The Desire for Riches

Ask the internet whether you should want to be rich and you'll get one answer, shouted from ten thousand directions. Of course you should!!! A whole economy of men in rented Lamborghinis has assembled to tell you so. Ask a certain kind of Christian and you'll get a holier version of the same thing, that it's nearly your duty to want wealth, because look how much you could give away (but you get to decide if you want to). Ask your average decent American and they'll split the difference. Nothing wrong with wanting to be rich. Just don't be a jerk about it.

Jesus and Paul did not get the memo.

Jesus says it about as plainly as he says anything. "No one can serve two masters... You cannot serve God and money" (Matthew 6:24, ESV). Not "it's tricky to serve both." You can't. Pick one. Paul goes further and calls the wanting itself a trap. "Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare" (1 Timothy 6:9). A snare holds you in place while you're sure you're getting somewhere. The cruel joke of it is that the wealth we're certain will unlock every door turns out to be the chain bolting us to the wall.

You can dress the desire up, of course. I only want money so I can be generous. Think of the check I'd write the church. But the costume doesn't change the body underneath, and underneath the good intentions, you love the money.

I buy lottery tickets

I should confess something before I go further, because I'm not writing this down from a mountaintop.

When the jackpot climbs high enough, I buy a lottery ticket. So does my wife. Seth Godin once pointed out that nobody really buys a ticket to win, since the odds are a rounding error away from zero. We buy it to dream, legally, for a couple of days. And we do. We dream.

We start out noble. We'd take care of the whole family, including family members we don't really talk to anymore. We'd cut a tithe check big enough to make the treasurer weep. We'd start a nonprofit to help unwed mothers learn life skills and get on their feet. But give it five more minutes and we've drifted to the house, the travel, the comfortable padding against every fear we've ever had. By then the desire has done its quiet work and the fantasy has us. Worse, the fantasy makes the real life around us look a little shabby by comparison. We start grateful and end up faintly disappointed in a perfectly good life, all for a two-dollar ticket.

If only we had a little more.

Just a little bit more

That phrase is the entire engine. Somebody asked John D. Rockefeller, then the richest man on earth, how much money was enough. He smiled and said, "Just a little bit more."

That isn't the quirk of one greedy man. That's how every idol talks. The idol's mouth hangs open and never fills. It swears the next raise, or the next zero on the account, will be the one that finally settles you. It never is. It eats you a bite at a time and calls it ambition.

I see it clearest in young men, because the pitch is aimed straight at them. Wealth, the sales copy promises, buys a better wife, better kids, more freedom, the good life and everything that comes with it. And there's a course you can purchase to learn the secret. It's the oldest pitch in the world. Every false god in history has run the same con: work hard for me, and I'll lift you up. Give me everything and you will get what you really, truly want...maybe. What none of them mention until you're in deep is the catch that's just as old. The longer you serve, the less it hands back, and the more it quietly takes.

God doesn't run that con

The odd thing about the God of the Bible is that he won't play. There's no contract. There's no "hit these numbers and I'll bless you." The gods of the ancient world built humans to be unpaid labor. This God built humans to be his image, his living icons walking the temple of the world. (If that's a new idea, Carmen Imes and John Walton have written the readable books on it.)

Instead of contracts he makes covenants, which are a different animal entirely. A contract pays out if you perform. A covenant hands over the blessing first, before you've lifted a finger to earn it. You don't serve God to get the good life. Serving God is the good life, and you already have it. The opening move isn't to go acquire it. The opening move is to look around and notice you're standing in it.

The way out is gratitude

Jesus and Paul both name the antidote, and it's almost insultingly simple. Contentment. Food and clothing, and that's enough. Be content. Sermon over, drive safe.

Except it isn't simple, and we both know it. You can't just pick contentment off a shelf like a pair of socks. For me the road to contentment runs through gratitude, and I mean the practiced kind, not the greeting-card kind. My whole day tilts better on the days I actually do it.

Start here. Go somewhere quiet. Close your eyes and breathe. Then start thanking God for what's right in front of you, and start small enough to feel a little ridiculous. "Thank you for this toothbrush so my teeth don't rot out of my head" counts every bit as much as "thank you for the house." Stay with it a minute. Then another.

Two things happen while you do it. Your attention swings off the gap, the running list of what you lack, and onto what's already in your hands. And you hand the credit back to the one who put it there. Did God personally set a toothbrush on your sink? That's a thornier question for another day. Don't go metaphysical on me right now. Just stay in the moment and say thank you.

Do that often enough and something loosens. The grip eases. The everpresent wanting goes a little quieter. And the little voice that keeps whispering if only we had more finally has to argue with a louder one that's started saying, look at everything we already have.