Friday 17 October 2025
Some Thoughts About Money From A Christian In Big Tech
I’m a Christian, I work for Google, I have money, so I try to never forget Jesus’ words: “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”
It’s all God’s money.
Basic theology but easily forgotten: everything we have comes from God and remains his. We are merely stewards, responsible for allocating it to please him.
Decline lifestyle upgrades.
Suppose you have enough income, good sense and luck to establish a comfortable life for yourself and your family. Thank God! If the income, sense and luck hold or grow, you will see opportunities to upgrade your lifestyle — a better house, a better neighbourhood, the boat, the nicer car, the beach house, the overseas holidays… Turn them down. If you’re content with your circumstances and they don’t change, staying content is a matter of spiritual discipline. Especially when your discontent springs from coveting the lifestyle upgrades of your wealthy friends and colleagues.
I’ve got a nice house in a nice neighbourhood, but not the best house or the best neighbourhood; we’ve been living here for 21 years and the only reason I can think of moving for would be to downsize to a cheaper apartment.
Regularly putting money into a “giving account” is very helpful.
Our approach to financial giving is that every year we decide how much money we plan to give in the coming year. That converts into a monthly amount that automatically transfers from our main account to our giving account every month. Then our job is simply to distribute that money during the year, either regularly to charities and the church that we support long term, or via one-off donations.
We’ve found this approach very helpful because it separates the decisions of how much overall to give from what to give to, which makes both decisions easier. Essentially, money in the giving account has already been given, we’re just waiting to see where to. So when the right need arises, great! — that helps us do our job of giving that money away. If we don’t identify any good targets right away, that’s fine, the money carries over and we’ll find a place for it sooner or later.
Make gifts, not loans.
We believe in financially supporting people we know who face financial challenges (usually people we know in the church, because where else do rich people meet poor people), especially temporary challenges. But we find loans very awkward — we don’t want that hanging over the relationship. Therefore we almost always give straight gifts. An important reason to help people out financially is to alleviate the mental challenges of financial insecurity, and loans are worse for that.
People are uncomfortable receiving charity. That’s fine, but it can get in the way of them getting the help they need. A huge help here is the first theological point up above, expanded upon. I don’t have my lucrative tech job because I’m more worthy. God gave me talent and opportunity, and I’m responsible for distributing the fruits of that, especially to people who for whatever reason have had a harder time. And we are all recipients of copious amounts of God’s grace.
Don’t worry too much about tax deductibility.
Given two equal giving opportunities, one of which is tax deductible, we’ll choose the tax-deductible one, but otherwise we won’t pay much attention to tax deductibility. That makes our giving much more flexible. A bit of extra money going to the government is not a terrible thing.