It was the innocence in which he asked that caught me off guard, “Dad, will you give me $131?” “What for, Patrick?” “I need it to buy an ax like Gimili had in The Lord of the Rings .” When I told him it was not my habit to buy battle-axes for 7-year-olds, he didn’t say anything, but walked away. Later, I was talking to someone when I heard him ask his grandmother if she would give him a check for $131 for the battle-ax. I was reminded that even at a young and tender age our children, whether we like it or not, are absorbing a feel for money and the power it has which prompted me to ask myself: what attitudes are they catching in my home? Is it a biblical mindset that sees money as a good servant but a poor master or am I replicating the materialism of the culture? A good question to ponder, though I suspect most of us would rather think about other things, rather than tackle this one. However someone has wisely said, “There are three conversions necessary: the conversion of the heart, mind and the purse.”

If we believe the evidence of national surveys on giving patterns, it would seem Christians fare little better than people with no religious affiliation in the matter of giving and generosity. It seems that the conversion of the purse is not really that big of an issue among believers, or it may be that it is something we just don’t want to think about. It seems the contemporary church says, “Believe in Jesus and we will talk about stewardship later.” That sounds reasonable, but on at least two occasions in the ministry of Jesus, with the rich young ruler and Zacchaeus, salvation was linked with the giving away of all or a portion of their riches. I know the immediate reaction is to say grace replaced with works. The more I think about it, the more I see the smoke screen hiding the fact that we really don’t want Jesus to instruct us on money at all. But if you look at Jesus’ teaching, you will find out that he talked about money all the time. A survey of His teachings will place money as a subject of conversation second only to the free grace we so want to hear about. Why did Jesus talk so much about money? Why was it always on his lips in one form or another? I think the key is in the term Jesus used for money on several occasions—he called money ‘mammon.’

Mammon is an Aramaic term for wealth. It was actually the word the Carthaginians gave for the god of wealth. When Jesus says, “You can’t serve God and mammon,” He is not saying money is evil per se, but something much more subtle and much more difficult to deal with, that money can be an idol. It has spiritual power to win our affections. If you think about it money has many of the characteristics of a deity. It gives us security, it can leverage guilt over our conscience, and it gives us power. This is perhaps its most sinister attribute. With money we can achieve a false sense of status, we can buy friends, we can achieve power over other people and it has a tendency to give us a false sense of moral superiority. Economist John Kenneth Galbraith wrote, “Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as man’s greatest source of joy and with death as his greatest source of anxiety. Over all history it has oppressed nearly all people in one of two ways: either it has been abundant and very unreliable, or reliable and very scarce.” When money reaches such heights, reaches the level of an idol, it has become a false god the human heart goes after for its salvation. An old Chinese proverb shows this tendency of money to endow us with a false sense of status and the power it possesses, “With money you’re a dragon, without it you’re a worm.” Think of money’s power and, left untended and unexamined, it wields a mighty impact to bully people, to purchase honor, enlist the loyalties of others or used as bait to corrupt. No wonder Jesus talked so much about it.

However, Jesus also says something strange after this attack on the power of money. He tells us to “make friends with ungodly mammon.” On the other hand, Jesus never condemned wealth for its sake. He went to lavish parties, He benefited from others’ riches, and rich widows supported him at times. Jesus tells us for our souls to hold money loosely, to invest in things that last, to give money away freely, use it but do not be possessed by it. The only way I know of that ever happening in the human personality is to detach from it, to become radically generous with your resources—all of them, and to give them away. Dr. Karl Menninger the last psychiatrist and student of human behavior said this one time, “Money-giving is a very good criterion -- of a person’s mental health. Generous people are rarely mentally ill people.” Funny how money and its proper use has the stigmata of the cross. We think that by grasping and possessing we will find joy, happiness and fulfillment, but just as Jesus said, “he who loses his life will find it.” Instead we must grasp and possess Christ. I have never known a truly happy person who had a tight fist, with all their thoughts focused on money. But the happy people I have known have always had a relaxed attitude about money. In other words it didn’t control them, it didn’t define them and they held it responsibly but not obsessively, as a steward with a loose hand.