Money

The title is taken from a rather familiar text in Matthew 6: "No servant can be slave to two masters; for either he will hate the first and love the second, or he will be devoted to the first and think nothing of the second. You cannot serve God and money." That's the way it reads in the New English Bible. It's a familiar text—Matthew 6:24—but it has a few surprises for us.

First, there is the rather strange fact that generations of Bible readers had to go around, or through, a translation smokescreen in order to get the full impact of that basic statement, "You cannot serve God and money." Our familiar King James Bible, as well as the RSV, carried along the original Aramaic word "mammon," a word that meant simply "money" or "wealth." But there seemed to have been some reluctance to come right out and say it: "money!" Somehow it just didn't seem right to the translators that you should have to face such a choice—God or money.

We are, of course, used to the way in which the Bible makes sharp contrasts: good and evil, light and darkness, a broad way and a narrow way. So when we hear these words about two masters, two ways, two contrary loyalties, we expect to meet the familiar contrast of God and the Devil, the Lord Christ against the false lord Satan. But instead, the choice here is between God and money. Wealth is God's opponent; riches are the false god. Perhaps the translators thought that was too much for ordinary folk to take. They may have thought that money wasn't important enough, or evil enough, to stand up there opposed to almighty God! So they carried along that untranslated Aramaic word, "mammon." And that enabled us to create in our imaginations an image of a false god, one called mammon—another name for the devil, as some readers have thought. Of course the footnotes were always there to remind us that it meant simply money. But we didn't have to face it directly. It was just too blunt to call money God's enemy. Yet that is the way Jesus put it.

A second thing we should notice in introducing this text is its form as a simple descriptive statement. Jesus doesn't tell people that you ought not serve two masters, it's not a good idea, you may not make it. No, it's simply a straightforward declarative statement. You cannot! In Jesus' perception of reality, this is the way things are. Such divided loyalty is an outright impossibility.

It's an instructive exercise to go through the teachings of Jesus and give some attention to the difference between imperative statements—you ought or you ought not—and the indicative statements that simply say: this is the way things are. The Sermon on the Mount offers a number of imperatives. You recognize them: don't swear at all, don't resist one who is evil, don't lay up treasure on earth. These are statements that one can choose to obey or disobey. But now and then along comes a sweeping indicative statement, a straightforward pronouncement: "you are the salt of the earth." There is no choice about it, you see.

Of course you can be poor salt, salt without savor, no-good salt, salt that has lost its purpose. But the point is that, good or bad, you, the disciples to whom Jesus is talking, you are the only salt that the poor old earth has. You'd better believe it. And so it is with this text—just a flat declaration. You cannot serve two masters. There is no way.

What then is this master called money, this personification of wealth and riches? What does Jesus mean by putting it on a par with God? If we begin by asking what the word "god" means, god with a small "g," not the Lord God himself, there is a sense in which we can say that anything that people view as worthy and powerful can be called a "god." From this we get the symbolic meaning of money. Money represents a superhuman force, it's a symbol for great power. Let's not underestimate the power of symbols. People live for them, they die for them—words, slogans, a flag. Before you smile and say we're beyond such superstition about a god called money, let's stop and look around a bit.

Certainly one of the ways by which we can tell what people judge to be worthy, sacred, of supreme value to them, is the style and form of their public life. Look at ancient Greece. The temples to their gods were magnificent architectural achievements. Their ruins still stand. Or picture medieval Europe, where the spires of the cathedrals were raised at the crossroads of human endeavor, enduring monuments to a particular form of faith. There, in the center of the community, stood the cathedral, the temple.

Now take a look at our cities and towns. My home town, Goshen, Indiana, is no doubt typical. Go to the central intersection, Main and Lincoln streets. What do you find? On one corner a stately 19th century courthouse, representing the political power. On two other corners, not one, but two modern buildings, "temples" if you will, representing the god of money. The banks have pre-empted the cathedrals. "Oh," you object, "that's silly. The bank isn't a temple. Money isn't a god."

Let's think about it this way. Suppose you need a loan, you want to buy another car. You go to the priest of the money temple, the man at the bank. You bow and scrape in reverence to this man of power. And like the priest at some other temple he expects you to make your confession. He asks you some questions. How much do you make a month? What are your other liabilities? What are your assets? And you meekly pour out the secrets of your heart, the intimate details of your financial life. Now suppose the elders of the church come to ask you about your economic status. The chances are that most of us would reply like a person quoted recently in a Christian magazine, "That's nobody's business. That's just between me and the Lord."

We must ask which priest, which temple, which god is it who is most successfully making his claims upon us?

There very definitely is a theology of money in the Bible and if we take time to check out all the references to money, to wealth, to riches, we make some rather sobering discoveries. Jesus and his apostles take a very pessimistic view of the money game. Almost without exception, the rich man is condemned. Riches are a problem. It's generally assumed that the rich are oppressors. It's hard to swallow, but I could find only two places in the New Testament that mentioned riches in a possibly favorable light. One is Joseph of Arimathea, described as a rich man, who came forward to claim the body of Jesus for burial. We don't really know what final judgment is made of him, but at least in this instance he is portrayed sympathetically. Then, in 1 Timothy 6, after admonition against seeking to become rich, Paul the apostle recognizes that there may be some rich men in the church. But what are they instructed to do? To give away, to share what they have. And then, you know, they are no longer rich! Why is money such a problem? What's wrong, in the New Testament view, with being rich in the goods of this world? I want to outline briefly the New Testament perspective on riches. The first point we've made already—the fact that money can become a god, both symbolically and actually. Because it represents power, there is a constant temptation to abuse that power, and to seize power is to become a rival to God himself. Wanting to take the place of God is the primordial sin, the temptation that came way back there in the garden. '"You shall be like gods." But the attempt to take God's place only lands one on the devil's team.

Secondly, and closely related, money is not just a symbol of power, but it actually is power. Even in the simple setting of the New Testament there was concern about the control over others that money makes possible. For example, James warns against the inclination to give special attention to the well-dressed rich man as he comes into the assembly. That would be a denial of brotherhood, an obvious contradiction to the spirit and example of Jesus. And yet, how well we know that money talks in a money economy, that richness represents power. The man with a fortune can buy out his competitors; he can invest here, he can withdraw there. He can manipulate corporations, control virtual empires. Money talks, money votes. How seldom is it an expression of compassion and brotherhood.

Third, there is the problem of what one needs to do to become rich. In a world of finite resources, it is mathematically obvious that if some have too much, others have too little. Both the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament apostles seem to take it for granted that the rich get that way by oppressing the poor. Isaiah the prophet says, "Woe to those who join house to house, who add field to field," until there is no room for the poor. James in chapter 2 says to the church flatly, "Are not the rich your oppressors?" In chapter 5 he thunders out, "The wages you never paid are loud against you. You have condemned the innocent and murdered him." Hard sayings!

I know that this seems like too simplistic an analysis—just good guys and bad guys. But that's the way the book reads. Some will say that it's not good economics and surely most of us, who honestly have to accept the label of "rich" for ourselves, are not conscious of exploiting anyone. But there is no easy way to duck the issue. If the system makes some rich at the expense of others, the Bible speaks against it.

The fourth point—being rich makes us insensitive to the poor. That was the problem in Jesus' parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The poor beggar was there every day, but apparently the rich man didn't see him until his eyes were opened too late, on the other side of death. That's the way it so often is; when poverty was "discovered" in America in the 1960s, people talked about the "invisible poor" who had suddenly become visible. A prominent newspaper editor, faced with statistics claiming some 17 million desperately poor people in America said flatly, "I don't believe it. I don't know any poor people." He was telling the truth. He has insulated himself from the poor. That was his problem. It may be ours also.

We may recite "Blessed are the poor," yet it's awfully hard to identify with them. But remember, God does.

Still a fifth point: riches can cause us to forget about God completely. The more earthly security we have, the more we depend on ourselves, the less we think about God. That's the situation of the rich fool in Jesus' parable in Luke 12. "I've got the goods, I've got it made." Comfort, money, security, property. And then the voice in the night—"You poor fool!"

In short, the New Testament is bad news for the rich. And who are these rich? There's really no way to avoid the answer. It's us. Just about all of us. We are the rich—by whatever standard of measurement one might want to use. Certainly if we begin with the situation of Jesus and his apostles back in Palestine, where most people existed in what we can only call a subsistence economy, the rich man was nothing more than the one who had a bit more land than he needed for himself, a few extra cattle, a strong box for his savings. By that standard we are rich.

But, you say, that's not our world. Of course it isn't. But let's take our world. There's no need to remind well-informed people of the huge disparity between the wealth of this nation and the poor of the third world. Most of us are numbed by the statistics. We tend to turn them off. We refuse to accept the guilt-inducing reality, acknowledging that our pets probably receive better food and medical care than most of the world's children, that we are 6 percent of the world's population using 40 percent of the world's resources, and so on.

The telling point is that we—just about all of us—are by comparison, richer than most of those rich men in Bible times could ever imagine. But the situation of the poor hasn't changed much in 20 centuries—it's just that there are an awful lot more of them!

If riches are the enemy of true faith, then we are forced to say, in the words of the comic: "We have met the enemy, and he is us!" This is a very troubling realization because most of us don't feel rich. We are constantly bothered by rising prices, by unpaid bills, by the struggle to balance the budget. We want to reserve the label "rich" for the conspicuously wealthy, the jet-setters, the obvious millionaires. It hurts to admit that we are rich!

The whole theological and ethical problem is sharply focused in Mark's account of the rich young ruler. We all know the story, so we no longer share the surprise of the disciples when they heard Jesus exclaim: "How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God." The disciples were amazed. "Who then can be saved?"

We are not amazed anymore. Perhaps because we have been going to church for too long. We make our peace by setting up a logical formula. Premise: the rich cannot enter the kingdom. Fact: I can enter the kingdom. Therefore, I must not be rich. We begin with the testimony of our faith and we conclude that we are poor.

But suppose you turn the argument around. Use the same premise: the rich cannot enter the kingdom, but begin with another fact: I am rich. Therefore, I cannot enter the kingdom. That seems to be arguing from facts, and where does it leave us? Lost?

Well, not quite, because of course, if you have watched closely you know that I set up the logic too carefully, too rigorously. I didn't quote Jesus altogether correctly. He didn't say categorically "the rich can't enter heaven." It's not an absolute barrier. But he did say "how hard," how difficult, how unlikely. And the disciples responded in amazement, "who then can be saved?" "For men it is impossible, but not for God." For God everything is possible. Hallelujah! But be careful! Our temptation is to shout so quickly "Hallelujah! Rich and poor are saved only by the grace of God!"—and forget the whole point of the parable. Don't lose the point in cheap talk. Jesus was talking about the kingdom—His kingdom. How hard it is for those who have riches to enter that kingdom, because the values of the kingdom and the values of the person whose god is money just don't come together. In the sphere of God's rule, the actuality of this presence, there is just no place for those whose master is money.

We're back where we started—you cannot serve two masters. Either you serve money and lose God—or you serve God by doing something drastic about your riches. Nowhere in the New Testament does an inspired writer encourage believers to get rich. We shy away from that truth, because just about all of the forces and influences in our culture tell us that money is success, power, glory. The Bible points in a different direction. The accumulation of personal wealth is seen as the biggest obstacle to faith, to salvation. The love of money is the root of all evil. It's that simple, and that devastating—to our usual assumptions.

We've been talking about money, but let's be sure we understand that the problem is not money in itself. The Bible isn't against money as such, it's against money as a god. The Bible isn't against business, but against personal riches. In talking about money and riches, there is a fundamental distinction that so often we fail to make. We must distinguish between the accumulation of capital for one's personal benefit—that's the "riches" which the Bible unequivocally condemns—and the accumulation of capital as an economic resource, as a productive capacity that may indeed be a tool in the work of God's kingdom—or at least in the enhancement of human welfare.

This is part of the magic of money, its fascinating potential. As Otto Piper puts it, "Money completely changes its character when it is used for the benefit of others rather than for the multiplication of our own capital."

Taking that as a starting point, we have a whole new orientation on the money and riches problem. With the whole scope of biblical teaching as our framework, we can begin to construct an economics of the kingdom. Our foundation is the Old Testament teaching that the earth is the Lord's, that resources are to be distributed equitably (that's the meaning of the jubilee year in Leviticus 25), that property must serve the common welfare through humankind's stewardship. The pattern is completed by the emphasis on radical sharing that is demonstrated in the New Testament community of faith.

The Bible does offer an answer to the money problem, and that answer has two parts, a what and a how, an end and a means. The what, the goal, is the kingdom of God. "Seek first God's kingdom and his justice" (Matthew 6:33). In these words Jesus sums up that whole section of teaching on money. How then do we put first God's kingdom and his justice? By completely turning around the problem we began with: to make money a servant instead of a master.

Any instrument with such tremendous power represents a serious temptation, a false god. To set the priorities in order, Jesus brings his discussion on money and property in Matthew 6 to a fitting climax with these words, "Set your mind on God's kingdom and his justice before everything else and all the rest will come to you as well."

Money can indeed be a servant, but it is a dangerous servant. It is a servant with such amazing potentialities that it requires a master big enough to control it, or else the roles may be reversed. The servant may overthrow the master and take his place. Here is the real heart of the problem of personal riches. This is why the whole New Testament speaks against accumulation of personal riches. Jesus underscored the difficulty of the rich entering the kingdom, because there's something about money and what it represents that resists the servant role. Unless the master is truly great enough to be a master, the demonic power takes over.

I believe that it's next to impossible for one person alone to be master of money in a Christian way. My isolated and selfish ego is not adequate for the task. If I attempt to master money on my own, those superhuman demonic qualities will assert themselves and again money will become the master.

Can money then be tamed and domesticated as a servant of my own small group, my family or my friends? I doubt it. We have the same problem of egoism. Only God's kingdom and his justice can be a big enough purpose, a worthy enough cause for the final mastering of money. If we are to escape the demonic captivity to money and riches, we must recover that biblical perspective that property must serve the common welfare, and that sharing is the Christian lifestyle. If we can't do this, we are inevitably caught in the money trap.

What might it mean, concretely, to place all of our money—not just the portion we give to the church—in the role of servant to God's kingdom and His justice? How can we use money so that our business, our capital, whatever resources we have, are actually serving the kingdom of God rather than promoting the accumulation of private wealth?

I have asked the question: What are we doing with our money? I have argued that the only answer to our problem of material riches—a problem that leads to spiritual poverty—is to redirect those riches so that they in turn become the answer to the world's problem, the problem of material poverty and spiritual darkness. Our money—all of it—must be totally devoted to God's kingdom and his justice, for only in that way can money become a blessed servant instead of a demonic master.

J. R. Burkholder was professor of religion at Goshen College when this article appeared in The Post-American.