How Does Greed and Materialism Sabotage Your Life in Ways You Can't Even See?

I love swim goggles.  The first time I put a pair on, it opened up a new world for me, underwater.   But what works down there doesn’t really work up here. 

The hit show, Seinfeld, made a whole episode over that.  The character, George, loses his glasses.  So, he decides.  He’ll use his swim goggles. They’ll work just as good.   And off that one idea, they made a pretty funny episode with scenes like this one.

And that doesn’t even begin to cover the ways those goggles distort what George sees, and the crazy misunderstandings that result.   But what Jesus saw, is that people are walking around with something in their life that distorts their vision just like those goggles.  It leads to anxieties and insecurity.   It leads to a sort of bondage, a type of mental imprisonment. It leads to life far from what God intended life to be.   And that’s not funny, not funny at all.  So, what is this thing that you have with you right now that distorts your vision like that.  It’s the money in your pocket.   How is that possible?  In these words, Jesus shows you the way.  Let’s listen and hear what he has to say. 

Matthew 6:19-34

Jesus talked about money a lot.  Jesus talked about money and possessions almost more than he talked about anything.    But why did Jesus stress out over money?   Jesus saw.  Nothing distorts the way you see yourself or the world around you like money.   And as money distorts your vision, it binds up your life.  But Jesus also offered a way out, out of that distortion, out of that binding.   Jesus showed you what ultimately matters.

But before we look at Jesus’ way out, how is money distorting your life? Jesus focuses on that right at the center of this passage.  Do you notice the words that don’t seem to fit here?      Jesus starts out with the whole not storing up treasures in heaven.  And then Jesus ends with the words on money enslaving you and thus, don’t stress out about it.  But right in the middle, do you see what Jesus talks about?   He goes off on this whole thing about the eye, and how if your eye doesn’t work, then everything becomes darkness.

Now, he is making the point that if your eye is not working, then it doesn’t matter how bright the world is surrounding you, you will experience it as darkness.   Ok.  But how does that have anything to do with money?   Jesus is warning you.   Money or more accurately obsessing about money has that power.   Greed and materialism blinds you to the glaringly obvious.  It distorts what is literally right in front of you.

How does it blind you?   Well, first it blinds you to your own greed.   What do I mean?   Greed and materialism can be hard to see.    If you’re committing adultery, you know it right?  No one goes.   “Hold on a second!  You’re not my wife?  What are you doing here?”   If you’re committing adultery, you know.  But how do you know when you’re being greedy or materialistic?   You don’t.   In fact, most folks assume that they’re not greedy or materialistic.   Those crazy rich folks, now they’re greedy, but not me.

Many years ago, I was talking to a friend about a tax change she felt was unfair.   She said.  You know $250,000.00 a year really isn’t that much.   I didn’t say anything. But inside, I was thinking, a quarter of a million sounds pretty good to me.   But I got it.   When you make that much money, your lifestyle expands to fit it.   You get a house with a bigger mortgage.  You go to nicer restaurants, send your kids to better schools, take different vacations.  And before long that 250 “large” doesn’t seem so large at all.

But here’s the twist.  I’m not any different.   What my household makes a year doesn’t seem a lot to me at times.   My family has financial stresses.  But someone else looking at that income, would think.  “Really?  You think you’re financially stressed?  You have no idea.”

Here’s the truth.  If you think you’re not greedy or materialistic, that’s the first sign you are.   It’s the way, greed works.  It convinces you that you don’t have that problem, that the onion you’re eating really is an apple.   It leads you to not ask yourself uncomfortable questions about your spending versus your giving.   You just don’t want to go there.  I know I don’t.  It feels too uncomfortable.  You see.  That’s the way greed blinds you. Greed leads you to not even ask the questions.  That’s how you can live in the wealthiest society that has ever existed, and still feel you don’t have enough. 

Years ago, I heard a mission worker talk about living and working in the red-light district of Amsterdam.    Folks asked.  How could you let your family grow up there?  He said.  At least, here they can see the evil.  It’s right there in their face.  But if we lived back here, the evil sneaks up on you before you even realize it.     And no evil is sneakier than greed or materialism. 

And generally, they get you with one of two lies.  First, greed tells you your net worth is your worth.   Your money makes you feel better about yourself or worse.   That’s why generally, middle class folks look down on the poor.  You feel pity for them, yes, but inside, haven’t you ever felt a bit morally superior?   But here’s the question.  If you had lived their life, had their experiences, would you be better off?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  But you don’t really know.   But when you have money, you kinda think you do.   Or conversely, if you see people doing way better than you, you can think. “What’s wrong with me?”     

And if you don’t get caught in that lie, you get caught in this one.  Your money becomes your security.  What a big fat lie that is.   Over twenty years ago, a classmate of mine, Giovanni Agnelli, died of cancer.   He was 33.  He had a baby daughter a new wife and lots of money.  His family had billions, billions.  But none of it could save his life.  Your money can’t stop death or disease.  It can’t even stop divorce.  It may even cause it.  

And so more than you even realize, your money, your anxiety about it binds you even as it blinds you.  But how do you become free?    A word Jesus uses again and again here tells you.  Jesus talks about your treasure.   And everyone has a treasure, something you value above all else. You think, if I had this, it would all be worth it.  I’d be worth it.   But whatever that thing is, money, success, romance, family, the list goes on, it enslaves you.  It will make you sacrifice your life for it.   But in Jesus, you have something profoundly different. You have a God who sacrificed his life for you.   Now, what does that mean?   It means.  You are Jesus’ treasure.  You are God’s treasure.  God looked at you and said.  I’d go to hell and back to win that.   And so, in Jesus, God did.   And when you know God treasures you like that, money can just become money, not security or significance.  For, in Jesus, you have ultimate security even from death.   You have significance that no amount of money can buy.  And as you treasure this one, who so treasures you, it frees you to give, radically, sacrificially, joyfully, even as Jesus did for you.