It is better to take refuge in the Lord than
to trust in man.
It is better to take refuge in the Lord than
to trust in princes.
Psalm
118:8-9
As we said yesterday, the various
ways that we give physical presence to money is much like the way that a novel
gives physical reality to a fictitious story. We make novels seem more real by
turning them into television programmes and films, so we can watch people act
out the stories. Or we produce reference books that describe the fiction as if
it were real, like biographies of Sherlock Holmes and tour guides for Tolkien’s
Middle-Earth. We can get more involved when the fiction becomes a computer game,
where we are part of the story and our own abilities and preferences affect the
plot. Today, people create wholly fictional lives for themselves by means of
avatars living in virtual worlds imagined in cyberspace.
When people become obsessed with
fiction, they easily become unbalanced in real life. Their obsession changes
them, usually for the worse, as they cease to make clear distinctions about
what is important and about acceptable standards of behaviour. In the same way,
obsession with money often changes people for the worse, distorting their
perceptions and priorities.
Dr Oliver James, author of Affluenza, describes how people with an
undue emphasis on money and material possessions are particularly vulnerable to
emotional disorders. This can plunge people into a downward spiral, as they
seek to relieve their feelings of insecurity, inadequacy and depression by
buying what they think will bring relief and happiness. There are physical
issues, also: medical research has shown that making large amounts of money can
give the same sort of ‘high’ as cocaine, by stimulating the same area of the
brain.
All this goes some way to explaining
the escalating recklessness that drives people to sacrifice their families and neglect
their health for money – often doing work they do not enjoy for money they do
not need! It begins to explain the addiction that drives traders on the
financial markets to gamble huge sums of other people’s money, even threatening
the viability of major financial institutions.
This is why Jesus of Nazareth placed
money in direct opposition to God. Not because it is fundamentally evil but
because it is the ultimate man-made system of trust that demands the sort of
allegiance that should be due to God alone. But although Jesus said that we
cannot serve both God and money, might living in a consumer society tempt us to
try?
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Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre &
Church and Philip Evans 2012.
Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry
of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
These Advent Reflections do not teach personal finance
skills and where these skills are mentioned the issues have been simplified. Handling
money and dealing with money problems and debt can be complicated and neither
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