Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Dr. Rutland is a world renowned leadership expert. He is a New York Times best selling author and he has served as the president of two universities. The Leaders Notebook is brought to you by Global Servants. For more information about Global Servants, please Visit our website GlobalServants.org Here is your host, Dr. Mark Rutland.
[00:00:25] Speaker B: When a society drops frugality out of its moral hardware, the national character begins to twist like sheet metal in a blast furnace.
Hello, I'm Mark Rutland and this is the Leader's Notebook.
This is the sixth in a series that I'm doing on integrity on character. It's based on my book, my very popular book sold tremendous amount of Character Matters.
All of the proceeds from this book and every book that I've ever written have all gone 100% to support our girls homes, House of Grace in Thailand and West Africa.
At the end of this podcast someone is going to tell you how you can get a copy of this book, Character Matters. I want you to have it and I believe it will be a blessing to you. If you already have it, then get your copy and get it to someone else.
The whole point of this series has been to teach on the essential nature of character.
The nine essential virtues or traits that you need to succeed and that make a society successful. That make a society strong in its character.
One of these, and one that is often overlooked, is frugality.
Frugality is that virtue the absence of which touches the very substance of life.
Poverty of every kind will follow when it is lost.
It's not just a matter of a nation or society or culture spending itself into bankruptcy because it's not frugal. It is more a matter of losing its capacity to evaluate what is really precious.
Frugality is at its core not simply about saving money or spending less for some object though that's a part of is really about learning how to set value.
If the base, the precious and the semi precious all look alike to a society, it becomes impossible to discern the difference between, say, humanity and plastic, between life and a bauble.
A society is defined by what it wastes as well as what it wants.
If a society will sell a child to buy a television set, it may have made money on the sale. But it is not a frugal society because it is a destructive, mindless society that cannot set proper values.
Let me tell you about a woman named Osceola McCarty.
When she was in the sixth grade, she dropped out of elementary school to become the principal caregiver for her dying aunt. She never returned to school, working instead doing laundry and ironing for Hattiesburg, Mississippi's aristocracy.
She spent her life doing that. In 1920, a 12 year old African American with a 6th grade education had little to look forward to but a life of hard work.
Osceola McCarty turned her life of service into an anthem to character.
Caring for her aunt, then her grandmother, and finally her mother, Osceola became the family hospice.
She supported herself and her relatives with her work as a cook, a domestic, and in the process, she earned herself a public reputation as a trustworthy, loyal, diligent woman.
She was loved and admired by many in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
In private, except where no one except some local bankers could see, Osceola McCarty was carving into her youthful character a strength that was eventually to benefit many.
Year after year, for more than seven decades, she lived and learned to true frugality.
Even on her marginal income. Working as she did, doing laundry, cooking, cleaning, living at what some would call a poverty level, she still saved. Week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade. Seven decades in local banks, buying CDs, setting aside the small but regular deposits, Osceola McCarty found herself at the age of 88, prepared and empowered to do grandly what she had done her whole life. In July of 1995, a humble washerwoman who never attended junior high school presented the University of Southern Mississippi with a check for $150,000.
An endowed scholarship for minority students now helps others to an education that she never received.
A stunned University of Southern Mississippi administrator said, this is by far the largest gift ever given to the University of Southern Mississippi by an African American. We are overwhelmed and humbled by what she has done.
A life of character, humble, hard working, sacrificial life, built on the conviction that servanthood is noble and important now enabled her to give grandly. And it enables a new generation to find success through education.
The character of Osceola McCarty, however, is her most enduring contribution.
Out of a lifetime of laundry, sometimes earning only a dollar a bundle, Osceola McCarty, in quiet character, earned and served and saved that others might receive.
It is difficult to teach frugality to postmoderns because the very word has utterly disappeared from their functional vocabulary. Among those in whose vocabulary it does remain, there is a great deal of confusion about what it really means.
Many identify frugality as mere thriftiness, and that is a part of it.
But the thrifty can easily become stingy, and stinginess can lead to lovelessness. And judgmentalism and withholding.
Stinginess separates us from those who look to us for providential care.
Sometimes wise parents learn it is better to buy the double dip ice cream cone, even though we know the child will never finish both dips.
Fiscal responsibility knows that the second dip is a waste of money. But sometimes love must be the law.
Frugality springs from a balanced view of things and life.
Stinginess may actually be a lack of frugality.
What passes for frugality is sometimes only an obsession with smallness and pettiness.
I had an acquaintance in college, Dennis, who prided himself on being frugal.
Actually, he was dangerously obsessed with money.
I remember the great issue of the shoelaces in our sophomore year in college.
Before it was over, I was absolutely sick of Dennis and his shoelaces.
He broke a shoelace and it became a federal case. He complained for two weeks.
Not so much because the shoelace had broken since he had worn it for years and thought it was about time for it to break.
He was angry because he could only find shoelaces for sale in pairs.
This he resented bitterly and complained about it on and on and on. How he moaned, I don't need two, I only need one.
He blamed the entire American industrial system for only selling shoelaces in pairs.
That is not frugality, and it is not a virtue. It is an obsession with pettiness. And God hates petty living.
False frugality always sees itself as acting virtuously by doing things that are irrational and unethical. Pennywise and dollar poor can become a way of life that destroys homes, relationships, businesses, and sometimes our very souls.
Stinginess can also become judgmental toward what it perceives to be the excesses of others.
A frugal lifestyle is a virtue, but the law of love must preside over our attitude toward the possessions of others. In other words, I may be frugal, but I am not given permission by God to judge what I perceive to be a lack of frugality in others.
God may give one liberty at one level regarding possessions that he does not give another.
I have neither the right nor the discernment to decide what God is saying to someone else.
Legalistic judgments about others will make me presumptuous and condescending.
Law separates people. Frugality is not about imposing laws on each other. It is about hearing from God for ourselves.
Frugality is character's attempt to cultivate a lifestyle pleasing in God's sight and effective in our pursuit of holiness and prosperity.
To speak of being frugal implies far more than saving money.
Frugality is not the opposite of generosity. It is rather the opposite of reckless wastefulness.
Frugality, like modesty, has to do with controlled living. The great point of frugality concerns the the purpose of things.
Frugality is not so much a question of how many things I own, but of their purpose and place in my life and what value I assign to them.
I remember a certain chap I ran into on an airplane coming out of Los Angeles. As he flopped into the seat beside me in the coach class, he was obviously terribly irritated.
Before I could even introduce myself, he announced to me, the first thing I want you to know is that I never ride coach.
My travel agent took care of this. They've always booked me in first class and they know they're supposed to.
I admit I didn't check my ticket, but I got here and the first class section was full, so they stuck me in coach. I just want you to know I don't travel coach.
It never seemed to dawn on him that he was insulting me because I do travel, or did at that time. Travel and Coach Christians often struggle with the wrong question.
They ask, is the added comfort worth the added cost of first class? That misses the point. It may be more frugal to travel first class. In fact, if it saves your health or your energy or allows you to arrive alive. The issue is not money, but attitude. It is useless to debate whether or not traveling first class is a sin because it costs more.
If I can afford to travel first class because I'm afraid people will think I can't, that's when it becomes a sin.
It is a sin only if I make it a matter of being showy and self indulgent.
John Wesley said, money is an excellent gift of God if it is used excellently answering the noblest needs of humanity.
To Wesley, you see, money was not the enemy. The enemy was my own sinful nature.
Therefore, in order to arrive at a balanced view of money, I must ask myself frugality's simple questions.
What is money for?
Money is for exchange. Money is for goods and services that may, without corrupting my spirit, add education, comfort, beauty to my life and to the lives of those I love and care about.
Furthermore, money is good for the good of humanity and for the expansion of the kingdom.
Money is never to be used for the purchase of status.
Never is it to be used for the demonstration of power.
In his great book, Richard Foster tells an excellent example of the misuse of power of wealth and how it Corrupts us.
In a brilliant parable out of his own childhood, he says, it really happened. Foster reports that he was a champion marble shooter. They played for keeps and he was the best in the whole neighborhood. Finally, none of the kids had any marbles left because Richard Foster had won them all.
In order to display his wealth and his power, his dominion, if you will, over the other children in the neighborhood, he carried his hard won fortune out to the pond. And while the other children watched, he meticulously threw the marbles in the water.
It was a cruel, ruthless and vicious demonstration of power and wealth.
Foster also reported that it was a dark and evil moment in his own childhood.
The second question we must ask ourselves is, is who's in charge here?
Am I controlling money or is money controlling me?
When ethical decisions are based on the bottom line of finances, money is in control. When I bend the rules because money tells me to, I am the slave of money.
Are we making our decisions according to God or Mammon? Man cannot serve two masters at one time. He will always love the one and hate the other. Jesus said, financial expediency corrupts faith. Like demonic rust, it eats away at character.
It destroys our submission to authority.
It destroys humility, obedience, holiness and patience.
Money must never control us. We must control it.
I do not believe there is some mystical evil power inherent in the dollar bill.
What I do believe is that there is a weakness in my own flesh.
Therefore, I must humble myself under the hand of God. I must show Mammon who's in charge here. It is the Lord Jesus Christ and not Mammon.
Now here's the third question I have to ask myself. Will I let character set the limits on my life?
Am I willing for God to limit aspects of my life through a commitment to frugal living?
In other words, when there is not sufficient money for me to purchase a certain course of action or some product that I want or some self indulgence, am I willing to believe that it is not God's will for me to have it or do it? Right now, we easily confess that the positive abundance of funds can be used by God to affirm a course of action.
If that is true, then the contrary may also be true. From time to time, God may pull tight the purse strings in order to stop me from a course of action that is not in his will.
Therefore, lack of funds may be a way that God can use my commitment to being frugal, to modest living to keep me from continuing on in a path that is wrong for me.
Frugality is the willingness to endure limits on myself.
A grave danger inherent in the American credit system is that it allows me to consume at a level that is not based on any real wealth. Personally, we run up our credit card debts in this country, and the nation is running up its credit card debt. Sooner or later, of course, the piper has to be paid. That's what the people in Washington can't seem to to believe.
Bankruptcy in America comes dressed in a tuxedo, not in rags.
Fooled by their own mirage of wealth, Americans are amazed when financial disaster finally catches up with them. I find it difficult to discover a vocabulary sufficient to express to modern Westerners that it is possible to live without some things.
My wife, Allison, and I once shared a weekend retreat with some young couples. We told them that we got married when we were very young. I was 19, Allison was 17, and I asked, do you realize that we were married three years before we owned a car?
They were utterly unable to comprehend what I was saying. It was like I was speaking Hebrew.
They said, what do you mean you didn't own a car?
I said, look, I'm trying to tell you in plain English. We didn't have an automobile the first three years we were married. They just gaped at me like modern children quizzically inspecting some ancient agricultural implement, the purpose of which they had no idea.
We just don't know what you're talking about. How did you get around?
I said. I walked. I hitchhiked to school. I hitchhiked home. I hitchhiked to my first job in the evening at midnight. When that was over, I hitchhiked to my second job. Or I rode the bus, they marveled. Rode the bus, you'd have thought, I said. I went in a Conestoga wagon.
Provoked by their astonishment, we plunged on.
You may not realize that we were likewise married for three years before we owned a couch.
We had an old army cot on which my wife arranged some folded quilts so that it looked flat. She made a little coverlet that went across it and hung down to the floor. It looked vaguely reminiscent of a couch type thing, but it was an army cot. If somebody came to visit, we would caution them, don't sit on the couch. If they came in too fast and sat on it, the pitiful contraption would shoot out from the wall, hurling them the legs in the air, and they'd fall backward like a carnival ride.
Why? They asked. Why didn't you buy a car and a couch?
We couldn't afford it, I said.
What do you mean you couldn't afford it? They were astonished. Literally astonished. Why didn't you just charge it?
I realized then that we were speaking completely different languages.
Frugality is a fundamental virtue in life.
Without it, our lives become not only bankrupt financially, but bankrupt morally.
Frugality is the strength of character that will set us free from the terrible grip of mammon.
It may not be immorality that finally erodes our national character. It may be the price of designer tennis shoes.
The prosperity of God is a great blessing, a dangerous one, but a great blessing if greatly used. Generosity can do great good.
Hoarded or squandered, it corrupts character and destroys families.
Osceola McCarty had it right.
Work hard, serve other folks joyfully, save frugally, and give generously.
I want you to have this book Character Matters. Stay tuned now and someone is going to tell you how you can get it.
Until we meet again. God bless you. I'm Mark Rutland, and this has been the Leader's Notebook.
[00:20:42] Speaker A: Wow. Another great episode of the Leader's Notebook. Hello, I'm Ronnie Brannan, the Chief of Staff at Global servants, and as Dr. Rutland said, we want to send you your copy of his book, you, Character Matters. You can receive your copy by contributing any amount to Global Servants through our Secure Give app on our website. Go to globalservants.org, click the Donate button and then click Give Online and then leave your contribution under the Podcast Gift tab. Next, please click Add a Message and include your name, email address, and the mailing address where you would like your book delivered. As soon as your donation is processed, we'll send you an email confirming the delivery address and we'll get your book in the mail to you by the next business day. Again, thank you for subscribing to the Leader's Notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland and helping make a difference for those around the world in helping save little girls for big destinies.
You've been listening to the leaders notebook with Dr. Mark Rutland. Be sure to subscribe, rate and review today's podcast. You can follow Dr. Rutland on Twitter @Dr. Markrutland or visit his website, Dr. Markrutland. Com. Join us next week for another episode of the Leader's Notebook.
