fear with better branding

I sat across from a client couple a few years ago who was walking into a business sale. The income from the sale was significant and was causing some tax problems. Their CPA’s solutions were pretty straightforward: defer the income thru a variety of retirement-funding vehicles, delay the tax bill, let the money compound. It was a solid idea and one that many professionals would’ve seconded. But when they looked at the numbers, to my surprise, they said no. Instead, they wanted to just pay the taxes now. I’ll spare you the details, but we were talking about six-figure tax implications over multiple years. So why would they do this? They had Kingdom initiatives they wanted to fund while they still could, and they didn’t want that flexibility locked up for years waiting for a better tax-optimal moment—that might never come anyway. **They may be some of the clearest-eyed people with whom I’ve ever had the privilege of working.** They looked at a perfectly good financial strategy and recognized it for what it also was: a sophisticated way to postpone obeying what God had put on their hearts to do. That is what I mean by fear with better branding. The hard part is that fear and wisdom can look identical on paper. Most financial planning is genuinely useful. I want to say that before anything else, because what follows is not an argument against planning carefully. It is an argument for telling ourselves the truth about why we sometimes plan the way we do. Because a lot of the tools we use — trusts, diversified investing, tax planning — can become clean, respectable ways to manage fear. And when you get honest, the fear usually sounds like this: \* I’m scared I’m going to run out. \* I’m scared one bad season will erase years of work. \* I’m scared that if I obey God with money *now*, He won’t come through. \* I’m scared I’m not even hearing Him clearly. Nobody says it like that, of course. We call it being a good steward—and we truly want to be. Oftentimes we are. But what if sometimes we are just scared, and the financial plan is the distraction? And financial services is where this can get especially elaborate. You can build layers of strategy that reduce uncertainty, lock in outcomes, and keep everything “safe.” Some of that is genuinely necessary. But the danger is you can end up with a technically excellent plan and a posture that requires almost no faith at all. Let me say that again: *You can have a technically excellent financial plan and a functionally godless posture toward your money.* Think about Joseph in the Genesis story. Seven years of plenty, seven years of famine. He stored up grain in the good years. He planned. He built the systems. And when the famine came, the grain was not a hedge against God — it was the means God used to feed nations. Joseph wasn’t agnosticizing his future or mitigating his future need for God’s provision. Quite the contrary. His preparations were the means by which God’s provisions were channeled through a nation to a hungry world. That is the line. Preparation is seldom the problem. Preparation disguised as self-protection leveraged to reduce our dependence on God, is the problem — and it’s the problem Jesus illustrated in the parable of the rich fool (see Luke 12). The clients who paid more in taxes earlier than advised were not being reckless. They had plenty. Their retirement was not at risk. Their family was not going to suffer. They simply looked at a strategy that would have deferred flexibility for many years, decided that was not in alignment with the Kingdom work God had put before them, and they felt to choose that path would be disobedient. So they chose obedience over optimization, over maximization, and over fear with better branding. If I ever face that choice, I hope I have the courage to do the same. What about you? Is there an area of your financial life you’ve sensed clear direction from God but have held off? Why? What’s one step you can take today toward obedience and away from fear? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit faithandfinance.substack.com