Deconstructing Money

In yesterday’s post, I talked about the wages of sin . . .

Today, I was going to focus on actual monetary wages, but I don’t know if I can do a great job of that. The fact of the matter is, the church was never close to 100% responsible for the way I looked at money, yet it’s one of the areas in my life I’m still trying to deconstruct. I’ve taken this money thing apart so many times and failed miserably in every attempt to put it and my actual finances back together. I’m just sitting here exasperated in a pile of mismatched parts, none of which seem worth anything.

The further the topic zooms out from personal finances (mine or anyone else’s individual concept of money) the easier it is for me to feel like I’m grasping it and being real about it. Corporations? I could go on for days about their greed and disregard for the well-being of people (who work for them and worship them) and their role in the government of our nation.

But I won’t. Not now. It’s an easy and comfortable road for me to go down, and in its essence it would just wind up being a retread of a political argument everyone seems to want to have when they get on the Internet.

(I will say, that historian Heather Cox Richardson, who writes the excellent newsletter, also wrote a brilliant chronicle of the history of the Republican party that gives a thorough study and a big picture understanding of what the party has stood for over the years from an economic standpoint and how that has played out in the policies of political giants like Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, and Eisenhower. It’s a must read and a far better discussion of things than I could ever lead.)

But personally, the Bible’s teachings on money have always been more like a pebble in my shoe than a guiding light. The overall vibe of greed, the accumulation of wealth, and the love of money all being evil (except when it makes you responsible) made me uncomfortable whenever I’d think about making more money or having a bigger house or a nicer car. I didn’t want to think about how much I made. I didn’t want to have a lot of money. I wanted stuff, and I wanted to enjoy my life, but I felt this nagging pain any time financial topics or ambitions or anything that cost over $100 made their presence known.

Add to that the more recent discoveries that a) I almost certainly have ADHD and b) people with ADHD tend to be pretty terrible at managing money, and I just never really tried to venture very far down the road to financial freedom. I was more of a hitchhiker.

Leaving the church coincided with leaving my job, so I went from fundraising (among other things) for Christian organizations to selling for secular businesses. It was shockingly close to being seamless. I felt kind of like a universal cog that fit pretty well into any system designed to ask people to hand their money over.

But personally I wanted (and desperately needed) to break free from the idea that having money needed to be regulated by some kind of psychologically imposed ceiling, so I sought out books to help me do just that. I came across Rich Dad, Poor Dad, which had been recommended by Christians and non-Christians alike. At first blush, I loved it. Acquire assets aggressively, avoid accumulating liabilities, and learn to recognize the difference—and above all, learn how to make money and make it work for you. The truth of that book, however, really boils down to being greedy af, treating every transaction between humans like a game and winning every single one with a sociopathic disregard for its effects on anyone else.

The main goal of RDPD in a nutshell: learn to be able to generate and accumulate wealth as naturally as breathing and teach your kids to do the same . . . and make sure you have a mountain of treasure to pass on to them so that no one else in the entire world ever gets more of your wealth mountain than absolutely necessary (and even then, try to take it back). It’s just a blueprint for being a selfish human in a miserable world.

I don’t understand how someone who claims to think Jesus isn’t an idiot could stomach the stench of Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

I haven’t been able to do a passable job of recovering from the chaos that has been my understanding of money. I did learn that exchanging your time for money is a losing errand, but I also learned the incredible discipline required to make a living doing anything else. And I’m still working on that. But it’s doable.

Some day, I’ll revisit this topic and I’ll have better things to say. For now, I’ll just say this: pay attention to the world your view of money would create if it spread like a virus.