The Two Ways Money is Dangerous, and How You Can Free Yourself from Them

I’ve always thought that I’d be an excellent rich person.    I’d give a lot of money away.  I’d sit on all sorts of charitable boards.   I’d live well, but not too well.   And whenever I went out to dinner with others, I’d always pick up the check.  

But  I’ve picked work that doesn’t lend itself to getting rich.   And that’s as it should be.   Usually when you see a rich preacher, something hinky is going on.   You figure.   It’s not going to be too long before 60 Minutes or the IRS come calling.  

But here’s the problem.  If I’m honest, compared to preachers in most parts of the world, I’m doing pretty well.   Compared to them, I am rich.   In fact, that would be true of most folks in this country compared to the rest of the world. 

But is that bad?   Should that trouble us?  What does the Bible say?   Actually, the Bible says  wealth as not bad at all.  A lot of folks in the Bible, Abraham, Isaac, David, Esther had all sorts of wealth. 

But while the Bible doesn’t say having money is bad, it does say it’s dangerous, so dangerous that it will kill the very life God yearns to give. 

Now how can it be that dangerous?  In this story, Jesus shows you.   More crucially, Jesus points the way to how you get free of the danger: how you free yourself of the worst that money brings to open yourself to the best.   So let’s hear what Jesus has to say. 

Luke 18:18-30 

In the Bible, God makes it clear.   Wealth isn’t bad.   In fact, many folks in the Bible had great wealth, and did good things with it.  But God warns you.  Wealth, even money itself endangers you.    It endangers you in two ways, by how it addicts you and how it blinds you.   And those two things can happen in your life without you even realizing it.  And when they do, they will sabotage the abundant life that God yearns to give you.   But it doesn’t need to be that way.     By staying rooted in this reality, what God has done for you, it frees your money to become what it actually is, just money, nothing more, and nothing less. 

Now, how does money addict you?   It does it the way anything that threatens to addict you does.   It makes you want more and more of it, even as it gives you less and less.  

For example, I love Publix fried chicken.  Crunching through that spicy, salty breading into the juicy chicken underneath, it just makes my taste buds glow with satisfaction.   But after my second piece, something sinister begins to happen.   I think.   If that second piece was so good, then the third one will be even better.   But guess what.  It isn’t.   And so then I think well maybe the fourth piece will bring back the joy.  But it doesn’t.   Instead I begin to feel queasy, a little sick.    But even so, I’m still pondering on whether to eat piece number 5!  Then I realize, as much as I love this chicken, if I don’t watch it, I’ll start loving it too much.   It won’t be just an occasional treat.  It will become an everyday deal, and my waistline and health will pay the price. 

Money has that sort of power, but it can be way more subtle than that fried chicken.  But the power is there.  You can see it in a somewhat surprising fact.   The more money that folks have, the less money they give away.    As a percentage of income, poor folks giveaway way more than the rich, twice as much actually.   Now why is that?  

Well, it’s a little bit like the fried chicken.   You make more money, what do you do?  Well, you spend more of it.  You may buy a nicer car than before.   But then that nicer car just doesn’t look so great in front of your kind of now shabby looking house or apartment.  So even though you have more money, it feels like less.  So, then as you get more money, you buy up.  You move into a nicer neighborhood.  But once you’re there, you realize.   These folks have even nicer cars then you do, and that one has that new renovated kitchen, and that one just took their family to ski in Aspen.  So you don’t feel richer, even though you are.  You feel poorer.    It’s why studies show that most wealthy folks don’t actually live in wealthy neighborhoods.    No most folks in those neighborhoods are spending so much to keep up with their neighbors.  They hardly have any money left at all.     And between all the glitzy stuff on TV and the internet, you don’t even have to live in a wealthy neighborhood to feel it.  It’s why so many Americans feel so dissatisfied with their finances, even while they spend more than their parents ever dreamed.  They’re addicted. 

But money won’t just addict you, it will blind you.  It will blind you to the reality of life, and it will blind you to the reality of you.   If you have a lot of money, a lot in savings, you can think to yourself.  Now I’m safe.   If I lose my job, I have a nest egg to lean back on.  But lots of things can happen to you that are worse than losing your job.   And money doesn’t do jack for those. 

It’s been almost 20 years, but I remember it like yesterday.  I was coming home from work.  My old classmate, Gerry Stephens called me.  He just blurted it out.  Giovanni is dead.  I said. What?  Giovanni?  Are you sure?  Yeah, he replied, just look in the New York Times.  It’s right there.   He was right.  It was there in black and white.   Giovanni Agnelli, our old classmate, had died of cancer at age 33.   The New York Times, normally doesn’t cover the death of every 33 year old from cancer, but Giovanni was no typical 33 year old.  He was part of the family that owned Fiat.   He had a billion dollars, and he was dead.  He left behind a wife of 13 months, and baby daughter three months old.    And none of that money could change that at all.  

Money can’t save your marriage.  It can’t parent your kids.   It can’t keep your parents alive.   It can’t even keep you alive.   In fact, the worst things life can throw at you, money can’t protect you from them at all.   But it blinds you so that you think it can, until that stuff happens, and you realize how false the promise was.

But it doesn’t just blind you to the reality of the world. It blinds you to the reality of you.  If you’re smart with your business, and make a lot of money, you’re just smart with business.  But you don’t think that.   No, you start to think you’re just smart, at everything.   If you have more money than others, you just have more money.  But you start to think that you are more, more wise, more virtuous, more everything.   And it becomes harder and harder to see your faults and failings.   And in life, nothing can mess you up more than being blind to that.

In this story, Jesus knows that.  He realizes how in danger this rich young ruler is.   That’s why he says such strange things.  And what Jesus says here is strange.   Right before this, he has told a parable whose whole point was that keeping the rules won’t get you eternal life.   Yet when this rich guy asks about getting eternal life, what does Jesus say?   He asks him.  “How are you doing at keeping the rules?”  What?  And before that, when the man calls Jesus good, Jesus pushes back.  He tells him.  No one is good but God alone.    Jesus is not saying that he’s not good.  No, he is challenging this man’s presumptuousness.   He is saying.  “As far as you know, I’m a man like you.   So how can you call me good?”   Why is Jesus pushing back like that?  He knows.   This guy thinks he is good.   It’s the same reason he asks him about keeping the rules.   He knows.  This guy believes.  I have kept all the rules.   But here’s the problem.  This man still doesn’t have the peace, the fulfillment, the connection with God that he yearns for.   That’s why he’s coming to Jesus.   So what does Jesus do next?   He drops a bomb.  He tells him.  “Ok, give all your money to the poor and come follow me.”    Jesus has never asked this of anyone before.    So, why is he asking this guy?  He is trying to show him what is sucking his life away.

One time on the road, Jesus has a conversation with a woman by a well.   As the conversation goes on, Jesus tells her.  I have a living water that will fill your deepest longing.   When she asks him to tell her more, he tells her to go get her husband.   And when she says that she doesn’t have one, how does Jesus reply?  He says.  Yep, you’re right.  You have had 5 husbands, but this guy you’re living with now isn’t one of them.  Why is Jesus so concerned about her love life?  He knows.  Being with some guy has become her path to fulfillment; to significance; to meaning and identity.   Her relationships have become her “living water,” so to speak.  But this living water isn’t saving her life.  It’s killing it.

And for this rich young ruler, his money has become his living water.   And as with the woman at the well, it’s killing him too.    But he can’t see it.  He thinks that he is doing everything right, obeying all the Ten Commandments.   But in reality, he hasn’t even got past number 1, having no others gods but God.    And so Jesus calls him on it.  He asks him to give the money up.  But he can’t.   He’s addicted.   He can’t walk away from it.  So instead he walks away from Jesus.

That’s why Jesus warns his disciples.  It’s easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for somebody rich to enter the kingdom of God.   It’s that dangerous. Now if you’re rich, where does that leave you?  It leaves you, to be honest, with everybody else. The Bible makes it painfully clear.    On their own, no one can enter that kingdom.   It’s impossible for everyone.    The rich just find it a bit more impossible.   It’s not because they’re worse.  It’s just because their wealth has such power to blind and addict.   It blinds them to what they need by convincing them they already have it.  

How do you know that you might have this money sickness?  Here are a few questions.     When you see people making a lot of money, do you envy them?  Do they get under your skin?    Or when it comes to money, do you think about it a lot?  Are you anxious about what you have or don’t have?    Or how about this one.  When you’re bummed out, do you shop and buy stuff to feel better?   Or on the other hand, do you feel awesome by not buying anything at all?    And beyond those, you can simply look at what money you give away.   Two places show the priorities of your life, your checkbook and your calendar.   They tell you what has the power in your life?    We talk about giving here not simply so the light bill gets paid.  We talk about giving here because the more you find the freedom to give, you more you become free of money’s power to addict you, to blind you.   And the Bible has clear guidelines on giving.   The Old Testament gives you a ten percent minimum.  Ten percent of what God has given you, you return to God and everything you have is a gift from God. Jesus goes further.  He says that 10% isn’t enough because some can give more.  Instead, Jesus says give until it hurts, and then you’ll be where you need to be.   That’s why when the preacher, Rick Warren got rich off his book the Purpose Driven Life, he became a reverse tither.  He gave away 90 and kept 10.  

But how do you do that?   How do you free yourself to give radically like that, and not out of guilt or obligation?  No you give it out of joy, out of gratitude, out of a fullness that wells up within you?  How does that happen?

You look to the rich young ruler.   I’m not talking about the guy who walked away.   I’m talking about the guy he walked away from.    Jesus was about 31 here, and he had been rich too.  That’s why when Jesus looked at this rich guy, he loved him.   Jesus had faced the same choice.   He had walked away from the infinite wealth of the universe.  He had left behind its power and glory.   And very soon, he will give up his very life.  More than that, he will undergo an isolation, a despair, that you and I cannot begin to comprehend.   In Jesus, God will be literally ripped apart, and why?   Because he loves you.  As Hebrews says it, for the joy set before him, he endured the cross and disregarded its shame.  What was that joy?  It was you.  It was the joy of loving you, of bringing you home.  When you see that, what God has done for you, money will just be money, because God will be God.  

This little card isn’t a giving card, it’s a get out of jail card.   It’s a declaration of freedom to let God lead your life and not your anxieties about money or your appetite for stuff.  So put a number here that makes that clear, that stretches you, that exhilarates you, that liberates you from any illusion that money can ever give you what you actually need.