“If you want to know what God thinks about money…Just look at who He gives it to.”
Do you mean like Job (Job 1), Abraham (Genesis 13:2), Isaac (Genesis 26), Jabob (Genesis 30), and Solomon (1 Kings 10:23)?
This statement comes from yet another one of the misconceptions that religious people have about wealth and money in general. But this ignorance is not limited to the religious. In fact, if someone does not have a lot of money, you can expect them to make statements like this. It is usually a symptom of envy. These people have no wealth, so the best they can do is berate those who do.
We are already aware of the fact that many religious people will try to conflate virtue and poverty by suggesting that the reason they are poor and not rich is because they are “spiritually rich” and “not materialistic or greedy.
As has been previously stated, it is extremely judgmental to suggest that just because someone is wealthy, then they are automatically materialistic or greedy. Wealth is just a numerical representation of how much value one has provided to society. A specific level of wealth is not equal to greed; a person’s attitude about wealth is what determines greed. There are plenty of greedy poor people and generous, wealthy religious people.
Jesus clearly taught that it is easy for people to become materialistic (Matthew 19:24), but the reason we have the old testament examples of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Job, and Solomon is to show that it is possible to be righteous and rich at the same time. That does not mean anyone is guaranteed wealth in life, but it is available for them if they are willing to work for it.
If you really want to know what God thinks about money, look at who He doesn’t give it to.
He does not give it those who whose faith would be damaged by it. This is the striking lesson of those old testament examples. These are men who not only were righteous, but who managed to be righteous while being incredibly wealthy. That is not the lesson you hear very often in the church.
“But I thought if you had any money it means you were focused on the things of this world. How is this possible?”
Abraham, the father of the faithful, was a man who had such great spiritual wealth that God deemed him worthy of managing great physical wealth. Many religious people have improper attitudes about money. the second they come into any kind of wealth they think improperly about it. If you are going to think right about God, it begins with thinking right about money. The two are not unrelated.
We need money to survive, but we are required to be separate from this world.
Developing a level of mental detachment from possessions is key. We have to be grateful for what we are given and yet be unattached to it. Even secular men like the stoics practiced similar mental exercises.
You must avoid the class warfare that the church has managed to drag itself into. Poor people despise the rich thinking they are worldly. Some of the rich look down on the poor for being lazy (which some of them are). What you must do is be completely unattached to these philosophies. Recognize money for what it is: a useful tool and a metric of value. Your worth to the marketplace is determined by your income. Not your value as a person or as a creation of God. But your value to society is what determines your income. If you do not like your income, you need to adjust how society values you.
God thinks that money is a tool and a part of life.
There is no way around this fact. The Bible teaches more lessons about money than about any other subject matter. So if you want to know what God thinks about something, you might want to see what He has said. If His Word is gospel, you might consider listening to it.
If you want to know what God thinks about money, read the Bible.
But that is something that many Christians, including many of the poor are not doing. Most of their time is occupied with keeping up with the secular interests of this world. Many Christians simply lack the basic Biblical knowledge necessary to allow them to think right about money. If you are in this habit, you need to break free of it.
If you wanted a masterclass on money management, look to the Proverbs. These passages contain so many timeless truths that even secular people use them. This may be the most marketable book of the Bible, because there are so many simple, easily applicable and non-ethereal teachings in it.
If you want to know what God thinks about money, then learn about money.
Too many Christians lack not only biblical knowledge but also financial knowledge. The financial education of the majority of people in the world is dismal. It is even worse than their biblical education. To better understand what God thinks about money you need to increase your financial education. you also need multiple sources of this.
If you typically listen to hyper-conservative thinkers (monetarily speaking) like Dave Ramsey, then expand your information intake slightly. You do not have to change your actions, just increase your knowledge. Ty Ramit Sethi who wrote the book, “I Will Teach You To Be Rich“. Also, there is Tony Robbins who wrote “Money: Master the Game“. And any of the Rich Dad Poor Dad series of books are fantastic. Each of these will expand your thinking.
Never allow yourself to be limited or bogged down by one single philosophy. You need to be able to shift between ideas. If you are too rigid in any endeavor in life, you risk being shattered.
Give these ideas a thought.
