© Pierre Maré,
2004 - 2007
Offbeat 108
Money is incredibly maligned. Apparently it breeds shallow materialism which can ultimately be blamed for all the ills and woes in the world. Admittedly, there is something to this idea. Money makes people do incredibly stupid things. But this is a generalization at best.
Firstly, money is not money. It is a representation of resource. If you think of it in this way, then saying ‘money is the root of all evil’ would be analogous with saying ‘food is the root of all evil’. Carrying this one step further would imply that in order to be good, we should all stop eating. As far as I and a number of global organisations, including the World Food Programme and MacDonalds, are concerned, this is absolutely out of the question. Eating is good. Not eating is Darfur or Sudan or Ethiopia, which is very bad in every sense of the word.
You can take this train of thought a lot further. Money also represents clothing, shelter, health, education and expensive consumer electronics, all of which are very, very good. If you don’t accept this, I challenge you to do without any of them.
The main gripe of the naysayers seems to be the sort of greed that emerges when people who believe that there is a certain acceptable amount of money, have not reached that level. However, legend and myth aside, there is a certain irony in the idea that the absence of money is the root of ‘goodness’.
Legend and myth have it that great poverty is a prerequisite for being a prophet or messenger of God. However an examination of the lives of three of the most influential religious thinkers of all times reveals an entirely different story.
Buddha is well-known for poverty. The common image is that this was a man who spent his life living under a tree, not worrying about the material. However the normal depiction of Buddha is of a particularly obese individual. Obviously, if the depiction is true, the man had no shortage of food. His biography notes that he was once a prince. Obviously, he had a job to go back to if the business of religious reformation failed him.
The Christ figure is often depicted as a ‘poor carpenter’. However once again, the biography and facts tell a different story. Christ was a scion of the royal line of David, obviously an indicator of some social status. And in his time, there was no such thing as a poor or lowly carpenter. In fact, carpenters and other artisans seldom lacked employment and a ready source of money. In the economic pecking order, artisans were the ancient equivalent of the orthodontic surgeon or medical specialist: well off to say the least.
Islam is more honest with its roots. They depict the Prophet as a wealthy merchant. Good for them.
The point is that all three had access to money and / or large amounts of charity, and it was upon this basis that they could spread their messages and spend the time changing the world. If not for the money or resource in the environment around them, they might alternatively have had to concentrate on day jobs, and in all likelihood might not have been able to spread their words.
The pattern is unaltered today. Most major religions are founded on the obvious principle that the collection of money from believers is good for the souls of believers.
Hence, to say that money is the root of all evil ignores the other side of the story.
The idea of poverty as a virtue is relatively new. Actually, the element of poverty was added to Christian thought to prevent shockingly wealthy monks with a very lax approach to vows of chastity, from passing on all their material gains to their children.
Hence the second ‘hence’ that money is actually good. And the third ‘hence’ that the absence of money is the root of all evil. If everyone had enough and then some, there would be far less crime, actually.
If you have enough money, bask in it. And if you have a bit more than that, give some away as well. However bear in mind that although money seems to be a prerequisite for goodness, the world has enough religions for now.
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