Gospel of Luke, chapter 16:13

The gospel that you hear preached in many mega churches and by tele-evangelists today is a gospel of material prosperity. Material wealth is dangled like a carrot before listeners as God’s blessing to all who believe. In today’s gospel passage, Jesus makes clear that you cannot serve both God and money because you will love one and despise the other. The Lord does not condemn the acquisition of money which is necessary to live a decent life. What He condemns is making a God of money; choosing money, not God, as the love of your life.

There is a Latin adage that says: “Abusus non tollit usum,” which means, “the abuse of something does not take away its rightful use.” This wise adage applies to the use of money. The scriptures roundly condemn the abuse of wealth. This abuse of wealth can take three forms: a) how one acquires it, b) how one uses it, and c) how one invests it.

The first form of abuse is seen in those who exploit the poor to get rich. The rich who are condemned in James 5: 1-6 belong to this class because they withheld the honest wages of the “laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.” Wealth is good when a person works honestly for it without defrauding anyone else, but when someone gets it through dishonesty and fraud, then it has been abused. This is what St. James is condemning in His epistle.

The second abuse is that of those who may have become wealthy by honest means but who use wealth to indulge themselves. Jesus gives us an example of this form of abuse in the Parable of the Rich Fool (Luke 12:19-20) who laid up his wealth, saying: now is the time “to relax, eat, drink, and be merry.” But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” Wealth, like every other blessing, is given to us in trust so that we may serve God and our fellow man with it. God does not give us the blessings of wealth for our self-gratification. It was never ours in the first place; we only have it on loan or on trust from God, the creator, to use for His glory, and not for self-indulgence.

Finally, there are those who invest in wealth for themselves rather than for God. For people like this, wealth has become another god. It is of such people that Jesus said: “No servant can serve two masters; for he will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Luke 16:13).

Money and God do not go together. When a society, a church, or a person makes a God of money, they fall into the abyss of corruption and greed, no matter how well they rationalize it. Today’s scripture warns against the abuse of wealth, not its proper use. Let us pray for a balanced view or attitude towards wealth in the way we acquire it; in the ways we use it; and in the way we invest it.

Fr. Hugh Duffy

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