What Does It Mean to “Serve Mammon”?

[Denise]

A HEART PIERCED WITH MANY PANGS
What Does It Mean to “Serve Mammon”?

October 2012
By Christopher Zehnder

Christopher Zehnder is the general editor of the Catholic Schools Textbook Project, which has published his books From Sea to Shining Sea, a history of the U.S. for grades 5-8, and Light to the Nations II: The Making of the Modern World, for grades 8-10. He lives with his wife and seven children in the mountains of central California.

“You cannot serve God and mammon.” These have been among the most repeated of the words of Christ and, perhaps, the most ignored. This might be because they are among the most misunderstood. What does it mean to serve mammon or wealth? Does the simple possession of wealth or the pursuit of money and material goods equate to the service of mammon? In seeking to better our material condition, do we imperil our eternal souls?

An honest misunderstanding of these words of Christ’s, however, is not alone the cause of their neglect. Some who hear them despise them. The Gospel of Luke tells us that the Pharisees, “who were lovers of money,” scoffed at these words of Jesus (Lk. 16:14). Why did they scoff? Because, Jesus said, they sought to justify themselves “before men,” not before God. Nevertheless, “God knows your hearts,” He told them; and He gave them this warning: “What is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.”

As if to emphasize the truth that human exaltation is an abomination to God, Jesus almost immediately launches into one of His most well-known parables, that of the rich man and Lazarus (Lk. 16:19-31). Understood in light of the teaching of “Moses and the prophets” (v. 29) and, for us, the New Testament and sacred Tradition, this parable not only illustrates the perils of human pride but provides the key to understanding what it means to serve mammon, and how this service is not consonant with a life lived in God.

Our Lord delivers His parable with a simple but eloquent artistry. By the use of a few well-chosen, parallel but contrasting phrases, He paints for us a vivid picture of the rich man, or Dives, as tradition names him, and the poor beggar, Lazarus. Dives is “clothed in purple and fine linen,” while Lazarus is “full of sores.” The rich man “feasted sumptuously every day,” but the poor man had to content himself with nothing, for he “desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table,” but was not. We can presume that Dives, being rich, had servants to wait on him; Lazarus, however, had only dogs to lick the wounds that covered him like a garment of shame.

Like any good storyteller, Jesus does not spell out but merely suggests the character of His personages. We are not told that Dives is an evil man, only that he lives well while Lazarus suffers famishment. Yet our Lord’s brief description tells us everything we need to know about the rich man. Unlike the poor of our day, who are segregated from the neighborhoods of the wealthy, Lazarus lay at the rich man’s gate. Dives presumably saw him every time he entered or exited his house. The poor man was not out of sight, nor was he out of mind.

Every day, perhaps, Dives saw Lazarus hungry and full of sores, but never did he offer him the merest scrap of food. Even dogs could eat the scraps that fell from their master’s table, but this man, made in God’s image, was left to starve. How would those to whom Jesus told His story have judged Dives? Harshly, for the tale would probably have recalled to their minds the words of Isaiah, spoken to the sleek and well-fed of his time:

Cry aloud, spare not, lift up your voice like a trumpet; declare to my people their transgression…. Behold, in the day of your fast you seek your own pleasure, and oppress all your workers…. Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness…to let the oppressed go free…to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover him, and not to hide yourself from your own flesh? (Isa. 58:1-7)

By the judgment of Isaiah, Dives was a wicked man. He had “waxed fat,” grown thick, become sleek, and “forsook the God who made him” (Deut. 32:15). Dives transgressed the Law of Moses, which enjoins mercy on the poor (Lev. 19:9-10). He refused to “rescue the weak and the needy,” and so the judgment against him was certain: “You shall die like men, and fall like any prince” (Ps. 82:4,7).

But what of Lazarus? Would his misfortunes have been taken as a sign of wickedness? So Job’s friends had judged him, and so did the Pharisees condemn the man born blind (Jn. 9:2,34). Yet, in both cases, the judgment was false. Job did not suffer in recompense for his sins, nor was blindness a punishment for iniquity. Indeed, according to Scripture, far from being a punishment for sin, suffering is often a sign of election, “for the Lord reproves him whom he loves as a father the son in whom he delights” (Prov. 3:12). Lazarus’s sufferings were not an earnest of God’s wrath, as Jesus’ parable makes clear; for, when the poor man died, he was “carried by the angels to Abraham’s bosom.” It was not the poor Laza­rus but Dives who was consigned to torment in the netherworld.

If, however, we look to the parable for a direct and specific confirmation of the thesis that Dives was punished for his sins and Lazarus was rewarded for his righteousness, we will be disappointed. How does Abraham account for the contrasting states of the two men? “Son,” he says to the rich man, “remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish” (Lk. 16:25). It seems that Abraham is saying that neither Lazarus’s beatitude nor Dives’s damnation accords with merit but only with the material state of their lives on earth. Why does Lazarus enjoy good things now? Because in life he suffered only evil. Why is Dives tormented in Hell? Because he enjoyed wealth and comfort on earth.

In other words, it seems that Abraham pronounces Lazarus blessed because he had been poor, while Dives is condemned because he had been rich. Such an interpretation of Abraham’s words seems to suggest that the material condition of one’s life, rather than one’s virtue, determines one’s eternal destiny — that riches, far from being a reward for virtue, are, in themselves, the cause of damnation.

To interpret Abraham’s reply to Dives in this manner, however, flies in the face of all Scripture. Nowhere does Scripture teach that the rich are condemned simply for being rich, or that the poor are saved simply on account of their poverty. When Jesus speaks of the Last Judgment (Mt. 25:31-45), He does not say that the Son of Man will separate the sheep from the goats based on their income levels, but on whether they showed mercy. It is love of God and neighbor that Jesus commands, not divestment of possessions. It is true that our Lord called on some, as He did the rich young ruler, to “sell all that you have and distribute to the poor” (Lk. 18:22), yet this was not a universal precept. Jesus, for instance, dissuaded the healed Gerasene demoniac from joining Him — which entailed utter poverty — and instead told him to “go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you” (Mk. 5:18-19). And Jesus did not condemn the tax collector Zacchaeus for giving up only half, rather than all, of his possessions to the poor. Far from condemning Zacchaeus, Jesus praised him: “Today salvation has come to this house” (Lk. 19:1-10).

Placing Abraham’s words to Dives in the context of the rest of Scripture, we are forced to conclude that the rich man was not condemned for his riches but for his lack of generosity to the poor man at his gate. Dives was like the man in another of Jesus’ parables who built larger barns in which to store his abundant harvests and who said to his soul, “You have ample goods laid up for many years; take your ease, eat, drink, be merry.” To this man, God said, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you; and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” This man’s fault, our Lord tells us, was that he was not “rich toward God” (Lk. 12:16-21). St. John Chrysostom, commenting on this parable, explains that this man was justly condemned because he destroyed his own security, “for the safe barns are not walls but the stomachs of the poor.”

But are we not to interpret Abraham’s words as in a sense condemnatory of riches as such? Does not the New Testament speak rather slightingly of riches and, indeed, the rich themselves? Certainly we do not hear Jesus praise the rich. When He speaks of riches, it is of their power to hinder our journey to God. Indeed, He emphatically tells us that it is “easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God” (Mk. 10:25). The soul of the rich is the soil in which thorns choke the Word into unfruitfulness (Mt. 13:22). In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus blesses the poor and speaks woe to the rich in terms similar to those spoken by Abraham to Dives. You poor are blessed, says Jesus, “for yours is the kingdom of God”; but “woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation” (6:20,24).

Jesus does not praise wealth — far from it. The ideal of the New Testament is not the wealthy man but the man who abandons all for the Kingdom of God, he who does not look back even to bury his dead. Fervor for the Gospel did not move the first believers to the acquisition of wealth but to the nakedness of those who seek first the Kingdom of God. The Acts of the Apostles even describes a kind of evangelical communism, where none were rich or needy, but the distribution of goods “was made to each as any had need” (4:32-35).

Yet, if Jesus does not praise wealth, neither does He condemn it as such. In theology as in philosophy, the phrase as such (or in Latin, per se) is of immense significance: It points to the intrinsic nature of a thing. We do not, for instance, warn others not to drink milk as such, but sour milk. Milk as such will not make a normal person sick, but sour milk may. Nor is wine in itself dangerous to moral rectitude, though it may endanger the moral and bodily good of the intemperate man. Catholic wisdom, as well as sound reason, carefully distinguishes between the intrinsic nature of a thing, and the use to which it is put, and the extrinsic circumstances that modify its influence on men’s lives.

A closer look at the passages in which Jesus seems to condemn wealth as such will show that He does no such thing. Though Jesus speaks of the difficulty of a rich man’s attaining salvation, He does not preclude the possibility. To His astonished disciples, who asked, “Then who can be saved?” Jesus replied, “With man it is impossible, but not with God” (Mk. 10:23-27). Nor, in the parable of the sower, is it riches that “choke the word,” but “the delight in riches.” Likewise, the passage in Luke in which Jesus blesses the poor must be understood in light of a parallel passage in Matthew, where it is to the “poor in spirit,” not simply the poor, to whom the Kingdom of Heaven belongs (Mt. 5:3). Also, in Luke, Jesus speaks woe to the rich, not simply because they have riches, but because they have found their consolation in riches. They have delighted in them.

Likewise, when writing to Timothy, St. Paul does not say that the rich should cease to be rich. Rather, he tells Timothy to charge the rich “not to be haughty, nor to set their hopes on uncertain riches but on God who richly furnishes us with everything to enjoy.” It seems that Paul is saying that the chief danger besetting the rich is not their wealth as such, but the temptation to put their trust in wealth and to use it for vainglory. Both temptations render the rich overly possessive of their goods, and so St. Paul further tells Timothy to charge the rich “to do good, to be rich in good deeds, liberal and generous, thus laying up for themselves a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life which is life indeed” (1 Tim. 6:17-19).

Although Jesus and Paul do not condemn riches as such, it would be a mistake to assume that they think the possession of great riches makes no difference to the good of one’s soul. In the same letter to Timothy, Paul speaks of the “great gain” to be found “in godliness with contentment; for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world.” Rather, says Paul, “if we have food and clothing, with these we shall be content.” But, Paul continues, “those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evils; it is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced their hearts with many pangs” (1 Tim. 6:9-10). What Paul recommends here is not destitution but sufficiency. What he warns against is the pursuit of wealth beyond the demands of sufficiency. The fact that what counts as sufficiency will differ according to one’s state in life is not immediately important. Let it be granted that what is sufficient for a single man is not sufficient for a family; still, the basic point remains. Those who are not content with “food and clothing” — or what is necessary to fulfill their state in life — imperil their souls. They fall into avarice, the love of money — the “root of all evils” — and so court damnation.

In a series of sermons on the parable of Dives and Lazarus, St. John Chrysostom calls the enjoyment of wealth beyond sufficiency luxury. “There is nothing more grievous than luxury,” he says, for it “often leads to forgetfulness.” Forgetfulness of what? Quoting Deuteronomy 8:11, Chrysostom says, “When you have eaten and drunk, ‘take heed to yourself that you forget not the Lord your God’…. Fill your belly so moderately that you become not too heavy to bend your knees and call upon your God.”

The possession of great riches, though not to be condemned in itself, nevertheless presents grave difficulties to the soul that seeks perfection. Great wealth coaxes us with a delight that “chokes the word.” It deludes us with a false security, tempting us to hoard our riches and to pull down our barns for larger ones. We become unwilling to live like the birds of the air or the lilies of the field and seek the Kingdom of God (Lk. 12:22-31); rather, we are anxious to maintain what we have amassed and seek to amass more. The desire for wealth dries up the springs of generosity; it turns us in on ourselves rather than outward toward God and neighbor. We do not grow “rich in good deeds, liberal and generous,” like the poor woman praised by Jesus who “out of her poverty” contributed “everything she had, her whole living.” Rather, we become like those who “put in large sums” but gave far less than the widow, for they “contributed out of their abundance,” not of their very selves (Mk. 12:41-44).

Is it any wonder, then, that Jesus says it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? The trappings of pleasure and good living blind Dives not only to the state of his own soul but to the very purpose for which he possesses wealth, and so unwittingly he commits grave injustice. Chrysostom admits that Dives did no injustice to Lazarus, in that he stole nothing from him. The rich man’s injustice was far more subtle and thus more profound; for, says Chrysostom, “the failure to share one’s own goods with others is theft and swindle and defraudation.”

Scripture too teaches that theft includes not simply taking what another possesses but refusing to give to another what is owed him. In the prophecy of Malachi, God condemns Israel for robbing Him by withholding their tithes and offerings (3:8-10). But, it might be objected, Malachi speaks here of what is owed to God, not of charity given to the poor. Yet, God has identified Himself with the poor. Did not He by whom Malachi prophesied rebuke those who asked when they saw Him hungry and thirsty, “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me” (Mt. 25:40)?

“To deprive is to take what belongs to another; for it is called deprivation when we take and keep what belongs to others,” says Chrysostom. “By this we are taught that when we do not show mercy, we will be punished just like those who steal…. The rich man is a kind of steward of the money which is owed for distribution to the poor. He is directed to distribute to his fellow servants who are in want. So if he spends more on himself than his need requires, he will pay the harshest penalty hereafter. For his own goods are not his own, but belong to his fellow servants.”

The words of Chrysostom shed much light on the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. Nowhere does Jesus indicate that the rich man was particularly immoral. He may have been faithful to his wife, sired a large family, been honest in his business dealings, paid his taxes, offered the requisite sacrifices in the temple and, like the rich young ruler, observed all the commandments from his youth (Lk. 18:21). We know of no reason to condemn Dives, except that in his life he received “good things” while Lazarus lay suffering at his gate. What then was his fault? It was simply this: In receiving good things the rich man failed to share them with the poor. He lacked the “one thing” necessary — love for God as expressed through the service to the “least of these, my brethren.”

It is to the likes of Dives that the words, given in another context, were spoken: “Truly, I say to you, as you did it not to one of the least of these, you did it not to me.” We too must heed the warning of Jesus’ parable lest we, like Dives, be numbered among those who “will go away into eternal punishment” and not with Lazarus and all “the righteous” who dwell in the bosom of Abraham, unto “eternal life” (Mt. 25:45-46). We cannot serve God and mammon.