The root of all evil isn’t money. There’s a decent chance you think I’m wrong about that. “Michelle, you liberal heathen, it says so in the Bible!”
It doesn’t, though. See for yourself:
For the love of money is the root of all evil: which while some coveted after, they have erred from the faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me. (I Timothy 6:10)
Money is morally neutral; it’s a tool we use to pay for things we need and to receive compensation for work we do.
So money isn’t the root of all evil
Love of money is. Isn’t it interesting how we have edited that passage, and how it changes the meaning?
The problem isn’t money, it’s greed. I’m not aware of any spiritual tradition other than the GOP’s weirdly perverted form of Christianity that doesn’t frown on greed.
Yet we celebrate the greediest among us
Evangelical Christians had a lot to do with the outcome of the election. Their inauguration featured some of the greediest and most terrible people on the planet. They’ll be the real powers behind the throne, and the policies they’ll favor will result in more money going into the pockets of the few and less money going into the pockets of the rest of us.
The money those American oligarchs are hoarding would be enough to fix any number of issues, and I don’t mean by simply seizing their fortunes and giving the money away to one good cause or another.
I’m not a huge fan of flamboyant philanthropy
If you’re paying your workers and taxes appropriately, you won’t amass the kinds of fortunes Bezos, Musk and Zuck have, and the people working for you won’t live in poverty. People who don’t live in poverty don’t need help paying for their food and housing, and they can decide for themselves what causes they want to help support.
Note that the verse goes on to say “give me neither poverty nor riches”! It’s as if the Old Testament backs up the premise of Untrickled – income inequality is bad. The people who exploit their workers and the country in order to hoard more wealth are bad.
That’s why it’s incomprehensible to me that the Republican party thinks it’s the standard bearer for Christianity. It’s clear most of them have never read the Bible because all that feeding the poor and loving foreigners stuff does not sit well with them.
For a nation that often claims (falsely) to have been founded on Christian values, we sure don’t know our Bibles very well. Like familiarity with Shakespeare, basic Bible literacy used to be considered a requirement for any educated person. I took a Bible-as-literature class in college as part of my English minor and I have personally read the Bible cover-to-cover because I grew up with rather fundamentalist beliefs. Those beliefs have evolved over my life.
Most professed Christians know the children’s Bible stories and a couple of nice verses they like to hear at weddings and funerals, but that’s as far as it goes.
Give me neither poverty nor riches
Give me neither crazy-high taxes nor no taxes at all. Give me neither $8 eggs nor eggs so cheap they could only be produced by mistreating the hens and farm workers. Give me neither gas so expensive I can’t afford to drive nor gas made cheap by bombing oil-rich nations.
I am not particularly religious. It’s been years since I’ve gone to a church service. I feel comfortable letting a lot of the old rules about sexual morality go by the wayside; non-marital sex is fine with me and I suspect with most of you. On the other hand, we ignore all the old rules about financial morality and I think we should worry less about who is screwing and more about who is screwing people out of their rightful money.
Greed is not good
It has never been good. It is bad. So is usury. So is failing to give the worker his or her wages. So is ill-treating foreigners. So is not paying your taxes.
I could go on all day, but my point is the things evangelical Christians espouse are quite often antithetical to what their sacred texts say, which makes them easy prey for cynical politicians who don’t share their views but do want their votes.
If you had to boil down every goal the new administration is working for, you would eventually come up with one word: Greed.
The root of all evil.
About Michelle Teheux
I’m a writer in central Illinois. If you like my work, subscribe to me on Medium or Substack. My newest novel is The Trailer Park Rules. My newest book is Strapped: Fighting for the soul of the American working class.
From the author of The Trailer Park Rules comes this enraging and engaging collection about all the ways our broken system sets us up to fail and whether there’s anything you can do about it.
Did you know that originally the term “bootstrapping” was used sarcastically to describe an impossible task? Yet now, the meaning has morphed into the opposite.
I invite you to give it a try. Reach back, grab your bootstraps and pull with all your might. How did that work out for you?
There’s a reason we tell people to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps even though we know it can’t be done. It’s one of the ways people in power keep the rest of us from complaining that we’re being screwed. We keep trying and trying and blaming ourselves when we have trouble. Of course we blame ourselves. Who else can we blame?
This is not a self-help book because you cannot single-handedly fix what’s wrong with the system by working harder or working smarter. There’s a good possibility that some of your problems are out of your hands.
This book was not written for the top 10 percent or for anyone who had life handed to them on a silver platter.
Instead, this book is for every working-class, lower-class and even middle-class person who has done everything right but still feels strapped.
I was raised in a poor evangelical family (got out as soon as I could). My step dad was constantly reminding us of this verse, correctly too! But when I point to drumpf he coughs out some obtuse excuse ("he isn't taking his presidential salary!") and in the same breath changes the subject to "the terrorists." The one thing that can consistently get an evangelical to allow every other rule to be broken is FEAR. Fear backed up by evangelical Christian nationalism. We will never have real progress in this country as long as racists keep using religion to keep people racist. This is absolutely maddening and I hate it here.
Very good points, as always.