In a seminar about what money is I was at recently -on a certain online platform- in the chat someone asked, I think slightly tongue in cheek -but it does open up an interesting line of enquiry:
Which form of money is most likely to be the root of all kinds of evil?
To which I responded:
It's the love of money that's the root ... 1 Tim 6:10 ... but 'store of value' must be at the top of the list
At one level that first bit could come over as a bit pernicketty -but it is important because it does enable us to think a bit about money with the gospels at heart.
What the presenter had been reminding us was that there are essentially 3 sorts of money -or rather functions of money: a medium of exchange; a store of value and a unit of account (settlements of debts). It seems to me that Jesus plays off two of the forms of money against one another, in a sense. Wealth/mammon which seems to correspond to the store of value kind of money against the relational exchange form of money while inviting us to sit very loose to the third in relation to its debt dimension.
They are, of course, all interdependent. Money can't be a store of value if people won't accept it in payment of a debt or as a way to exchange valuables. People won't accept money for debt payment if they don't think what is offered will enable them, in turn, to settle a debt or store its value long enough to exchange for other goods or services. The functions are essentially facets and not really separable. There are ways to prioritise the various facets differently in different contexts but that's another thread. They all hold in common a social construction of value and a common 'agreement' to honour and use the tokens standing for the units of account -that is a kind of faith in the money -or rather, a faith that the community in which we move will (continue to) value it and accept it in payment of debts.
That last observation about faith in the system of monetary exchange implies a kind of trust in the community that collectively creates the currency by its faith, trust, continued use /circulation and savings. Those who are rich can only be rich because they are using something that the society where they are rich accepts the currency they have stored away. Money is socially created and maintained and wealth, in as far as it arises or is stored in monetary terms, is therefore socially created and maintained. The participation of the society is necessary for wealth to be possible in monetary terms.
I'm hoping to develop some of this by looking at the gospels where they touch on money and wealth. To look with particular interest in noticing what kind of money is foregrounded in each episode and reflecting further on that. I also anticipate that noting the relationship between money and wealth in terms of goods and services will form part of the reflection.
Returning to the love of money being the root of all kinds of evil, in the society of the first century this would be a love of the status and property that money could buy. it would also be directly a love of the amount of coins one might have locked away promising future wealth by its mere existence in a society which accepted those tokens in exchange for goods, services and concomitant high esteem. 'Money' here seems to have come to stand for that nexus of disposable income as well as the property, esteem and power which money can buy. the kinds of evil it is a root of can be understood in terms of the gospel teaching and a sideways glance at some of the other Pauline literature and the letter of James. Without delving into detail at this point, this would include hard-heartedness towards the poor and marginalised, failure to alleviate poverty, self-aggrandisement and self-importance -thinking of oneself more highly than is warranted- coolness towards God and God's agenda and a (false) mentality of independence of others, of individualism.
What the writers of what we now call the New Testament are concerned with is the effect that this technology (still emerging and developing at this time) has on the social and psycho-spiritual dynamics (to use anachronistic terms and perspectives) at play within and among people. I think that we have tended to think too much in the individual terms of greed and soul-deformation and not enough of the communal nature of money and the ethics around it. So, to the three functions of money noted in the previous paragraphs, we should, I think, add its function as a culturally formative artefact. The love of money clearly includes its cultural footprint of status and social and economic relations: one grows to love the way that wealth positions one in cultural terms. I think that unless we analyse money as a cultural artefact, we risk theologically distorting discipleship in individual and corporate terms.
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