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What Does The Bible Really Teach About Money?
Welcome back!
The Bible is a controversial book because people have such
different beliefs about it. Some treat it as literal truth.
Some regard it as literature and moral guidance. Others
think that it is all nonsense.
No matter what you believe about the validity of the Bible,
the Bible continues to affect what people believe about many
important topics, such as the meaning of human life, human
worth, marriage, slavery, war, sex, government, and money.
Let’s pick just one topic that affects all of us. What is
the Biblical teaching about money?
As soon as we ask the question, we have to stop and analyze
the question itself. No matter what the topic, the biggest
problem for any question about “what the Bible teaches” is
that the Bible is not really a single book. We think of the
Bible as a single book because we can buy it as a single
book in the bookstore. But the word “Bible” comes from the
Greek word meaning “books.” The Bible is a collection of
books rather than a single book.
You will always find people who “prove” what “the Bible
teaches” on any particular topic because they can quote
particular Bible verses to make their case. You will also
find people who “prove” just the opposite based on other
Bible verses.
The solution to such contradictory efforts to “prove” what
“the Bible teaches” is to recognize that the Bible did not
originate as a single, organized, coherent book. It is a
collection of writing from different times and places,
written in different languages. In addition, these writings
have been edited, expanded, and then edited some more.
Another problem about biblical stories about money and
wealth is that they come from different economic systems
than the capitalist economy in which we live. Some of the
biblical stories are about nomads. They were herders rather
than farmers. Other stories come from an economic era based
on farming, in which wealth was based on land. Money in an
agrarian society based on farming was very different than
money in an economic era based on herding. And both are very
different from money in a capitalist era, when wealth is
based on money itself.
People often read the Bible as if they are stories written
in today’s newspaper. People will ignore the differences
between these economic systems, to look for direct answers
to apply directly to our own capitalist era.
If you want to know what “the Bible teaches about money,” do
you take the stories of a nomad, such as Abraham, who
amassed great wealth? Do you base your economic life on the
words of Jesus, “Blessed are the poor,” and believe that God
wants you to be poor? Or do you simply get confused with all
of the conflicting stories?
At a seminar about creating wealth, I saw a man who was
confused about what he thought the Bible teaches about
money. I heard him ask the speaker, “How can you say it is
good to be rich? Jesus said that a rich man cannot get into
heaven”
The first problem is that the man had misquoted a story told
in the Gospel of Matthew. (The same story is also told in
the Gospels of Mark and Luke.) “Then Jesus said to his
disciples, ‘Truly, I say to you, it will be hard for a rich
man to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is
easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than
for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God’” (Matthew 19:
23-24.)
The most basic fact that the man did not understand was that
Jesus was telling the story in an agrarian society. A rich
man was part of the ruling class who controlled the land.
Wealth came from exploitation and abuse of the majority of
the population.
In its own context, the story was not about a being rich in
a capitalist economy, where it is possible to be rich
without exploiting other people. The man who asked the
question simply assumed that the words of Jesus could apply
directly to life in a capitalistic economy.
This is the kind of misunderstanding that happens again and
again when people use Bible verses without paying attention
to the economic context behind the story. The only real
answer to the man who asked the question at the seminar
would be to understand the point of the story in an agrarian
society.
Kalinda Rose Stevenson, Ph.D.
Going Broke With Jesus book What if most of what you believe about Jesus and money is not true? Don’t let misinterpreted Bible stories block your abundance.
