The Counsels of Mammon (I)

https://churchandfamilylife.com/podcasts/6390cc89fad8bafe3a9ec787

Contrary to its claims, this podcast seemingly exists to proclaim the insufficiency of Scripture because not only is the doctrine of the New Testament ignored when it comes to money, its applications and attitudes about mammon, possessions, and worldliness are rejected and replaced by an opposite set of values.

The world may be impressed with someone involved in commercial real estate but New Testament Christians are not. I know the field well as my father was deeply involved in it for many years and I can say that playing manipulative games with value, numbers, and marketing is not loving your neighbour. They're just that, sleight-of-hand tricks used to maximize profit and often exploit people in the process. All too often it's about capitalizing on someone else's distress, or hyping up someone's dreams, even if they're not realistic. You can excel if your attitude is caveat emptor, or when you say – Hey, it's not my responsibility to do their due diligence for them, or to run the numbers and see if they're realistic for what it is they're trying to do.

But contrary to this ethos, the Scriptures say we are in fact to put others first and treat them the way we would want to be treated. This isn't a formula for profit or success. Though painful to entertain for the capitalist and the business mentality that goes with it – it's actually quite simple. Additionally the whole notion of making a living by means of selling, moving assets, flipping properties and the like may be legal – but it's not an honest and ethical way to make money nor are the amounts of money that are often made even remotely commensurate with the work involved. The Scriptures know nothing of capitalist attitudes about risk in the realm of investment – wherein you get to cash in at the expense of others (someone ultimately has to pay or work for it) simply because you took a risk. That's not investment – in some cases it's little more than gambling, but more often than not it's simply mercenary and exploitative, yet another form of usury.

Following the podcast, here are some comments on each of the sections:

1. We are Stewards

This concept is regularly abused by these folks. Read the salient passages more carefully and you'll find the New Testament teaches what these people would consider to be 'bad stewardship'. We're not to think long term or about returns on investment in the way the world reckons it. Investing eternally (so to speak) means that we (like the widow) can throw in our two mites – giving recklessly as the world would count it.

Is that normative? Maybe or maybe not but that episode and many others demonstrate the principle these people have enshrined is not Biblical.

They use the language of God's ownership as a blanket or cover for their own acquisition and even avarice.

And as I've argued for years, the Parable of the Talents is one of the most abused and misused of the parables – many of which are distorted by Evangelicals. The parable is not teaching or ratifying the system of interest-return investment. Reading it that way is to read it as a lost person, as someone who doesn't understand that it's revealing mysteries concerning the Kingdom of God.

If the Parable of the Talents is meant to be read literally then you are sinning if you weed your garden or use a pesticide because in the Parable of the Sower, Jesus apparently meant to teach us about agricultural practice and his prohibitions were meant to be taken literally.

That's ridiculous and everyone knows it. The parable wasn't about gardening. Neither is the Parable of the Talents about investing your money and getting a return. Such an interpretation of the parable collapses at several points and in fact becomes highly problematic in what it says about God Himself. They have missed the point.

It is nothing less than wicked, the way this stewardship-talent paradigm has been used to justify and in fact mandate the aggressive pursuit of wealth. It makes for Mammonist Christians to be sure – just not New Testament ones.

2. Stay Away from the Kingdom of Thing-dom

Warnings concerning materialism are definitely needed but one has to laugh looking at the obvious wealth these people all possess. Okay, your house isn't cluttered up with stuff and you don't chase some of the lame things your lost neighbours do, but the standard by which you judge such questions is profoundly skewed. You're judging this from the standpoint of the Middle Class or even Upper Middle Class. Your gauge is already so askew and biased – one doesn't know whether to laugh or just roll the eyes.

And as far as financial freedom – where is that a concern in the New Testament? Where are we told to strive for that? We're told not to lay up treasures on Earth. We're told to set our hearts on things above. We're warned about the perils of riches and how they destroy faith. Where are we told to seek financial freedom? This is a capitalist middle class value, not something derived by means of exegesis. So much for the Sufficiency of Scripture because apparently to live the 'full' kind of Christian life that makes you grin like the guys on the podcast – you'll need something more than what we're able to find on the pages of the New Testament.

Living paycheck to paycheck is denounced. Okay, there are people making a lot of money that do that. It's true, they are indeed foolish. But there are others who live paycheck to paycheck because they have no choice and even then they struggle and often cannot make ends meet. But what if they're being faithful? What if they're following Christ in the work they do and they way to choose to live? That wouldn't be good enough for these folks living in their nice homes. It would never occur to them that the guy stocking shelves at the grocery store earning a low hourly wage might be a more faithful Christian – a more faithful steward, than the multi-millionaire Theonomist ex-Vision Forum guy involved in commercial real estate, who lives in the nice house and is rewarded with church office as a result. It is literally beyond their ken.

Their advice reminds me of listening to Dave Ramsey and his ilk. Pay cash for your car. Well, there are large segments of the population that cannot even dream of that. It's not in the cards as they say. These are rich men dolling out advice for the rich. And as I've often related, we spent years driving around in beater used cars that we paid cash for. We live in a rural area where you put on a lot of miles. Consequently, I would lose sometimes 2-3 days a month messing around with car repairs. And so when you factor in the lost wages and the garage bill – it was considerably cheaper and far less stressful to finance a used late model car and simply make the payments – knowing full well that we're being exploited by the finance agency or bank. I agree buying a new car is stupid. Regardless, financing a newer car meant that we could drive the car for a long time without any worries of repair. Their advice is just rotten and unrealistic. As far as paying the interest to the bank and thus ultimately paying more for the vehicle – it's just one of the endless series of scams that dominate and define modern capitalist society. We're being scammed at every turn – why should buying a vehicle or house be any different?

Is it wrong to take out a loan? If it is, and cases can be made for that argument, then Christians for the most part cannot buy homes at all because you're going to find very few people who can afford to buy one with cash. There are real problems with loans, usury, and the like and it's something I've discussed from time to time. But regardless, these fellows would have nothing to say about it.

And as to the argument regarding the expectation of increase in value legitimizing the taking out of a loan – hey, that's nice, but that's just your opinion. It actually has nothing to do with the Bible or the application of its ethics. It might if I was on the other end of the question – charging interest and making money in that fashion, which certainly comes into play for many Christians who have investments, but for the working class family trying to survive, that's being exploited and worked over by the larger system – the question of 'expectation of increase' is begging the question.

Their evocation of Matthew 6 and Jesus' words regarding mammon is misused because it condemns almost everything they're saying. They're quoting it in a self-serving manner. The fact that the man's grandfather sat around at the table endlessly discussing business and money demonstrated (at least to me) that in fact the man was obsessed with mammon. Apparently there was nothing more important. He would have been better served teaching Scripture – not principles of financial success. Please note that despite what these Prosperity Gospel-lite men are trying to say, the two do not go together. That's what Matthew 6 teaches.

3. Recognize how you Spend Money

Yes, spenders vs. savers and the like. Hey, there's no doubt a lot of people do foolish things with their money. As someone who often works for people with lots of money I can assure you no one is more wasteful than the rich. The difference is they can afford it. But for some reason they think simply being able to afford it makes their spending and habits moral – but it doesn't.

There are others that don't save because they can't. Some could but waste their money on foolish things. It's true. But there are others who don't. The money just isn't there. I just love when rich people sit back and make these judgments – especially when they've had a lot of their wealth handed to them, or the ground (as it were) that produced wealth for them was already plowed and well-watered. They've never been in a position of stress of having to choose – not the right decision but the least bad one, let alone of being in the place of utter defeat which is where many people are at. Security also grants you the ability to take risks – risks poorer people can't even dream of. This is just a really nice quaint little conversation. The only thing missing is a fireplace. But it's not reality and it has nothing to do with Scripture. It's not a Christian discussion. It's a bourgeois capitalist one with a Christian veneer.

4. Don't Marry Someone with a Spending Sickness

It's not central to the message or for that matter my rebuttal, but I find it interesting how these people like to consistently refer to and cite the people of the Depression era as examples of frugality and the like.

That's true but only to a point. There were the people that became extreme and some of them were still extreme when I remember them in the 1970's, 80's, and after. The extreme ones remained 'odd'. I'm speaking of the people with boxes of food everywhere, cans stuffed under living room furniture and things like that. These people aren't exhibiting their financial savvy – they were traumatized. That's why some were still keeping money in coffee cans buried out in the yard decades after the Depression ended.

Then there are the mainstream people who emerged from that time. These people grew up poor but they were also the generation that after the war bought into a new consumer lifestyle that was based on credit – taking loans out for your house in the suburbs and your new car. When compared to today's decadence they seem restrained, frugal, and wise, and yet they broke with the values of the previous generation in their willingness to go into debt to buy these things, not to mention the kitchen full of appliances, and many of the other accoutrements of middle class life – which also represented a new and progressive set of values about work, time, leisure, and technology. It wasn't that they were so wise as much as they were riding an economic wave that made the average American richer and it was at a time when the general quality of things was better. Your appliances would last decades and the degenerate values of today hadn't set it. There was no desire to remodel your house every few years and things like that. They were wiser but they're not all they're made out to be nor was that generation nearly as socially conservative as some pretend.

In other words the Depression era values discussion is something of a non sequitir.

Continue reading Part 2