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    Home / College Guide / Money Isn’t the Root of All Evil, Said the Minister
     Posted on Tuesday, September 17 @ 00:00:10 PDT
    College

    A new understanding of money empowered me to make a lot more of it (without the guilt) Lydia Sohn Follow Sep 16 · 14 min read Photo: Guido Mieth/Getty Images Y ou may have played this game before: You can be the wealthiest, most talented, smartest, or most attractive person in the world entire world. Which would you choose? This was always a fun conversation topic amongst my college friends. We would ask clarifying questions to explore the logic of the game: Would we need to sacrifice other traits in exchange for being the best at whichever we choose? Would my existing attributes change based on my choice? Wouldn’t I automatically become the wealthiest if I was the smartest, most talented, or most attractive because my skills would also be lucrative? As we reasoned through the finer details, we would all inevitably settle upon being the wealthiest. We decided that with money, we could buy or otherwise compensate for our other traits. It always seemed to take a while for us to admit that, though. There was apparently something off-putting about wanting to make a lot of money, especially to us socially conscious, liberal-arts types who prided ourselves on a love of intangibles — of learning over looks, doing good over making money, and wisdom over wealth.

    We rarely talk about money and its meaning in our lives at a higher ideological level. Instead, we tend to talk about the functional aspects of money: how to make it, how to save it, how to best use it, and how much of it we have. But the second-order status of money in our lives, the one that deals with its ultimate importance and purpose, often goes unaddressed. This is likely because the dominant understanding of money in our country (as well as most other countries with similar cultures) derives largely from a Judeo-Christian heritage, which seems neither helpful nor practical for addressing these questions. Judeo-Christian teachings about money are conflicting, contradictory, and difficult to apply consistently. We rarely talk about money and its meaning in our lives at a higher ideological level. As a minister, I’m all too familiar with these contradictions. On one hand, the authors of the Old Testament see money as a sign of God’s blessing. Money and material abundance confirm favorability in God’s eyes. Granted, many books within the Old Testament — such as Deuteronomy, Micah, and Amos — urge us to treat all people with dignity, especially the most vulnerable members of our societies.

    These teachings, however, do not seem to negate the Old Testament’s predominant view of money as a sign of God’s blessing. The life and teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, however, disrupt this neat and simple theology of money. Jesus does not believe that poverty is a sign of wrongdoing, as God himself might even be revealed in the faces of the poor. (We see this in Matthew 25:40–45). In the gospel of Matthew, a rich man asks Jesus how to receive eternal life. Jesus responds by instructing him to follow the commandments of the Torah. When the rich man tells Jesus that he has been following those laws since his youth, Jesus then tells him to “sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” After that exchange, he turns to his disciples to share how hard it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Infamously, he tells them in Matthew 19:16–22 that it is “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Similar teachings abound throughout the gospels, and they eventually made their way into the ideologies of the early Christian community and beyond.

    This is not to say the Old Testament’s teachings about money completely disappeared from Christianity. Many of us are familiar with prominent Christian figures such as Oral Roberts and Joel Olsteen, who misappropriated those sections of the Old Testament and gave rise to an idea called the “prosperity gospel,” which is exactly what it sounds like: Faithful followers of Jesus will be rewarded with material prosperity. This complicated belief system is so entrenched in our society that it governs how we interact with money — often, without our realizing it. Thus, we live in contradiction: We have certain, inherited views of money but their applications in our lives end up being very different from (and even irreconcilable to) our contemporary beliefs about the meaning of money. Money is one of the biggest drivers of human behavior. Our attitudes toward money dictate where and how we work, eat, go to school, raise children, travel, plan, and dream. Still, we don’t know how to feel about it. It’s like my college friends and I: We didn’t want to admit that we actually desired lots of money because we felt guilty and obnoxious for wanting it.

    I grew up with the poverty-as-a-virtue brand of Christianity. People like Mother Teresa and St. Francis were introduced to me as ethical exemplars. Money was the root of all evil and its accumulation was a sign of greed. I was taught that our true freedom lies in breaking free from worldly obsessions and nurturing our souls instead. This is what Jesus meant when he taught us to store up treasures in heaven as opposed to this earth, where moths and rust corrupt, and thieves break in to steal. My earthly possessions could be taken away in an instant but love and kindness could never be taken from me. While there is great truth in this notion, I also became increasingly uncomfortable with the impractical and severe views of money in my given faith tradition. This is probably why most ministers don’t explicitly talk about money from the pulpit: biblical teachings about wealth are so often one-sided. We either see money as the physical manifestation and central driver of worldly corruption, or as a sign of a divine blessing on a good life. In both cases, we give money immense moral weight in opposing directions. The only options we (and also God) should seem to want for ourselves are extremes of poverty or wealth.

    But this doesn’t match with our practical experiences. Are wealth or poverty good indicators of who has been leading a virtuous life, aligned with God? Is the exemplary life really one that is always on the margins of subsistence? And, given the shape of our highly-organized, global, technological society, isn’t it difficult to make a change for the better without having some positive assessment of what money is and what it can do for you? My inherited views of money also began to get in my way when it came to creating the life I truly desired. I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life getting my clothes from thrift stores and pretending this was my preference. I wanted to buy a home in Southern California and I didn’t want to explain myself or be defensive. I wanted to be really generous with my family, friends, church, and important causes without worrying that these gestures would break the bank. I really wanted to make money and I wanted to make more of it, perhaps even a lot more, without abandoning my faith and Christian values. Some time between when I acknowledged my inner conflict about money and now, I encountered several scripture passages where Jesus’ views on money are more nuanced and pragmatic.

    An integral but often overlooked one is nestled in the gospel of Luke 16:1–9: Then Jesus said to the disciples: “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an account of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.

    And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” This passage may seem puzzling, or even bizarre, upon an initial reading. A rich man’s financial manager is about to be fired for poor performance, so he goes around to each of the rich man’s debtors and cuts a significant portion of what they owe in the hopes that they will be charitable toward him in the future, when he no longer has a job. The text doesn’t reveal the debtors’ responses but we can only assume they were positive because he was forgiving large portions of their considerable debt. The rich man’s response, however, was surprising — especially given the fact that he apparently did not give this plan his blessing. He commends his manager for being “shrewd,” the original Greek word for which can also be translated as “clever” or “wise.” Even more surprising than the rich man’s response is that Jesus then lifts up the manager as a model for his followers by urging them to “make friends by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into eternal homes.

    ” What does Jesus mean here by “dishonest wealth?” Is he encouraging people to use money dishonestly, like Robin Hood, to steal wealth from one person and give it to another? No, I believe that by “dishonest wealth,” he simply means money itself. Jesus says to use this temporal tool shrewdly, wisely, and cleverly. While money comes and goes, our relationships with God, others, and ourselves are lasting. This has become the new core of my money theology. Money, in and of itself, has no real value. People in this world have granted it value but money is not intrinsically valuable like you and me, who are living, breathing beings with abilities to love, forgive, create, and imagine. Money is just something we’ve created. If we think about physical dollars, for instance, we’ll remember that at one point in history, we decided to print green paper and declared that it had value. Before that, we used coins. And way before that, we used livestock, home goods, and services. People bartered to get what they needed. At some point, people started giving that blanket, coin, or green paper intrinsic value. People felt more secure when they owned it. But having green paper doesn’t make us safe, or okay.

    Good relationships make us okay — good relationships with God, others, and ourselves. Most of us have given money too much intrinsic value on one of two extremes: We think it’s either very good and makes us more valuable, or we think it’s intrinsically bad and we should not want it because money is the root of all evil. Both extremes give money too much power. The story from the gospel of Luke I Quote: d above also illuminates Jesus’ other, more extreme views of money in the Bible. It shows me that money in and of itself is not evil, but the way humans value money over life itself has become evil. In this passage from Luke, Jesus teaches his followers that money is fine. It’s a neutral fact of this world. Don’t avoid it. Don’t love it. Be wise with it. Be shrewd with it and always use it for good. Sometimes, that good comes in the form of blessing others with it. Sometimes, that good comes in the form of blessing ourselves with it. This more moderate conception of material wealth dispels one-sided myths about the inherent moral value of money which, in a sense, gives us permission to try to make more money so long as it serves a higher purpose.

    Jesus is clear in his admonitions of wanting money for the sake of itself, but I have to wonder: Who ever wants money for the sake of itself? Don’t all of us want money in service of something higher and more significant? I once attended a workshop on organizing personal finances and the facilitator asked all of us to write down what we would do and the kind of lives we would create if we had a limitless amount of money. I wrote down: Buy a beautiful Craftsman-style home in a town near my parents with a back house that would host our in-laws whenever they visited or other friends and family who wanted to visit us. Work a little less at the church and spend more time writing and creating curriculums that help people. Pay off all of my parents’ business debt and mortgage. Pay off all of my brother’s law school loans so he can work fewer hours and spend more time with his wife and son. Take my family on a cruise because my mom really wants to go on a cruise for some reason. Travel more (with my husband, by myself, with family, and with friends). Visit our family on the East Coast more often. And that was it. The exercise was illuminating because it showed me the truth of the aforementioned Lukan passage: What I really care about isn’t money for the sake of itself.

    Rather. I really care about my loved ones and practicing more of my creative capacities. A friend of mine told me she wanted to be a billionaire so she could buy a house with glass walls near the beach. Well, first off, that sounds dangerous. More to the point, I asked her why she wanted that house with glass walls. When we narrowed down to the driving motivations behind her reasons, it became clear that she believed this house would make her happier. She didn’t believe she could achieve that level of happiness in her life right now. Herein lies the strongest and most problematic connection we tend to draw between material possessions and emotional well-being. We think more money will make us happier. We hear sages and religious leaders harp against this idea. And of all people, the actor Jim Carrey put it profoundly: “I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it’s not the answer.” Rich people still fail. Their dreams are still crushed. They get sick and lose loved ones. Money is not the magic pill that cures all of life’s problems. Instead, that magic pill has been ours since the moment we were born.

    The pill that truly saves and empowers us is the belief that humans have intrinsic and infinite value that will never be taken away from us. We do not need to earn it or strive for it. Out of our worthiness, we long to make connections with others. We also long to contribute to the world in our own unique ways with our gifts, talents, and imagination. To do this, we must believe and employ these three truths: We are intrinsically beloved. We are wired to love others. We want to create and contribute to this world, whatever our financial status is. Money’s role, then, is as a neutral and temporal tool in assisting us with this third part — creating lives that are aligned with the values and dreams we have for ourselves and others in this lifetime. We’ve all have tasted the joy and satisfaction of the creative process, from making a lovely scarf; to expressing exactly what we mean to say in an essay, poem, or email; to designing a room according to one’s tastes. This process of creation, of bringing something imagined into being, is what actually fills us up. It’s not the money itself.

     
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