I've got an idea!  Let's...

It was a great conversation involving several good friends.  Creative people with drive, skills, ambition and determination to serve God.  Some are involved in business, some homemaking, some in school.  Interesting projects were proposed, ways of disseminating truth through music and art, of pointing people to their need of God and to consider the question of their eternal destiny.  The ideas were laudable: all ultimately motivated by a desire to help people live better lives and experience peace, satisfaction and hope.

It struck me.  "What do all these great ideas have in common?" With technology and tools available these days, and in our current state of freedom of expression in our country, we were free to pursue any of the projects that were being discussed.

They require money.  Some simply would require human effort and time, which could be supplied by the people present.  But even the people supplying their time and effort have to eat and sleep.  Other aspects of such projects would be beyond our capability without travel, more tools, and more expertise or training.  But whether we focused on simply feeding the persons present while they contributed their time and effort, or we consider the traveling, acquiring additional tools, or hiring additional expertise, everything requires money.

Money isn't really anything, yet it sort of represents everything else.  With money, you can create all of what was being considered.  Even the most creative person--musically, visually, etc.--requires food, clothing and shelter.   Money gives each person freedom to choose what food, what clothing, and what shelter.  More money gives us a wider range of freedom.  Less money limits our freedom of choice. 

So where does money come from?  The bank?  The government?  In a free society, everyone has the ability to get money.  You get money from other people.  How?  By offering them something they want in exchange for money they have.  The most common illustration of this is to go to someone who is trying to accomplish something that requires human effort.  This someone needs help polishing, carrying, sanding, turning, carrying, stacking, loading, unloading, driving, bending, shoveling,--you get the point.  They need something you can give them: your physical coordination and effort, also known as labor.  How badly do they need your labor?  They propose that it is worth $12 for every hour of labor you give them.  If you think it is a fair exchange, you agree to take their money by giving them something they want.

Another way of getting money is improving something for someone.  You pay $10 to acquire several boards.  You add some of your time, energy and creativity to it with some basic tools, and change it into a beautiful fireplace mantel, and find someone who is willing to pay $100 for the mantel.  You turned your time, energy and creativity into $90.  In this instance there is now $90 worth of valuable goods in existence that did not exist before.  You literally created wealth.  Another way of thinking about it is: your time, energy and creativity are a resource convertible into money.

To do the things we want to do, even good things like spreading the Good News, we are limited in our capacity to do so by the amount of resources--money and the things that money can acquire--at our disposal.  So the conversation turns to ways to generate the necessary resources. 

One challenge that life always poses to us is: what must I do to acquire the money I need to do the things I choose?  What could be fairer than that?  I get whatever I want, by finding ways I can give (from my time, energy and creativity) other people what they want.  The more needs or desires I satisfy for others, the more money I will have available.  The more money I have, the more freedom I have to choose what to eat, where to sleep, what to wear, and even what to enjoy.

The essence of liberty is to let each person choose what to do with his or her own resources. 

"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it." (Thomas Jefferson)

As government taxes your resources away, it deprives citizens of liberty.  "We do not commonly see in a tax a diminution of freedom, and yet it clearly is one."  (Herbert Spencer)