Matthew 5:33-37
The secondary nature of money becomes clear when we explore the rest of the Sermon on the Mount. It is not my intention to look at every issue but just two keys ones for us today: authenticity and relationship.
In the above passage, Jesus advocated plain speaking in every situation. At the time, a system of ‘honesty’ had been created about the idea of taking oaths: if someone ‘swore by the altar’, it was not to be taken as seriously as if they swore by the gift they had sacrificed on the altar, as Jesus explained on another occasion when denouncing hypocrisy.
Historically, philosophers and theologians have limited legitimate lies to averting violence and maintaining due modesty and privacy. The British also have a noble history of euphemism to disguise unattractive truths in a good cause, such as glossing over a person’s imperfections in their obituary. But since the 18th Century, when Immanuel Kant first asserted that it is morally preferable to use misleading truth rather than to lie in a good cause, we have come to approve misleading truth in more selfish situations.
People today blag, trick, mislead, misdirect, distort, distract, evade, fabricate, exaggerate and embellish without lying; they mix euphemism, abstraction, expectation, understatement, metaphor and slang to create an illusion that cannot be sustained under scrutiny but they do not lie. In fact, it is deemed unethical to accuse them of lying, even when it is obvious that would have been the judgement of previous generations!
Honesty has become astonishingly subjective. When answering questions in credit applications, the ‘correct’ answers are the ones that get the loan or mortgage. If the applicant has to have an income or disposable income above a certain level, the ‘correct’ answer will exceed that level, whether or not they actually earn or have that much. In as much as they think about it at all, they are not being dishonest because issues of empirical truth are not relevant: what counts is getting the loan.
How easy is it for us to be compromised by what society accepts as normal?
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Copyright © All Souls Clubhouse Community Centre & Church and Philip Evans 2012.
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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.
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