Of the Love of Money

So who doesn’t love money, right? That’s why we work. It’s why we study. To get a good job that pays well. And of course the “paying well” part is more important than the “good job” part, right? Money is the good stuff that makes our month’s work all worth it at the end of the month. But where do we draw the line when it comes to loving money?

Of course there’s a difference between loving money and having money. No one can deny that money is important. It’s a basic and a core necessity. Without it, we wouldn’t have food on the table. Heck, we wouldn’t even have the table in fact. We wouldn’t have roofs over us, or beds under us. We wouldn’t have education. Yeah, money is important.

And yet some of us idolize money don’t we? We start measuring people by how much money they have. To us, success = excess. We envy the rich and famous. We chase money, believing it to be the most important thing in life. We chase money, for the future, both for ourselves and for our children, so they can get a good education, and we can get a comfortable life. We soak up the culture of expensive = good.

We think about money. We wonder how to make more money. We grumble that our paychecks aren’t large enough. We wish we had a fatter bank account. We think we’d be so much happier and better off if we had more money. Really? Would we really be better off with more?

Here are a few facts about the Love of Money. The Bible states that money is the root of all evil. What’s that supposed to mean? That we should give all our money away and become monks? Certainly not. It means that money ENSLAVES. It gains enough power over us that money controls us instead of the other way around as it should be. How do we know when we’re being enslaved by money? It’s when we’re never satisfied with what we have. It’s when we long and yearn for more, and yet when we get that more, when we achieve that “if only”, it never seems quite enough.

We think it’d be great to be a millionaire, but somehow when we do become millionaires, there’s not much joy or enthusiasm in that. At least nothing close to what we expected. How do I know? It’s simple. Think of all those Richie riches. Do note, however, that I’m not saying being rich is bad. How many of the super-rich are really happy? Yeah, they can buy whatever they want. They can go for holidays in the Caribbean every week. They can afford limos and jets. They have yachts named after themselves. They have their own islands. They have mansions the size of Singapore. They could probably afford a pet elephant if they felt like it. They can afford to drink champagne instead of water. They’re waited on hand and foot. They’re given preferential treatment and elevated to ‘demigod’ status.

But at the end of the day, does that really satisfy them? Does it fill the emptiness we’re all born with? Can you fill it with money?

If you can, then explain why so many of these Richie riches lead such broken lives (albeit luxurious ones). There’s no denying that abundance of money provides a luxurious life. And yet, why are there so many broken families, broken lives and emptiness? Just take a look at Hollywood for example. Those guys earn collectively probably as much as a small country. Look at the news of divorces, drug abuses and law breaking. The affairs and scandals. The broken hearts. Is that what we want?

Where we are now is a good indicator of where we will be in future. Already we’re complaining we don’t have enough money. Already we dream of enriching ourselves. What makes us think we’ll be fulfilled if we achieve all of that? So what if we can drive Lamborghinis and afford diamonds the size of a whale?

Does money give us security? To a certain extent, yes, but beyond that, no.. Yeah, it assures our children will have a good education and a good future in general. But that’s all. We all die someday. It’s a fact. We’ll never take anything with us. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got 5000 terracotta warriors or a pyramid to boot. So what if you’re buried with half a tonne of gold? We enter eternity naked, just as how we entered this world naked. So why do we insist on spending our lives chasing something that only lasts us a few meager years? We sacrifice our time, our lives, our health for this. We neglect our children in order to provide a future for them. That doesn’t make sense to me.

“Yes we know Daddy is busy at work, but can’t he even spend some time with us? Just a little everyday?”. Maybe our kids don’t say that, but don’t you think we should be spending more time with them? In a world of decadence, the role of parents becomes ever more important. Without that firm grounding, who knows what could happen to our children? Do we want our future generation to be a broken generation who grew up without their fathers? Of course there are effects!! Children get their affirmation from their dads. By affirmation, I mean gender wise. I’ll be talking about that more in my next article, but this suffices for now. A child with an absent or almost-always-absent father can experience severe negative effects! Do we want that for our children for the lame excuse of providing a future for them?

We live in the information age, but do we really know what life is? Life is more than hundred dollar bills. Life is more than cars and girls. Life is so much more than sex, drugs and rock and roll. Life is more than high paying corporate jobs. Deep down we know all that but we can’t pull ourselves away from our self-absorbed lifestyle. We can’t change the attitude of “better me than anyone else”. We can’t tear ourselves away from our materialistic thinking.

Life is more than material things. Life was never meant to be about us. I end by quoting the chorus of one of Switchfoot’s songs, This is Your Life:

This is your life, are you who you wanna be,
This is your life, are you who you wanna be,
This is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be,
When the world was younger, and you had everything to lose.
If you are living for nothing more than material things, remember that our souls are not made of sticks and stones. We’re meant to live for so much more. If your life now is not what you dreamed that it would be, it’s time to seriously sit down and think. Think whether you really know what life is. And if you find that you don’t, it’s time to start searching for the truth.

God bless you all