What Dave Ramsey Gets Wrong About Inheritance
Dave Ramsey has been trending over on Threads this week and it’s not because he helped someone get out of debt. It’s because he was absolutely hateful when a caller asked him a question about her inheritance.
If you haven’t seen the clip that is making its way around the internet right now, you can watch it here:
A caller named Monique told Dave and Dr. John Delony that she wasn’t sure she wanted to leave her inheritance to her daughters anymore because they had become “socialists.” To my surprise Ramsey then walked her through how he had structured his own estate to guard against this very thing. His kids get access to what he calls “God’s money” on one condition.
“If they’re not walking with God, they don’t get to manage God’s money”.
The Phrase That Does All the Work
When you stop to think about that phrase long enough, you begin to realize there is a whole theology wrapped up inside of it. And the big question I have for Dave and Dr Delony is who gets to decide what walking with God actually means? Because if I were to guess, I bet it would mean agreeing with the person holding the money. Or voting a certain way. Holding a specific political label or fitting inside a shape that someone decided for you a long time ago.
Dave is saying something out loud that a lot of us were taught to believe (especially if you grew up evangelical.) Somewhere along the way many of absorbed a view of God that runs on that exact same logic. We need to prove our alignment first. Get our politics correct. Or get our behavior in line, and then the inheritance becomes available. But if you fall short, then the door closes.
Inheritance Was Never Supposed to Work Like This
But that approach goes against everything we read about inheritance in Scripture. The prodigal son literally gets his portion of the estate before he’s proven anything at all, spends it recklessly, and the father is still scanning the road in anticipation of him coming home. Paul then tells a fractured church in Galatia that they’re heirs not because of anything they had done to deserve it, but because they had been adopted. Period. Something that had nothing to do with merit or worthiness but everything to do with a father’s choice. In the Kingdom of God, the inheritance comes first. Always.
What Gets Lost When Love Has to Be Earned
I grew up being told that belonging was technically available to me, but it was also quietly at risk. I could feel the floor beginning to shift the moment I began to ask too many questions, or my politics drifted, or my doubts got loud enough to where people started to notice. While nobody would ever use the word disinherit, the framework was definitely there.
And what breaks my heart about that framework is that the people caught up in it can’t imagine a love that doesn’t need managing. They can’t imagine a love that isn’t some kind of resource that needs protecting from the wrong kind of person.
But that is not an accurate picture of the grace of God we see in Jesus.
Ronald Rolheiser talks about grace as something that comes looking for us before we have cleaned ourselves up for it. That’s exactly it. And once you have actually felt that kind of love land on you, the conditional version starts to look extremely small by comparison.
A Different Kind of Walking
Walking with God was never supposed to feel like completing all the things on the checklist before the money moves. I think it’s closer to wandering companionship that is ongoing, unglamorous, and full of wrong turns and slow returns. I think it’s similar to the story Jesus shared about the father standing on the edge of his property scanning the road. There is no waiting to prove yourself worthy of love.
Now, I don’t know Monique or her daughters, and I won’t pretend that I do. But what I do know is that a lot of us grew up being taught to hold love the way Ramsey holds a trust fund. Carefully, contingently, and with an exit clause tucked into the fine print. I don’t believe in that kind of God anymore. The God I believe in doesn’t have an exit clause, or criteria I have to meet before I am blessed. The God I believe in is waiting patiently for me at the end of the road.
I have mentioned these tags before, but I love praying this prayer every morning during my shower.
What if you prayed that same prayer every morning as you got ready for your day?
Lord,
As I enter the water to bathe, I remember my baptism…wash me by your grace, fill me with your Spirit, and renew my soul.
I pray that I might live as your child today and honor you in all that I do.
I read this book in college, and it totally changed the way I think about the Prodigal Son story. I see it on the shelves of my local thrift stores all the time. Keep an eye out for it. It’s worth a read.
Last weekend, Resurrection hosted a workshop called Standing Together: A Guide to Queer Allyship and I was blessed to be able to talk about the theology of inclusion and affirmation of our LGBTQ siblings. It was a special morning and left feeling so grateful to be part of a church that stands with a community that has been so hurt by the church.
See you next Tuesday.
What a vile man. He gets no one out of debt. I trashed his advice when he said that if you have debt, you should not ever eat out, see a movie or contribute to your 401k. I ignored all of it. I have a healthy 401k, retired at 62, and ate out and enjoyed entertainment throughout it all. If I was one of his kids, I'd tell him to stick his "trust" where the sun don't shine.
Thank you. I very much value your assessment and explanation of grace.
I appreciate Ramsey's financial training that has helped many people get themselves more financially stable. The rest of his admonitions struck me as archaic and, sometimes, missing the complexity of actual living, not to mention the gospel. Somehow "pulling ourselves up by the bootstraps" has replaced the beatitudes and judgment has replaced grace. And it makes me so sad.