because most hard-working first-world Christians don’t feel rich.

How can we possibly be rich when we are struggling to keep our heads above water? The answer is simple. We may be rich but we are not yet wealthy!

By that, I mean large salaries may, technically, make us rich – but we still lack freedom and choice. The moment we stop going in to the office each day, our income will dry up and we will instantly become poor.

Investing in Freedom and Choice

Without the freedom to choose where we go, when we go there and how we spend our time, we feel impoverished no matter how rich we may be.

So what brings about such a sad state of affairs? The most common cause is our materialistic first-world spending patterns. It’s in our nature to spend every last dime, no matter how much we earn. Sure, many of our expenses are legitimate purchases for food, clothing, shelter and transport. But we tend to make a lot of frivolous purchases and foolish choices as well.

For instance, we take out a loan to purchase a $40,000 car. Of course, there is interest on this amount so our actual payments over five years will be closer to $50,000. No matter, we think. We can manage $10,000 a year. At the end of five years, we finally pay our last installment. And how do we celebrate? By selling the car for $19,000 and then taking out another loan to buy a $50,000 car!

If we chose to break this cycle just once, and saved that money over the next five years instead, we would have enough cash to put down as a deposit on a rental property. This would, in turn, create an additional income of a few hundred dollars a month not to mention the capital gain over time.

This is building wealth for freedom and choice.

It may not look like much but this creates… choices. And those choices bring about… freedom!

Ironically, for most people to achieve true wealth with freedom and choice as described above would not require any more money than they have right now. Imagine a world where you earned your current salary – only, in this world, you get to choose your hours and you can work from anywhere in the country.

All it takes is some planning. A small paradigm-shift, a different income stream or a lifestyle adjustment of some sort and freedom could be within your grasp!

You wouldn’t necessarily be any richer than you are now – but you would be wealthy beyond measure.

Tax in New Testament Times

Posted on September 14, 2020October 30, 2020 by richabbaholyabba

It intrigues me how little human nature has changed in 2000 years, if at all. In Jesus’ lifetime, the Jewish population’s feelings about tax was no different to ours today. In a word, resentful.

Tax Collectors in the Bible

Tax collectors in the Bible demanded two main taxes for Rome:

Income Tax and
Poll Tax (Tributum Capitis)

Income tax was divided into two categories. Slaves, and everything else. Income from the sale of slaves was charged at 4% and everything else was charged at 1%.

Poll tax, on the other hand, was a flat rate paid by every adult, regardless of their wealth. Augustus Caesar ensured that the Roman empire took a regular census of its population in order to keep this poll tax accurate. Based on what we read in the Gospels, it is likely that Jesus was born during one of these census periods.

I don’t know exactly how much the poll tax was during Jesus’ lifetime but, it seems it was one denarius per year, roughly one day’s wages. Records show the tax was increased by two denarii, or two days’ wages after the Jewish revolt against Rome around 66-73 A.D. but this was forty years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.

In other parts of the Roman empire, it seems that this tax amounted to roughly 1% of the average person’s total assets.

Jews resented tax collectors in the Bible. They especially resented the poll tax for several reasons. First, it was a tax imposed only on non-Romans. Second, it was a bigger burden on the poor than on the rich.

By way of illustration, in contemporary terms, if every adult was charged $1,000/month as a poll tax, then someone who earned $1,200/month would be forced to pay almost their entire salary in tax and would be left with $200.00 on which to live. This amounts to a tax rate of roughly 83%. Conversely, a person who earned $100,000/month would only have to pay 1% of their earnings in poll tax.

The up-side of this tax policy is that it encouraged entrepreneurship and the Roman economy thrived as a result. However, this came at huge cost to impoverished communities and low-income households. As such, tax collectors in the Bible were held in very low esteem.

Tax Collectors Today

Considering, Israelites in the time of Jesus had to pay 1% of their net worth plus 1% of all their earnings, I wonder how they would have felt in the face of the tax burden most hard-working people face today?

Country

United States of America

Canada

United Kingdom

Income Tax Brackets

10% – 37%

15% – 33%

20% – 45%

Add to that the 10-20% VAT we have to pay on every purchase we make with the money that is left after paying the taxes above, and that amounts to a pretty hefty tax bill.

Makes Caesar and tax collectors in the Bible look like benign grandparents.

Never Forget the WHY

Posted on September 7, 2020October 30, 2020 by richabbaholyabba

Here is some wise counsel I recently received from a fellow-Christian.

When building wealth God’s way, free from the love of money, never forget why you are doing it.

For instance, one of the things that is important to my wife and I is the ability to spend time with our children while they are growing up and to be there for them in the years that they need us the most.

Building wealth takes time, however. There is no way of getting around this. How silly would I be if I spent years of my life focusing on that goal only to find that my children have grown up without me… because I was too busy pursuing wealth so that I could spend time with them.

That would simply be the Love of Money dressed up as a Godly pursuit. I’ve said it before. Everybody faces Love of Money challenges; only the form varies… and this is my personal fight.

As I move from a mindset of Financial Struggle to one of Financial Freedom, it is very easy to lose sight of why I am doing this.

Building Wealth God’s Way

¹¹Be careful that you do not forget the Lord your God, failing to observe His commands, his laws and His decrees that I am giving to you this day. ¹²Otherwise, when you eat and are satisfied, when you build fine houses and settle down, ¹³and when your herds and flocks grow large and your silver and gold increase and all you have is multiplied, ¹⁴then your heart will become proud and you will forget the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. ¹⁵He led you through the vast and dreadful wilderness, the thirsty waterless land, with its venomous snakes and scorpions. He brought you water out of the hard rock. ¹⁶He gave you manna to eat in the wilderness, something your ancestors had never known, to humble and test you so that in the end it might go well with you. ¹⁷You may say to yourself, ‘My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.’ ¹⁸But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth, and so confirms his covenant, which he swore to your ancestors, as it is today.
Deuteronomy 8:11-18

Deuteronomy 8 reminds us of the ultimate WHY with respect to building wealth God’s way. Everything we do should be for God first and foremost. I pray that God’s grace will carry me and that I keep fighting the good fight. That means:

being available to my children in the now
making time for God’s work in the now
giving generously in the now

This doesn’t mean that I should abandon my goal of wealth creation. That would make me a bad steward of the talents and resources God has given me. It simply means that I should always remember why I am building wealth. It means living out my values in the now as if I have already achieved the objective – even while I am working towards that objective.