You can deal with the love of money from a place of abundance, or from a place of lack. But make no mistake; you will have to deal with it.
Doing battle from a place of financial struggle won’t make your fight any easier or more noble.
Love of Money From a Place of Lack
I used to live in South Africa – the Southernmost tip of a continent gripped by poverty. A friend of mine ran a local ministry organisation that reached out to the homeless in Johannesburg’s inner city. These were some of the most destitute people in the country.
At one point, my missionary friend came up with a brainwave. What if he could empower these homeless people in some way? Teach a man how to fish, so to speak. He got on the phone to some PR people at Coca Cola and asked if the company would be prepared to loan some small mobile coolers and donate the initial stock. The company agreed and his plan was underway. He selected some of the more entrepreneurial members of the homeless community to whom he ministered and gave them each a stocked cart.
He explained to them that Coca Cola had loaned them the carts and given them their first batch of stock. All they had to do was sell their stock by the roadside each day. Once they had sold all their stock, they could return and use some of their earnings to restock the cart at cost-price. The profit was theirs to keep. This would set them on a cycle to earn a decent living and they need never be homeless again!
The new entrepreneurs left with their carts, filled with joy at their newfound fortune – and never returned. After several weeks, my missionary friend managed to track a few of them down. Some found their way back to the homeless shelters, others to a local soup kitchen. Each story followed the same tragic theme. The entrepreneur had sold his stock and spent the money. Once the money was gone, he then sold the cart and spent all the proceeds from that. After the proceeds from the cart were gone, he found himself back on the street locked in the same cycle all over again.
The love of money had cost these men dearly. It cost them a valuable opportunity which then led to theft of equipment that was not theirs to sell. Finally, it reduced them to the very same bondage of poverty they had hoped to escape.
Utterly dejected, my friend went back to Coca Cola and explained what had happened. The carts were gone and his organisation did not have the money to pay for them. He asked the company if they would offer him terms so that he could repay the debt over a year or two. Graciously, the good folk at Coca Cola told him not to worry about it. They would happily carry the loss and cancel the debt. ‘Don’t feel bad,’ they told him. ‘We see this happen all the time.’
As I pondered this story, I realised those people are not so different from me and most of my peers. Yes, we may not be homeless and we can clearly see the folly of their actions. We can do this because we’re better educated and their financial dilemma is simpler than ours. We would never be so foolish.
But what about our own middle-class financial dilemma? Living from paycheck to paycheck with barely enough to meet our monthly bills. No matter how much we earn or how many promotions and salary increases we get, there is never quite enough money at the end of each month.
Let’s take some time today to examine our own hearts. I would urge you to consider how the love of money might be the very thing that keeps you locked in a cycle from which you long to escape.