Redeeming Money Book Review

In a world of Dave Ramseys and Suzy Ormans bossing you about what to do with your money, it’s nice to read a personal finance book that doesn’t make one single practical suggestion about what to do with your money.

It’s nice, and maddening. All at the same time. Paul David Tripp’s 2018 Redeeming Money: How God Reveals and Reorients our Hearts is big-picture, philosophy over practicality. It’s about a book about your relationship with money. And the only to-do takeaway is to consider what money reveals about what your heart truly loves. The intended audience is Christians.

But this isn’t just another Christian money book explaining Bible verses or defining stewardship (although it does). The real thrust is to get you thinking about the gaps between what you believe about money and how you live–and the why behind this breakdown. He looks at this from several angles, including how we spend based on how we view ourselves (identity); how we view this world vs. eternity, and the purpose we’re living for–our glory, or God’s glory.

Tripp breaks identity into four components. He says we’re creatures–not the Creator–and this is why we should view ourselves as stewards, not owners. We’re also sinners living in a fallen world, and this means that the tool of money is used in broken ways, and also that it cannot fix our broken world. He describes this as being sufferers. We can spend on comfort, convenience, and pleasure, but we can’t spend our way out of all suffering. Lastly, we are “saints,” i.e., believers and followers of Jesus can be changed by God’s power to use money in ways that are in line with God’s value and bring Him glory.

My favorite part of this book is how he relates money to satisfaction and eternity. We all want to feel satisfied, happy, content, and this drives much of our over-spending. If we could accept that complete satisfaction will not happen this side of paradise, we may be better able to reign in the spending whilst also investing in God’s eternal kingdom through generous giving.

Though he doesn’t make this connection, this point relates closely to the financial independence/early retirement movement. I’ve thought before about how for those who long for early retirement, what you really want is heaven. You want to be able to do productive, meaningful work with freedom, with ample resources, and without having to worry about significant time restraints. Sounds a lot like eternity to me.

My main critique of the book is that he used over-spending and debt as his examples of misuse of money, without talking nearly as much about the pitfalls of a wealth-building obsession (when that wealth is built but not over-spent). Being miserly, overly focused on saving/investing, or driving too hard toward financial goals such as debt payoff or retirement can be equally dangerous. These could have used more attention, even just as examples and illustrations.

The greatest strength of the book is that he tries to address the underlying problems, rather than just telling you to make a budget, save for emergencies, or invest in index funds. There’s a time and place for both types of advice, but dealing with the underlying issues of the heart will take you a lot further in carrying out practical steps.

Like all Tripp books, he belabors some points with excessive lists of rhetorical questions and redundant sentence structures. It’s annoying in a literary sense, but I keep coming back for more because his content is good. And best of all, he gets grace–hence the title. I like that he makes a play on the word “redeem,” which we use to mean make something useful out of something wasn’t. But it also has a financial sense: purchasing a slave’s freedom. His overarching, hopeful message is that God in his grace can take any person and any financial situation and redeem it if we will surrender our money and our hearts to Him. Maybe that doesn’t look like you get out of debt fast, or you retire when you want. But He can help us stop being enslaved to our longings and the spending (or saving) that comes with them.

What’s the best money book you’ve read lately? What do you believe is the connection between our money and what we love most?