My “day job” is serving as the ministry coordinator for a discipleship program at my church called Rooted. Rooted is a 10 week small group experience. Each week, your group focuses on a different topic related to God and how we live in response to God (you can find more information on Rooted here, if you’re interested). The topic for this past week was money.

 

Now personally, I love talking about money, learning about money, and planning how to use my money. I don’t know if that’s because I was brainwashed by listening to too much Dave Ramsey as a child or just because I’m a natural planner and saver. Regardless, I think money is a fun topic.

 

However, money can also be a confusing subject in the Christian world. There are a lot of lies out there about money. I want to look at three of those lies in this blog post and my next two. Each post will examine one of the three lies and evidence that it is, in fact, a lie. Let’s start wit the first one:

 

Lie #1: Money is evil. It’s bad/sinful to have a lot of it.

 

There are some segments of Christianity today that make out money to be this evil thing. Money is a necessary evil, but if you have too much money, that’s a problem. Being wealthy is almost (or maybe is) a sin in their eyes. After all, isn’t as hard for a rich person to get into heaven as it is to get a camel through a needle’s eye?

 

Which Is Evil: Money or the Love of It?

With these first two lies, there are a couple of proof texts that people can use to support their claim. This lie actually uses a misquote for its main prooftext. The Bible doesn’t say that money is the root of all evil. It says in 1 Timothy 6:10 that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” The love of money and money itself are two very different things We can all agree that loving money and/or being greedy is a bad thing.

 

Jesus Was against Rich People, Right?

The other Bible passage that people holding to this lie tend to focus on is the story of the Rich Young Ruler in Matthew 19. This guy comes to Jesus and asks what he has to do to get eternal life. Jesus tells him he needs to follow God’s commands. “I’ve got that one down,” the guy says (Ashleigh paraphrase), “what else?” Jesus tells him if he wants to be perfect, he needs to sell all his stuff and give the money to the poor. The guy leaves and is sad because he’s rich and doesn’t want to give it all away.

 

Jesus then says, “It is hard for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:23-24). This amazes the disciples and they’re like, “Who has a chance then?”

 

Jesus then says, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:26). The point isn’t that rich people can’t get into heaven. Yes, it’s harder for the rich to rely on God because they can easily fool themselves into relying on themselves. However, nothing is impossible with God. God is the only one that can allow any of us to make it into heaven, rich or poor.

 

Jesus Wasn’t Against Wealth

It should also be noted that it doesn’t seem like Jesus’ words to this rich young ruler were universal. He never asks anyone else to sell on their possessions, despite the fact that he comes in contact with many other wealthy people during his ministry. Joseph of Aramethea is a follower of Jesus who has to have retained his wealth because he is able to donate his tomb to Jesus (no small expense in those days). The beginning of Luke 8 talks about how a bunch of wealthy women followed Jesus around and used their wealth to support him and his ministry.

 

This trend holds true in early church history as well. Though Acts 2 talks about people selling possessions to give to other Christians, this is a totally voluntary thing and it doesn’t say that everyone sold everything they had. They just sold things as people had a need. Acts 18 includes the story of Lydia who was a purple cloth merchant, which was a very lucrative profession at the time. The women uses her wealth and her house to serve Paul on his missionary journey. Wealth can be used for good.

 

God Prefers the Poor, Right?

People who hold to this lie about money often talk about how God has preferential treatment for the poor. This idea actually comes from Liberation Theology, which is a form of theology that combines Christianity and Marxism (a philosophical system that is generally against wealth, among other things) . There is some truth to this idea of God’s preferential treatment of the poor. The poor, disadvantaged, orphaned, widowed, and oppressed do seem to have a special place in God’s heart. He is very concerned with how people in these conditions are treated and he wants His children to look out for them.

 

However, that doesn’t mean that God only loves the poor and downtrodden or even that he loves them more. God loves all of his children equally, even if some of them hold a special place in his heart.

 

An Example from Family

Let me give you an example from my own family of what this could look like (I’m not saying this is how God views it, but I think it gives us at least one way of looking at it). I am the oldest of three girls. My mom loves all of us and I’m pretty sure she loves us equally. Now, that doesn’t mean that how she loves us looks the same for all of us. We all have different personalities and she takes that into consideration when she shows us love.

 

Despite loving us all equally, I think my youngest sister has a special place in my mom’s heart. For one, she’s the youngest. She’s also the only one of us that isn’t outgoing and that doesn’t say what we want easily. My youngest sister is more reserved and doesn’t talk a whole lot (you have to work pretty hard to get myself and my middle sister to shut up). My youngest sister was also exposed to a lot of sickness and death as a young child. She accompanied my mom to live with my grandpa and his wife were sick and then both eventually died.

 

Because of all that, my mom often has preferential treatment for my youngest sister. This isn’t because she loves her more (at least I don’t think so), it’s because she’s seen the path that my sister has had to walk and can recognize the unique difficulty of it. I think that’s how God sees the poor. He holds them in a special place in his heart not simply because they are poor, but because of the added difficulty that causes in their life.

 

We’re All the 1%

The final problem with this view is that we’re (almost all) rich compared to somebody else. Being poor is slightly subjective. A few years ago, the Occupy Wall Street movement rallied against the “1%”, those in corporate America that were making the most money. However, if we look globally, those protesters are actually in a “1%” of their own. If you live in America, you’re a part of one of the wealthiest nations in the world with some of the highest living standards. While you might not feel like it all the time, you’re actually on top of the world when it comes to wealth.

 

Money is not evil. God isn’t against rich people. If that were the case, he wouldn’t have blessed Solomon with great wealth. Why give him something that was evil as a reward for asking for wisdom? (see 1 Kings 3 for that story). As we will see throughout this series of posts, money is not inherently good or evil. It’s simply a tool that we can use. It’s up to us whether we use it to glorify God or do evil.

 

Photo by Pepi Stojanovski on Unsplash