Financial Tension

The Tension Worth Keeping

Andrew Clements wrote an excellent piece about growing up in Bangladesh and the idea of “enough.” I’d add this: some have earned great sums, yet decided—quite intentionally—what “enough” would be for them.

We sometimes talk as if there are two kinds of people: those who pursue wealth and those who give it away.

History suggests a third category—those who do both, and do both seriously.

There have always been men and women who earned great sums and gave great sums. They didn’t resolve the tension between earning and giving. They accepted it, even leaned into it.

Consider John Wesley, who lived generously and urged others to do the same: “Gain all you can, save all you can, give all you can,” and died with little. Or William Wilberforce, who combined a successful political life with sacrificial generosity, at times giving beyond his income. R. G. LeTourneau built a thriving business and became known for living on roughly 10% of his income and giving away the rest.

Others followed a similar path in different contexts. Chuck Feeney made billions and chose to give almost all of it away during his lifetime, mostly in quiet anonymity. Andrew Carnegie, after building enormous wealth, spent much of his later years distributing it with intention and urgency.

Many of these figures, including Wesley, Wilberforce, and LeTourneau, were shaped by Christian convictions about stewardship and generosity. That influence doesn’t explain everything—but it helps explain why they didn’t see earning and giving as opposing forces.

What’s striking is not just their generosity, but their posture. They stayed fully engaged in the work of earning—building, leading, producing—while at the same time loosening their attachment to what they earned.

That’s a difficult balance.

Holding both together—intentionally—requires discipline and clarity. It also requires a willingness to live with a certain tension: to take earning seriously without letting it define you, and to take giving seriously without postponing it.

For most of us, the question isn’t whether we’ll reach their scale. It’s whether we’ll move in that same direction.

Not choosing between earning and giving—but allowing each to sharpen the other