Your Money or Your Life: A New Look at Jesus' View of Wealth and Power

The first edition of this excellent book I believe pre-dated the better known book called "Your Money or Your Life" by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin, and is not related to that book in any way, although I would call both worthwhile. I have read the earlier version of Alexander's book more than once (unusual for me), because I thoroughly enjoyed his writing style and found the book extremely thought provoking. Alexander neither condemns nor condones money, as a matter of fact, he keeps saying that we are asking the wrong questions, and has a way of changing the context to questions larger than "how much should I have?" or other typical "mother may I" questions that get asked in the Christian culture about money. He also weaves in soul-baring financial confessions about what he spends his own money on, and the values he must weigh out to reach those decisions. This is neither a "how to" book or a Bible study. It is a very worthwhile and hard-to-put down conversation about the role of money and power in our lives. Alexander reaches some provoking conclusions, such as observing "power" in societal roles that we would normally not describe that way, and noting our ignorance and failure to rescue the starving poor as a way of maintaining our sanity. If we had a constant awareness of the suffering of our brothers and sisters and did not help them we would be monsters. And so we block the suffering from our conscious mind so that we can live with ourselves, because, after all, we are "nice" people... aren't we?