Calendar of October/November religious events

c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) “Greed is right. Greed works. Greed _ for lack of a better word _ is good.” So goes the Gospel According to Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film, “Wall Street.” Jesus, however, had another take. “There is none good but God,” he said. These extreme statements bookend our nation’s […]

c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) “Greed is right. Greed works. Greed _ for lack of a better word _ is good.” So goes the Gospel According to Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film, “Wall Street.”

Jesus, however, had another take. “There is none good but God,” he said.


These extreme statements bookend our nation’s chaotic financial crisis. So perhaps we need a little theological reflection on our current economic situation.

Judaism and Christianity share common values about money. Hard work, thrift, honesty and savings are given primacy; greed, ill-gotten gain, exploitation of the poor, laziness and irresponsibility are condemned. From the East, Gandhi pipes in that “there is enough for everyone’s need, but not everyone’s greed.”

In the first century, the Apostle Paul warned that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.”

Wealth is not evil and some early Christians were wealthy, but they were warned “not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.”

Despite this perspective on money, many religious Americans have fused the American dream with their vision for their own life. They believe wealth is the sign of God’s blessing, and that the richer we are the more spiritual we must be. The pursuit of the good life has become the same as the pursuit of the “God life.”

This view is at odds with Jesus, who urged people to “seek first the kingdom of God and all these things (clothes, money, a place to sleep) will be added to you.” To make sure his teaching was absolutely clear he warned, “You cannot serve both God and money.”

Anything that displaces God is a competitor for our allegiance to God. The Ten Commandments warn against erecting false gods or idols. Rabbi Abraham Heschel put it this way: “God is of no importance unless of supreme importance.”

A little-known American Christian mystic, A.W. Tozer, wrote in the 1960s that “the time is surely coming when we shall have nothing but God! Health and wealth and friends and hiding places will all be swept away and we shall have only God. To the man of pseudo faith, that is a terrifying thought, but to real faith it is one of the most comforting thoughts the heart can entertain.


“It would be a tragedy indeed to come to the place where we have no other but God and find that we had not really been trusting God during the days or our earthly sojourn. It would be better to invite God now to remove every false trust, to disengage our hearts from all secret hiding places and to bring us out into the open where we can discover for ourselves whether we actually trust Him. This is a harsh cure for our troubles, it is a sure one! Gentler cures may be too weak to do the work. And time is running out on us.”

As we think about harsh cures for our economic troubles, we should also be attentive to the radical steps required to resolve our spiritual deficits.

When everything was stripped from Job, he discovered what really mattered and concluded, “though God slay me yet will I trust Him.” Does our contemporary fear betray our displaced trust?

I’m not at all trying to be dismissive of this crisis or of its impact on hard-working people.

But I do wonder if we have collectively sold our souls by placing our trust in wealth. The fear we are experiencing is an opportunity to place our trust where it belongs, in God.

(Dick Staub is the author of “The Culturally Savvy Christian” and the host of The Kindlings Muse (http://www.thekindlings.com). His blog can be read at http://www.dickstaub.com)


KRE/LF END STAUB625 words

A photo of Dick Staub is available via https://religionnews.com.

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!