Let Goods and Kindred Go

Here is an obvious truth of the Christian faith: you cannot serve money and God.

Money is a tool for humanity, but a particularly tricky one to use. Few get a hammer and then become so enamored with hammers that they collect more than they will ever need to pound nails. Money is entrancing because it does nothing in itself, you cannot hammer a nail with a dollar bill, but can do so many things with it indirectly. 

Money is a way of keeping score for many of us. If we have it, or are getting paid big amounts of it, then we are winners. Our peers recognize our worth.

Money is a means to the world, the flesh, and the devil. With it a man can buy off the world for a time, satisfy the cravings of his body, and bribe devils for their power.

Money can be accumulated. If you have some, you can always have more money. The more money you have,  the more you will think you want.

The lesson of Scripture is this: use money, but beware being used by it. Give all you can.

Sometimes American Christians are too hasty to rush to the defense of “having money.” It is true that being rich need not be a vice, but also true that the Lord Jesus thought it was easier for a camel (big) to go through the eye of a needle (small) than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom. Why? Money and riches bring cares and desires with them. If we have more, we need more.

Money also appears to solve problems that are only covered up by spending. Relationships can be patched together with gifts, but money cannot cover spiritual hurts. If my first thought is “what it will cost” when dealing with a problem, I have become a spiritual Scrooge substituting money for spiritual power.

It is judgment on the American church that we can no longer say “silver and gold have I none” and so can no longer say “rise up and walk.”

We are powerless spiritually because we have substituted stuff for souls and consumption for creation.

My father always knew and could tell us the inexorable ruin that came to any child of God who become fixated on wealth, material privilege, and the good life. He was a generous man and gave my brother and me a good childhood full of fun and gifts but we never lived for money. We lived more simply than we might have because a servant of God could not profit excessively from the ministry.

Dad knew that there was no “rule” about how much was too much rather that the problem was desire. When we coveted, we were in sin. He taught me that there was nothing more odious than the “man of God” who lived in wealth while his flock suffered. I remember once hearing him say in sorrow about a pastor: “He is counting nickels and noses.”

Flee a church where the pastor measures success by offerings. 

And yet I have known far fewer pastors than laypeople obsessed with money. No government should be trusted to confiscate our extra funds and no government should be needed to do so because a Christian should give them voluntarily to those in need. 

John Wesley was (as most always) right: we can do well by doing good. He was also right that doing well is primarily so we can give it all away in service to God and fellow men. The ostentatious over consumption of wealth by Christians is a sign of coming judgment, not of prosperity.

I remind myself that I must let goods and kindred go, this mortal life also. As the martyrs of the Middle East show us daily, we may be killed. God’s truth abideth still. His Kingdom is forever.