What Money Can’t Buy

Over a doorway in an old Dutch banking house is the following inscription:  “The Golden Age is the Age in which money does not rule!”

One of the surest ways most everyone will know whether we are Jesus’ disciples is our attitude toward money. The character of a society will, in large measure, be determined by the place assigned to money in its hierarchy of values. And the same is true of individuals. To a large extent, our character will be measured by how money fits into our value system: why we want it, how we get it, and what we do after acquiring it.

Before his untimely death, spiritual writer Thomas Merton expressed great concern about the problem of money in our society. He said,

“As a nation, we have begun to float off into a moral void. We have reached the point where putting forth any moral standard automatically releases an anti-moral response in many people. But it is not with them alone…