Loud budgeting is a recent trend on Tik-Tok. It is a strategy to get your fiscal house in order, by setting a budget and telling all of your friends. It removes the pressure of ‘keeping up with the Joneses” while adding a layer of public accountability to personal commitments. It makes it easier to say ‘no’ to spending that does not fit the budget and discusses it openly with others.
This approach has several advantages.
- It disavows financial pretense in favour of honesty and encourages others to do the same.
- It takes ownership for past mistakes and sets out to fix them.
- It establishes long-term goals that may take years to achieve.
- And it garners the support of others to stay the course.
If these principles sound familiar, it is because they are. If the Bible was a playbook, this page has been copied.
The Apostle John was way ahead of his time. He didn’t call it “loud budgeting” because he was dealing with the ‘economy of God’. He called it ‘walking in the light’ which required confession and repentance. John wrote:
“If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous, so that He will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. (1 John 1:6-10)
When we own up to our sins, we admit what the Lord has known all along. When we confess them to others, it transforms our relationships. When we ask for forgiveness, we solicit the favour that only God can bestow and we transfer the burden of our sins to Him.
Doing it openly does away with pretense. Doing it honestly encourages others to do the same. Doing it genuinely results in forgiveness. And doing it together, strengthens the body of Christ. We confess our sins to one another, in order to assemble at the foot of the cross as sinners, and to pray for each other.
We seek God’s forgiveness, to continue to ‘walk in the light’. Obedience as an exercise of positive righteousness fills the vacancy created by abandoned sin, so that our hope in Christ will not be in vain.