I’ve been the official Associate for NNPCW for almost two weeks now, and I’m beginning to be acquainted with the ugly underbelly of the associate’s work—budgets. Suddenly, Mary Elva wants me to make crucial decisions about where to spend thousands of dollars. The Coordinating Committee expects me to guide them through the wilds of budget planning for the rest of the year. I was a liberal arts major, for goodness’ sake!

Accountants in the real world use some sort of arcane numerical system to make sure that we enter everything correctly. The problem is that the system contains no consistency whatsoever. Take a minus symbol, for example. In one particular report, the minus before your number means that you’ve overspent. Flip a couple of pages, and the minus denotes your expenditures in general. And then there are the minus symbols that mean the bill has been paid… and they all look exactly the same. Is it any wonder that accountants go to school for years to learn to read this stuff?

Part of our tendency as young Christian idealists is to be “above” the sordid world of money—particularly if we are women. According to one Wall Street Journal article I read, only 29% of students enrolled in the top 20 MBA programs in the country are women. The number is much higher in other professional schools, such as law and religion. Though women own, at least in part, nearly half of all American privately-owned firms, they aren’t getting MBAs to do it. We are still talking about an arena largely shaped by men.

We reinforce that trend with a Christian theological ethic that money is sinful. The Bible does say, after all, that “a love of money is the root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). And when we’re involved in movements for justice, we see the destructive power that the love of money has in the way we treat our neighbors and our environment.

The Bible also says, however, that we should be “as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16), and maybe that’s where all of us young, idealistic Christian women are missing the boat. If you want to effect change, you have to understand the current system. A hundred years ago, men were telling us that we shouldn’t worry our “pretty little heads” about such mundane things as the world of finance—that we were the moral guardians of the home and should leave the public sphere to men. Isn’t our moral assumption that we’re above money today just an internalized form of that exclusionary message? And isn’t it preventing us from having a transformative impact on the systems we despise?

As Gusti Newquist told me once, money is power. As long as we Christian women don’t understand money—where it comes from, how to use it—we will never have access to those avenues of power. The relationship between Christians committed to Jesus, and his messages about money and the marginalized, can’t be answered simplistically. But Christian women committed to justice only do themselves a disservice by failing to learn about finance.

“I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.” --Matthew 10:16

Kelsey

"Accountants in the real world use some sort of arcane numerical system to make sure that we enter everything correctly."

It's called debits and credits, and it make perfect sense once you understand the concept. You see accounting is a very easy and boring job. So they need to make up terminology and methods to make their work sound more interesting and to confuse people into thinking they are really smart.

First of all, I just want to remind you that Gusti was also a liberal arts major. I'm sure you're capable of doing the budget and you will do it as well as she did. Just because you're a liberal arts major doesn't mean that you can't do other things. I have faith in you.

Second, my dad gave me a book entitled "Smart Women Finish Rich" and the first thing it talks about is knowing where your money is, comes from, and goes. The author points out how many women, when they get married, have no idea where their husbands invest their money. This of course could be dangerous in the event of a death or departure of the husband. I do recommend the book to all women wanting to be in charge of their money!