Reflections on God and Money: Babylon and the Beast (8)

Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!

Matthew 6:19-23

Yesterday I described some of the more obvious ways that marketing creates desires in us to buy goods and services we neither need nor previously wanted.

Babylon trades in the bodies and souls of people, shaping who we are from a very early age. I have read that attitudes to money develop much earlier in life than any social values or personal codes of morality. As such, it can be very difficult to know who God created us to be and to see what is going on around us in true light.

This brings me to the words of Jesus at the start of today’s Reflection. If our eyes are healthy, our bodies can be full of light. But if they have been blinded by what our capitalist, consumer society offers, our bodies will be full of darkness. And if what passes as the ‘light’ inside us is darkness, how great is the darkness! And it is no wonder if we cannot see where we are or know what to do about it!

Does our blindness extend to the ways that we earn money? I am sometimes surprised when people assume that I must think it wrong for people to work for banks, credit companies and other financial organisations. I am not. I am not against people who own a lot of property, but I am against those who profit by letting their tenants live or work in squalid conditions that can destroy their health; I am not against chemists, but I am against those who create legal highs that can destroy people’s lives. Similarly, I am not against bankers or anyone who works in the financial markets or anyone in the advertising industry, but I am against those who pursue their careers by indiscriminately convincing people to buy credit and other financial products they neither need nor had previously wanted but that can tip them into the misery of debt.

Does our blindness extend to the motivations behind our decisions to spend money? How vulnerable are we to concerns about our credibility and status? How easily is our selfishness and love of luxury exploited? How important is it for us to lay up sufficient treasures on earth, so we can feel secure about our futures?

To what extent are we content living in Babylon?

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Handling money and dealing with debt can be complicated and neither the author nor anyone else involved in the production of these Reflections is responsible for any action you take, or fail to take, based on what is written here. You are invited to put a link on your website to these Reflections. You are welcome to copy these Reflections for personal study or for circulation to family and friends on a non-profit basis. For any other purpose, whether or not for profit, you will require written permission in advance from the author before copying, reproducing or transmitting extracts in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or using any information storage and retrieval system.

Saturday 22 June 2013

Babylon and the Beast (8)