Purse or Spirit?

In a recent letter to a friend, a man wrote about what he considers society’s ever-growing “money sickness.”

We are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that steer our attention to the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by, the dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?

Jesus talked a lot about the things that can bankrupt us, spiritually, and heading the list was money. Jesus understood the uses of money, of course. He spoke very often on the subject, but He never denounced money in itself as an evil thing. Rather, it was a certain attitude toward money — the kind that leads to a sort of spiritual bankruptcy that…