Among the many sayings of Jesus that have echoed down through the ages, few have continued to sound so loudly or uncomfortably in our ears as his warning, “You cannot serve both God and Mammon.” But this does not keep most of us from trying our darnedest to prove him wrong. In every era, Christians have devised systems for helping the wealthy–camel’s hump and all–squeeze through the proverbial eye of a needle into the kingdom of God. In medieval times they might endow chantry chapels in the wills, employing a team of monks to pray for their souls. Today, the “faith and work” movement often serves to reassure Christian businessmen that by participating to the hilt in the global capitalist economy, they are doing the Lord’s work.
It has been easy — in the thirteenth century as much as the twenty-first — for “radical” followers of Christ to assume a prophetic stance against all such compromises and glorify poverty as tantamount to Christian faithfulness. But although an idolatrous love of money is a great evil, the tension between God and Mammon will not be resolved by righteous rants against upper-class greed or middle-class complacency. The questions that money raises are usually too complex and multi-faceted to be resolved by such responses.
Read Full Article »