Money, Ethics, & Love

Money makes the world go 'round. Money is how we achieve our goals, execute our dreams, and facilitate our ideas. Money is everywhere, we wear it, we eat it, it burns the coals to heat our houses, and cleanses us with the fresh water in our pipes...nothing in life is free. That is the truth of America. America is frames welded together of immovable beams, fastened to a concrete foundation with the mortar, bolts, screws and steel of money.

Churches are preaching about it, the news is hyping its crunching power as it dominates the world's decisions, because money (as it has in past generations) was given more and more power. It became the engine and fortress of people's lives and anything given that kind of power can lash back with ferocity, empowered by the worship of its creators.

(us)

We put our trust in exactly what Psalm 20 talks about and the pain of not standing tall is the gravity of our idols grounding us in reality.

"See those people polishing their chariots,
and those others grooming their horses?
But we're making garlands for God our God.
The chariots will rust,
those horses pull up lame—
and we'll be on our feet, standing tall."

In the church, the economic crisis has opened doors for conversations of values, but are we daring enough to start scrutinizing capitalism? Jesus is not a capitalist, nor is he a proponent of democracy. The church has taken capitalism and scrutinized its ethics to draw conclusions of its validity relative to the Bible. It checks out. So does communism, so does socialism, so do monarchies, even dictatorships. The Bible calls its followers to transcend systems of slavery, government, hierarchical societal structures, disregarding their relevance or substance and to live for each other and God. Capitalism, not necessarily at its purest forms, but in simple business, is certainly ethical.

The trouble is, Christians are not supposed to be ethical. Ethics are for nice people who enjoy fairness, but ethics leave the passionate subversives waving the banner of Godly love deeply unsatisfied. Business is ethical, and business can love the world, in fact the power it has to destroy lives and inflict heavy, torturous stress on families can be harnessed for an equally saturating social flood of love. The key pivot is who our master is. The root of American capitalism is not money, but the master which empowered money...the self. Micro-finance is changing third world lifestyles in ways non-profit has struggled to help people. The key is who profits. Christians who evaluate their faith and work should find little comfort in their ethics, and scrutinize their profit margins, because to love another person more than yourself, you will have to work awfully hard to justify chariots and horses. The line was not blurred at ethics, it was blurred when safety and comfort through wealth became a solid rock in our lives.