Fighting the Flesh #3: The Love of Money

“For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”—1 Timothy 6:10

In the 1830’s the famous political thinker and historian, Alexis de Tocqueville, recorded his observations on America, citing “a strange melancholy that haunts the inhabitants...in the midst of abundance.” He went on to observe that Americans believed that money could satisfy their desire for joy, but he added, “the incomplete joys of this world will never satisfy [the human] heart.”

We are a culture saturated with abundance. We are wealthy, not Warren Buffet wealthy, but wealthier than most of the world. It’s not our having money that is the problem; rather, it is the love of money. It is making the acquisition, possession or accumulation of money, or that which money can acquire, the ultimate thing.

One missionary defined wealth as “the ability to choose.” The fact that we can choose what we want to eat, what clothes we want to wear, what doctors we want to visit, what house or apartment we want to live in, and a host of other choices that we take for granted each and every day, shows that we are wealthy. And yet we are still not satisfied. Why? Why are we not happy with all of the things that money can buy? Because soul satisfaction is not found in anything this world has to offer. Soul satisfaction can only be found in what it was made for, to know and praise God.

We are created to know and praise God. When we praise and commune with God, He communicates His presence to us. Money and the things we acquire can’t communicate anything to us. They are idols of the heart that can’t see, speak, hear or feel. Christ is the ultimate gift to us, whereby we can, by our trust, love and adoration, experience the satisfaction that we are inherently wired to seek. May God keep us from the love of money and enable us to find our soul’s satisfaction in and through Christ as we continually worship and adore Him. Amen.