Christians do not have a love/hate relationship with money. Beware any Christian that spends a great deal of time bemoaning money or lusting after it.
Marxism and extreme libertarianism agree: money makes the world go around. The Marxist hopes for something better while the Rand-style libertarian accepts the “truth” and glories in it. The Christian is stuck disagreeing with both: money is not important enough to love or hate. We dignify that which we hate by making it important enough to warp our souls. Money, my fill in word for stuff, is a transient thing while our souls are immortal. No thing that is a transient human creation (not even a great work of art) is worth the soul of any human being.
Stuff can be useful for the accomplishment of virtuous deeds and a fulfilled life. Nobody denies this truth. Sometimes people do not have stuff because they have chosen impoverished lives, but often the lack of nutrition, health care, and access to beauty creates a condition where escape from poverty requires a miracle. Miracles happen, but any human society that requires its needy to rely on them for hope is to that extent immoral.
My stuff is a gift from God. As such it comes as He decides and goes as He wills. He allows me to participate in the process, but no plan of mine is so great that He cannot thwart it or so infantile that He cannot choose to bless it. Gifts come to the children of God from an All-Knowing Father who chooses wisely and well.
The Bible is so plain about the evils of mixing money and ministry that it would seem unnecessary to repeat the message. Obvious targets are ministries that demand poor parishioners give money for jets or the entire culture of televangelism. Materialism is so seductive, however, that I must remind myself: I do not need a new Apple watch for the greater glory of God. The minute my second thought is, “how do I monetize ministry?” then I must guard my heart carefully. The love of money has deep roots in all of us to produce all kinds of evil.
And yet the lean and haggard evangelist at the mission’s conference that warned me that my buying a record (they were vinyl then) was an absolute sign of my greed was wrong. I was not tied to my records. When Hope told me the music was garbage, I believed her and she tossed all of them. (Oh, White Heart! Oh, DeGarmo and Key!) I did long for books. My covetousness for hardback copies of Lord of the Rings consumed too much of my desires. They were disproportionate to my need.
When God finally allowed me to buy the trilogy he delighted in my joy because by that time they were no longer precious to me. Someday this may true of the Apple watch. Oddly if tomorrow I were to see my neighbor sporting a new ten thousand dollar Apple watch I could not judge their heart. There is nothing wrong with owning an Apple watch necessarily. It is easy to imagine a situation where having one would be good, just not easy to imagine one where just now I should have one.
Perhaps a ministry does need a jet. Perhaps God simply wishes to honor his workers with a delightful gift, but the problem is the lust for stuff.
Of greatest importance is the state of the poor in the world. Am I helping or harming their cause? Not for Christians the stupidity that economics is a zero-sum game* where America having something means (by necessity) that everyone else has less. Plainly, though, some economic transactions are immoral or zero-sum and those Christians must oppose. Inhumane working conditions are wickedness. Robbing workers of their wages or double dealing from a position of power is wicked. Corrupting justice with money is wicked. Giving the rich governmental breaks the poor do not get is wrong.
Christians are human centered. In my field of education the question must always be: “What is best for the folks? What is best for the students?” Money might be a way to keep score, but there is danger, great danger, around money. This is not because money is evil, but because we are. We are apt to value objects over persons: a decent definition of wickedness for a Christian.
Eve and Adam loved the fruit of the Garden more than God.
Cain loved his status more than Abel.
Saul loved his Kingdom more than obedience, Samuel, or David.
Judas loved thirty pieces of silver more than Jesus.
I am sure that if we had been Eve, Adam, Cain, Saul, or Judas, we would have rationalized our evil. We would have invoked our choice to harm people as for “the greater good.” More evil has been done in the name of the greater good than in the name of evil. And so today I look at my Mac mini in a world where so few have a computer this nice and am thankful. I use it but for people and not for itself. And yet I cast down the equal error of the rising sense of superiority that comes up in me that I do not love my stuff. I am tempted to hate my stuff and hate those who love their possessions instead of praying for Christ’s mercy for both of us. I vomit out the superiority and look to God for redemption.
I will not hate or love money.
*The amount of goods is limited, so if I go up, then you must go down. See land in Monopoly. Apple creates value where there was little or none. They need not take from someone else to do this “magic.”
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