Money, freedom, and what really sustains
“Money is freedom!” So said a close older relative when I was still a young man. In the years since, I’ve come to understand how those three words sum up the view of much of humanity. But recently, some genealogical research on my mother’s family presented me with a most unexpected lesson as to why this view is not necessarily true.
One branch of my mother’s crowd were Mennonites in Russia. As I understand the historical details, the pacifist Mennonites were enticed to settle undeveloped lands in various parts of Russia and were given exemption from military service as part of the deal. An important point about the pacifist Mennonites: They weren’t just subsistence farmers—they wanted to farm and make money!
With the passage of years, politics in Russia changed, and among other things, exemptions from military service came under review. Many nervous Mennonites began to seek permission to leave Russia. By this time, the mid-19th century, the Mennonites were a critical part of Russia’s agricultural industry, and their departure threatened the country’s economic well-being. To put it simply, wealthier, land-owning Mennonites suddenly found that their money and success in business were barriers to their freedom to leave Russia. (The poorer, landless Mennonites had no such troubles getting permission to emigrate.) And Mennonite prosperity in Russia was to bring much grief to that community in years to come.
Shortly after I learned this piece of family history, I was reading the weekly Christian Science Bible Lesson titled “Soul and Body.” The question suddenly came to me: Exactly what is money, anyway? I started reading the Lesson with that question foremost in mind and immediately got some surprising (or, depending on your life experience, not surprising) answers.
One Bible passage from that Lesson dealt with the woman in the crowd who touched the hem of Jesus’ robe—she had spent all her money on physicians and “had suffered many things” of them and was not improved (see Mark 5:25–34 ). Her money apparently had led her to pursue expensive treatments, but her condition only grew worse—her money certainly hadn’t cured her plague! Now that thought came as a bit of a jar.
The Bible states unequivocally that “the love of money is the root of all evil” (I Timothy 6:10 ). That statement is pretty relevant to the situation today in many parts of the world. If inequities, injustices to others, and damages done to the environment because of greed and shortsighted profiteering—in other words, the love of money—don’t point to a kind of error that needs to be addressed in human thought, I can’t imagine what does.
Mary Baker Eddy, the discoverer of Christian Science, had many things to say on the topic of money. At times in her life she faced poverty and deprivation, and in the course of bringing the Christian Science Church into being, she had to deal with all manner of money issues. But her eyes never left the spiritual facts. At one point in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, she writes about how Jesus faced down lack, sickness, and even death by understanding that our real substance is spiritual, having nothing to do with financial supply or a material body. She counseled her followers to “divest thought of false trusts and material evidences in order that the spiritual facts of being may appear …” (p. 428 ).
The question suddenly came to me: Exactly what is money, anyway?
No monetary system can really meet the demands of genuine spiritual progress. For instance, many people do not realize that the divine system of economics has nothing to do with either capitalism or communism. Does that mean we ought to throw away the current economic order? Of course not. But Christians have been steered to look higher than financial systems. God’s systems don’t require one individual to suffer so another may gain. In reality, we are not limited to any human way of doing things, and we may find that greater spiritualization of thought will bring new economic approaches.
I caught a glimpse of this fact in a rather unorthodox way when I was a boy. By the time I’d reached the eighth grade, I was often praying with this idea: “Divine Love always has met and always will meet every human need” (Science and Health, p. 494 ). About this time, I had inadvertently kept a school library book too long and was faced with a fine when I returned it. The fine was ten cents! For a boy from a family that was very much less than well-to-do, I was lucky to have ten cents once in six months.
I was quite upset as I headed out of school and started to walk up the road toward the little store where the other kids tended to flock at noon. I suddenly found an empty pop bottle—and then another, and yet another. In those days, retailers gave a two-cent rebate for returning empty pop bottles. I found exactly the number of bottles I needed to pay the fine, and my parents never knew anything about the matter. It was never a good thing for them to be faced with unexpected expenses, no matter how small, on account of my goofs.
In my life since then, I have not experienced excessive prosperity, but I’ve always had what I genuinely needed, when I needed it. And in my case, I think that I have made better spiritual progress by dint of not having extravagant amounts of money.
So what is the spiritual truth about money? It seems to me that it’s best expressed in the story of Peter and John when they encountered the lame man at the gate of the temple (see Acts 3:1–11 ). When Peter said to the crippled man, “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee,” he showed a kind of thinking that had been stripped of any belief in the necessity of money to restore harmony. The crippled man’s healing and joy was a quick demonstration of how true comeliness and grace are not dependent on physical conditions, or on money.
Money is ultimately a human concept about substance—about what it is and how it works, subject to our own personal view as well as the broader community view. In my prayers, I am slowly gaining a better understanding that Spirit, God, is “the life, substance, and continuity of all things” (Science and Health, p. 124 ).
