Commentary: Money makes a great pitch.

"Psssst. Give an altar call now and half the church will come forward." I
was speaking at a church camp recently when the pastor of the church
whispered the above suggestion. No, I am not that anointed a speaker. As
part of my talk, I was personalising the lure of money. I was speaking as
though money was speaking. I said things like:

"Trust in me. I will take care of you. I will give you the desires of your
heart. I can't guarantee that you won't fall sick but if you do I can get you
the best medical care in the world. Travel? Nice things? No problem.
Worship me and you will have more happiness in your life than you can
handle. You will be popular. People will look up to you. You can continue to
have religion. You can go to church. But trust in God? Hey, have you seen
Him recently? But hold up a dollar note. Touch it. Smell it. Now that's real!
That's security. So, come, worship me."

In response to my "money as god pitch," the pastor suggested I give an
altar call. He was speaking in jest (he's an old friend) but we both
understood the power of mammon. So did Jesus.

When Jesus wanted to make the point that you can't worship both the true
God and a false god simultaneously, He chose mammon/money to
represent the false god, and not Baal, Jupiter, Mithra, or even Caesar
(Matthew 6:24). It appears that through the ages, money is the perennial
favourite for god pretender (cr. Colossians 3:5b).

But once in awhile mammon's true colours are revealed. Once in awhile,
the fact that money is no god at all becomes ridiculously obvious. The
present global financial crisis is one such time. Here is one summary of the
cause of the present financial crisis.

["Bank and financial institutions throughout the western world acted as if
the economic cycle was a thing of the past. Instead of understanding that
the longer the debt-fueled boom lasted and the greater the debt burden
became, the greater would be the carnage when the inevitable day of
reckoning arrived, they acted as if the longer the good times lasted the
more they could be regarded as a permanent fixture. The basic error, born
of folly, ignorance and greed, is the biggest cause of the mess we are now
in." (Lord Nigel Lawson, "Back to Reality," TIME Asia, October 13, 2008,
23)]

I am no economist but I would venture to suggest that the folly and
ignorance that Lord Lawson mentions, were in fact fuelled by greed. The
scripture is very aware of the power of greed to warp our discernment (1
Timothy 6:9-10).

[But people who long to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by
many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and
destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some
people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced
themselves with many sorrows. (NLT)]

As many have pointed out, it is not money per se that is evil. The bible
acknowledges the place of money in life. The problem comes when we love
money, when we make it the main foundation for our lives, when we deify
it.

This is no time for the church to be in any "I told you so" stance. Instead
the church is called to reach out to the broken. Financial difficulties often
reveal other areas of brokenness already present in the lives of people.
Already we hear of marriages at risk and the rise of suicides. Mammon is
no god at all. It cannot give life.

Besides, the church also have many who have tried to serve both God and
mammon --- and are reaping what they sowed. And there are many who
are innocent victims of the present downturn. Now is a time for
compassion, a time to try to rescue the victims of the new hard times. And
to be on the lookout for prodigals who are headed home.

When I played the role of money in my talk in the church camp, I was
preaching on the parable of the compassionate father from Luke 15:11-32.
The younger boy gambled everything on mammon and went off to a far
country. There he discovered, as we all do sooner or later, that money is
no infallible god. Indeed it is no god at all.

The pain of the financial downturn of his day caused the prodigal to go
home. There will be many prodigals coming home these days as well. For
those who didn't sell out to money (yeah, there may be a few), the elder
brother shows us what we should not be doing. Instead we should follow
the example of the compassionate father, and welcome home the broken
hearted with open arms and with love.

But it is a time for lessons. It would have been better if we had not left for
the far country to begin with. May the present financial turmoil teach us,
again, that money is no god. We have such short memories. And money
knows how to make a great pitch.

By Soo-Inn Tan