God and Mammon

Dealing with money is unpleasant.

You might be good at dealing with money (I am not). You might even do it for a living (I do not). You might be careful to use as much of your money as you can for good purposes (I try to, but man, these skyrocketing grocery prices are killing me).

But ultimately, money does not bring out the best in us. We waste it. We manipulate it. We hoard it. We become obsessed by it. We let pursuit of it define our decisions. Money is something akin to — it corrupts by touch, it seems. But unlike witchcraft, you can’t avoid money altogether. It’s necessary. These dollars and cents keep us alive in this world, for a time. We need them for food, for warmth, for health.

Jesus’ parable of the untrustworthy steward sums up all our anxieties surrounding material wealth and the delicate balance we have to strike of caring for our physical needs while prioritizing our spiritual ones. But the parable reminds us that we can’t escape money, just like we can’t escape the world and all the barriers forged by this world between man and the happiness his Creator intends for him. We could retreat to the highest, remotest mountaintop, but the human condition would follow us there.

We would still feel doubt. We would still feel pain. We would still feel fear. We would still sin.

And we would still be hungry and cold. We would still need money.

Money will never be something that is easy to handle virtuously. But guess what? Nothing in this world is. And it’s probably best that we remember that.

©LPi