Serving God and money?
Well, that's an easy one for capitalist Christians. You can't serve two masters.
First of all, I don't understand Christians who make claims to hating money. As human beings, what are we to God that God would give His Son to save us from an eternity separated from Him? If God with a wave of His hand wipe out (almost) all humanity with a flood and destroy entire cities with fire and not even blink, what are we that God wants to save us?
God wants something. Pure and simple. We represent value to God, and He Himself is the currency exchanged for saving us.
Money cannot be sinful because money represents value. Value is what ties us to God. If God can value things, so can we.
Second, money is a tool. By representing value, we can exchange our goods and services for things we need and to enhance our quality of life. Money is meant to work in our favor and to our advantage. When you earn money through your ideas and creative effort, when you create value, money is your best friend. If pursuit of money leads to squandering it for worthlessness, when money is gained through theft and extortion, value is destroyed and lost. You are either compelled to steal and destroy, or you must borrow and go into debt. Once you are in debt, you must create and work to restore the value you lost by accepting money that hasn't been earned. You work not for the joy of creating things, but to serve money as though money is a master. Debt means you cannot honor God through giving, since you have nothing to give.
There are other ways in which money becomes your master. One example is working jobs you hate in order to support a meager existence.
Another financial sin is trying to coerce and control people who have money for no reason other than they have what you wish you had. The value of money is in the work you put into making it. Money obtained any other way (unearned or undeserved, and one can deserve money they don't directly earn, but someone believes that person is worth supporting. One's children, for instance) is worthless. And guilting people for being valuable is perhaps one of the worst things anyone can do. The Church has, sadly, been active in guilting people for being achievers or for wanting to improve themselves. I'd say if the church is in the business of making people feel bad for pursuing value and self-improvement, then that is a severe problem. It is the church that has made money the object of worship, and not for anything they have earned or deserved.
Now...there is nothing wrong with tithing or making offerings. But that is a decision for the individual to make. The church has no business in telling people what to do with their money aside from what has been commanded already in the Bible. When you've experienced poverty the way my family has and the church celebrates poverty while church leaders are eating steak dinners at the most expensive restaurants, the sound of hypocrisy becomes too loud to tolerate for long.
28 Dec 2022, 4:42 pm
