Reflections on God and Money

Sunday, 3 November 2013

An Idol in Christendom (3)

You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbour and hate your enemy’. But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Matthew 5:43-48

After I outlined to a church leadership team what I planned to say at a seminar about making lifestyle choices consistent with the Sermon on the Mount, one of them raised a fear that I saw that others shared. That as there would be a number of bankers present, we ought to make it clear that we were not getting at them personally.

I never did understand what I had said to prompt that fear but, as has happened at other times, I suppose they assumed that if money can pose such a risk to people beliefs and behaviours there must, by implication, be something sinful or corrupting in handling so much of it.

And perhaps there is risk! Consider this guidance from a Christian leader in the 4^th Century. ‘When buying or selling, you can hardly avoid sin. So, in either case, be sure to lose a little in the transaction. Do not haggle about price from love of gain, and so indulge in actions harmful to the soul – quarrelling, lying, shifting your ground and so on – thus bringing our way of life into disrepute.’

Jesus said that we cannot serve both God and mammon. But it seems to me that a great many Christians, groups of Christians, churches, para-church organisations and ‘Christian’ charities and organisations (which is what I mean by ‘Christendom’) try to do just that – to serve both God and money! And are therefore guilty of idolatry!

Even if you balk at that, the possibility is worth reflecting on! Idolatry comes at us gradually, usually on our blind side, so that we are not aware of how our choices are being influenced and diverted. And then, without hardly being aware of it, we are acclimatised to assessing ideas and choices against financial criteria rather than the obligation to love our neighbours as ourselves and our enemies as our neighbours.

During Advent (which begins on Sunday 1 December), I plan a series of Reflections about making choices based on love, not money. It will be based on St Paul’s guidance about idolatry in 1 Corinthians 8-10.

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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, 2 November 2013

An Idol in Christendom (2)

Therefore my [James] judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God, but should write to them to abstain from the things polluted by idols, and from sexual immorality, and from what has been strangled, and from blood.

Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.

For the time that is past suffices for doing what the Gentiles want to do, living in sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry.

Little children, keep yourselves from idols.

Acts 15:19-20, 1 Corinthians 10:14, 1 Peter 4:3 & 1 John 5:21

I recall a church workshop where I was about to begin a session about making lifestyle choices consistent with the Sermon on the Mount, when the minister asked that, instead, I elaborate on the session about staying out of debt. At another church, the feedback at the end of the workshop was that people had found the practical teaching helpful but not the spiritual focus.

This sort of attitude is not limited to Christians. I have taught people of many religions who saw no inconsistency in living inconsistently with their religious beliefs. Islamic (Sharia compliant) finance, which operates according to rules derived from the Qur'an and other Islamic writings, prohibits interest (or ‘usury’ or ‘riba’) but I have met a great many Muslims that willingly ignore it. In fact, I can think of only one exception: at a school on the outskirts of London, a group of Muslim girls chose what the other groups thought was the worst bank account among the available options because it was the only one that was Sharia compliant! They were a happy, delightful group to work with, not in any way narrow-minded or fanatical, but they wanting to stay loyal to what they believed. And so they agreed to reject the opportunity to get interest on their savings.

The sad fact of modern life is that a great many people are lured or driven by money to live inconsistent with their own principles and beliefs. Exposing, reflecting on and discussing our lifestyle choices can be embarrassing, intimidating and menacing. So much so, we do not just keep the truth from our family and friends but also from ourselves.

I often challenge people to track their spending to see if what they have spent their money on accurately reflects their own lifestyle priorities. From all the schools where I have presented this challenge, I can think of only one where a group of young people actually did it and came back a fortnight later with their findings.

Tracking our spending for a couple of months, and analysing it, reveals our true lifestyle preferences and priorities and the influence money has in our lives. It not only helps us to manage our money better but, even more crucially, to ‘flee from idolatry’.

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Friday, 1 November 2013

An Idol in Christendom (1)

No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money. Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? …

And one of them, a lawyer, asked [Jesus] a question to test him. ‘Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?’ And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.’

Matthew 6:24-35 & 22:35-40

The Sermon on the Mount is the most complete description that Jesus of Nazareth gave of how people should live. It does not include Jesus’ statement that the first commandment is to love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, or that the second commandment is to love our neighbours as ourselves, but that is the sort of lifestyle described. And, at the heart of the Sermon, Jesus identifies money as the most powerful distraction.

Jesus knew that the most powerful rival to influence his disciples would be money. That is why he says, ‘You cannot serve God and money’. We tend to think that God’s great rival is the Devil, also called Satan, but nowhere does Jesus say, ‘You cannot serve God and Satan’. We know that the Bible repeatedly warns of and describes the devastation caused by two terrible types of sin, sexual immorality and financial corruption, but nowhere does Jesus say, ‘You cannot serve God and sex’.

I have taught personal finance for the past 12 years and almost everybody wants to know how to organise their spending and maximise their saving; very, very few want to understand and deal with the influence money has over their choice of career, their spending and their saving. While they may be highly tuned to various types of sexual misbehaviour, and quick to condemn it, they are often tolerant of avarice, covetousness, greed and other financial vices.

I finished the previous series of Reflection, An Idol in Israel, with the observation that Christians today may not have only Christian-like idols, like the gold ephod that Gideon made, such as tithing and sowing and reaping, but an idol as bold and as uncompromising and as alien as the shrine to Baal and Asherah that Gideon had previously torn down. That idol is money.

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