Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment… But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction…
1 Timothy 6:6-9
Something I make clear at the start of my presentations is that by explaining about how to handle money better, I am not trying to make anyone feel guilty about how they have used it in the past. They should not ‘beat themselves up’ about the past because learning new ways should be part of all human growth.
That is, I say, unless someone is doing something dishonest that they ought to feel guilt about! I go on to mention tax evasion, benefit fraud, bogus insurance claims, pilfering from employers, misleading contract bids and stealing from hotels and restaurants. People who do those sorts of things should feel guilty, change their behaviour and if possible offer restitution. The knowledge that such behaviour is common in society generally, and widely expected as normal by many, does not justify it.
It is an unfortunate feature of Church history that Christians can be no more honest than anyone else in society. In his first letter to the Church in Corinth, St Paul reprimands the Christian businessmen for their dishonesty. He begins by telling them that it is wrong for them to parade their disputes through the public courts but then he goes behind that, to the more fundamental issue: they did this because they had been cheating each other. Their legal disputes arose not from legitimate disagreements about poor service or contractual detail. Rather: ‘You yourselves wrong and defraud, even your own [Christian] brothers’! (See 1 Corinthians 6.)
The letter written by James to various churches around the Roman Empire addressed the difficult relationship between rich and poor Christians. Among the behaviour he sought to correct was preferential treatment for rich people, despising the poor, hoarding wealth, laying business plans without reference to God and cheating employees out of their wages.
In his first letter to Timothy, St Paul wrote the famous phrase, ‘The love of money is the root of all evil’. We will look at that later during the week. But it is sobering to think that he probably did not expect his warning to be heeded. In his next letter to Timothy, he wrote, ‘But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive… heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God.’ He then makes it clear that he is referring to Christians or, at least, to people who attend church: ‘having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power’. (See 1 Timothy 6 & 2 Timothy 3.)
I therefore close with this question: Is the pursuit of wealth always and inevitably incompatible with spiritual growth and maturity?
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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 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 Advent 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, however, 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.
