God and Money

Spiritual teachers throughout the centuries have focused on the conflict between our aspiration for God and our desire for money.

Money has an obvious, immediate appeal—even to the smallest child. I once offered my two-year old son a quarter. He said: “Don’t want quarters; want dollars”.

Money seems to satisfy all of our immediate needs, plus it brings us status and power. What could be better?

From the perspective of economic theory, money is–plain and simple–the ability to command goods and services from other people. So we can never have more money, except at the cost of some other person needing to produce what we demand because of the power of our money.

Possessing too much money can bring us an attitude self-importance, overconfidence, and conceit. It can deaden our feelings of compassion. It may become our total identity—“I am rich and important”.

Furthermore, material wealth cannot satisfy our deepest longings. It cannot buy love, happiness, health, good relationships, or a sense of lasting significance. It doesn’t help us face the prospect of dying. Wealth more often becomes a barrier in truly relating to other people and to finding God.

So what to do? The landscape of spiritual advice contains contradictory suggestions. Some suggest we give up money entirely and live in voluntary poverty. Others say quite the opposite. They suggest that God abundantly blesses those who are most devoted to Him and so wealth is a visible sign of His special affection—we deserve it.

I like the counsel of John Wesley, the great Methodist preacher of the 18th century. He said strong faith brings discipline to our lives. Discipline tends to bring us wealth after a while. But wealth then often turns our hearts away from God.

How we obtain our money is crucially important. Is our loyalty so strong to a corporation or to a well-paying occupation, that it compromises our allegiance to our family, friends, and to our community? Are we tempted to deceive and mislead in order to get rich? Or perhaps to take advantage of the weak? Do we believe “Let the buyer beware” when we sell our goods and services?

But even more dangerous than the corruption money can bring, is the distraction it presents: the passion, the yearning, and the ache for getting wealth. We may crave nothing else but getting money and spending it, so that it blinds us to all else.

One may even be quite poor, yet still totally obsessed with getting and spending money. We may buy lottery tickets or trade stocks feverishly, hoping to strike it rich. Even if we never succeed financially, our spiritual life may waste away because we devote everything we have in trying to get wealth.

The question comes down to what should take first place in our lives. Is it striving for the betterment of our family, community and the whole of humanity? Is it living our lives by moral and spiritual principals? Is it seeking to do the will of God? Is it creating security in our lives? Is it paying top dollar to keep fit? Is it going for cruises? Is it having a first-rate computer, or the ideal car? Is it using the shopping mall as the main source of pleasure?

We should not hesitate to pursue a good career or build a successful business if that doesn’t contravene our most important relationships in the process. Our spiritual danger comes not from getting money but from pursuing it too fervently at all costs.

There is nothing inherently bad about money per se. But like food or work, it can become an unhealthy obsession. Even worrying too much about whether we have enough is unhealthy. God provides for our needs day by day. That is why we pray “Give us this day our daily bread”.