Money | Spirituality | Culture
America’s Survival Depends on One Thing
De-Center Money
The love of money (avarice) is the root of all types of evil.
— 1 Timothy 6:10
It was my favorite scene from the movie The Ten Commandments, broadcast every Easter on ABC. As a good Catholic family, we watched this epic Hollywood recounting of the story of the Jews’ salvation from their Egyptian slave masters every year. The golden calf, made from the spoils of Israelite wealth, was hoisted in the air as half-naked men and women danced around it in an orgy of greed. Meanwhile, Moses, upon Mount Sinai, conversed with God, receiving his roadmap to a good life from a burning bush. Oh, the drama of it all. You just knew that the Jews were going to get it big time when Moses came down from the mountain. As a kid, getting in trouble was the most relatable part of the Exodus story for me, and every time I waited in suspense for the dramatic reckoning . . . they get caught being greedy bastards.
What I didn’t fully comprehend as a child was the depth of the ‘sin’ being committed by the Jews. Not only were they betraying their devotion to the God that saved them from slavery, the deity they put in place of him was money. We’ve literally been calling it out for millennia– money is…
