Scarcity: Helpful and Harmful

And how scarcity tempts us to believe God is stingy.

“He’s drinking all of the water!”

How silly, I thought. My kids were little and arguing about a cup of water one of them had finished. In a valiant effort to cut down on the insane number of cups that were being used and left all over the house, I was making them share a cup of water at lunch. Probably not a helpful strategy in hindsight. But I marveled at how they could possibly be concerned about water when all they’ve known their whole lives is water flowing out of fridges and faucets. Sadly, this is not every child’s reality but it was theirs.

To them, water was seemingly unlimited. There were two sources of water just a couple of steps away from them. But they acted like it was scarce.

Then it hit me. This is how I feel about God’s love and attention and resources. In a word: scarcity.

Scarcity is the belief that there is not enough to go around. And the inverse, often called abundance, is the belief that there is enough to go around. Scarcity says there is only one pie, and it is up to me to get as big of a piece as I can. And if someone else gets a large piece of the pie, it directly impacts and diminishes what I can get. Whatever someone else has or gets, is directly tied to me. Stephen Covey says that people with a scarcity mentality “have a hard time being genuinely happy for the successes of other people…it’s almost as if something is being taken from them when someone else receives special recognition or windfall gain or has remarkable success or achievement.”

Photo by Hugo Aitken on Unsplash

Abundance says there is a whole slew of pies.

What is so tricky about scarcity is that it is a real thing in our world. It is foundational to how economics work. It is the reality of our natural resources. Most things in life are actually limited. And sometimes, scarcity can be a good thing by reminding us that our earthly life doesn’t go on forever so we need to prioritize the right relationships while we are able.

But overall, I have found scarcity to not be helpful in the ways it surfaces in my life.

Scarcity is a cousin of insecurity in my experience. I’m not sure of their exact relationship but they definitely hang out together a lot.

I keep learning that if something is conditional or limited - if something is scarce - it keeps me hungry and keeps me searching. It keeps me performing and trying to get my fair share of the pie. But what I am searching for is elusive and always just beyond my reach. This is the way of scarcity.

And scarcity is the way of the world we live in and the culture we are steeped in. We hustle to get love and attention. We live frantic to be the best in class or the first to market. We compete with each other to get what we need. We may have to blow each other’s candle out to make ours burn brighter.

The problem with scarcity being so pervasive is that we can easily slip into thinking that this is who God is and how His Kingdom works. If our worldview is scarcity, we may secretly imagine God to be stingy. And if the enemy of our souls can make us believe lies or half-truths about God, then that is a good day at the office for him.

But the Kingdom of God is upside-down and altogether different from the world’s. God’s resources are not scarce. The fact that our days are limited, and our life is a vapor is one thing. But when we imagine that God’s love and grace are limited, that is another thing. God’s love is unlimited. Believing it is limited creates pain in our lives – I know from personal experience.

The truth is that the way of the Kingdom of God is one of abundance and not scarcity. It is much less like free market economics and much more like what the Apostle Paul prayed in Ephesians for us and all believers: 

And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully.  Ephesians 3:19 (NLT)

God is not stingy. God is generous with us. And there is enough to go around - there is enough of God’s love for you.

Thanks be to God!