How much is too much to spend on God?

Bill recently sent me an article on a $200,000 sculpture that was installed at Christian Family Church in Owatonna, MN.

The sculpture is called "The Coming King." It weighs 5,000 pounds. There are more impressive stats in the article if you care to read it, including their plans for a huge sculpture garden on the church's 22-acre campus.


What's amazing to me is that a small church in southern Minnesota just spent $200,000 on a sculpture!

And yet this sort of thing happens all the time and has been happening for hundreds of years, from Rome, Italy, to St. Paul, Minnesota.

Most of us probably agree that $200,000 spent on a sculpture isn't where Jesus would want us to spend our money. Yet when you look at the temple that Solomon built in the Old Testament, a $200,000 sculpture or even a basilica in St. Paul seems paltry!

So how much is too much to spend? How much should we materially show our love for God?

I don't think anyone has THE answer. They say that with some things, it's difficult to define what's wrong in words, but you know it when you see it. I suppose that's true of anything that boils down to being largely an issue of the heart.

With that in mind, that sculpture just looks wrong.