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Money & Religion: Perfect Together
For as long as I’ve remembered, I’ve struggled with the place of money in spirituality.
Most of that time was spent vehemently denying any connection at all between religion/spirituality and money. I was a pretty firm believer in many of the seemingly anti-money sayings of Jesus, such as found in Matthew 19:14, “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.” Money for me stood for exploitation.
Then, gradually, that attitude started to soften - thanks in large part to thoughtful communication with people of other religious traditions (such as Rev Max), for whom money is a completely natural and even essential element. Money for them stands for energy.
Suddenly though tonight, I realized the crucial piece I’d been missing all along. Money isn’t exploitation. Money isn’t energy. Money is a symbol - maybe THE symbol. Money is the great equal sign floating in the sky. It is the symbol through which we quantify time and effort and value and rarity and a million other things. It is the great transformer and translator reified into something solid we can hold in our hands and give to one another.
Jungian psychologist Erich Von Neumann writes:
As Jung has shown, the symbol mediates the passage of psychic energy from the unconscious, in order that it may be applied consciously and turned to practical account. He describes the symbol as a “psychological machine” which “transforms energy”… Through the symbol, the energy is freed from the attachment and becomes available for conscious activity and work. The symbol is the transformer of energy, converting into other forms the libido which alone enables primitive man to achieve anything at all. That is why any activity of his has to be initiated and accompanied by a variety of religious and symbolic measures…”
Go back and read that again - now replace the word “symbol” with “money.” It all fits, right down to the part about ritual-symbolic acts protecting and initiating transfer through that symbol. Just think of all the small rituals you go through when paying for dinner with friends. You ask for your check, reach for your wallet, figure out how much everybody owes, how much to tip, who’s going to pay what, and whether or not you can really afford it. (Or at least that’s the ritual thought-process I always go through)
Money and religion thus fit together perfectly. Religion deals with the meanings, stories and rituals surrounding symbols. Money is a symbol made solid. Money is religion. Don’t lie - you suspected it all along. Why else would you fetishize it? Why else would you chase after it or seek to overcome it or brag about how unimportant it is to you while working a job you hate so you can get more of it?
If money is symbol, if money is religion, then we could read a new meaning into Jesus’ constant admonitions against being wealthy. Perhaps the reason the “rich” man can’t experience God is because he has fixated on the symbols, the stand-ins for God. When He preaches on the mount, Jesus blesses the “poor in spirit,” as opposed to the financially poor. He calls out to those who mourn, to those who are reviled and persecuted. He calls out to those for whom all symbols and systems have completely broken down, and for whom there is nothing left. For those who pass through the fire. For those whose friends and own Father forsake them on the Cross at the hour of their greatest need. “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” The Kingdom of Heaven waits there, in the rift between worlds, where no symbols and no things remain. Only source. Where there is nothing left to quantify and measure and worry about because it’s all been stripped away.
No wonder Jesus throws over the tables of the money changers and predicts the destruction of the temple itself. They are the same. No wonder He only comes back at the End of the World, when all signs and symbols and great men are laid low.
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February 22nd, 2006 at 6:54 am
when we swim deep in the dogmatic morality of religion then in becomes difficult to see money as a symbol of effort, or energy, in purely physical terms. so much emotional baggage is heaped upon a person about money that it is virtually impossible to extricate one`s self out from the programming.
the religious leaders see clearly what money is and they ask unabashedly for it any chance they get. they are first and foremost businessmen. they even have the government giving them land and allowing them to be exempt from taxation. they know the value of coin. it is not surprising that they condition thier sheep to hesitate to share in the abundance………….unless you are a sheep that refuses to go to sleep.
i make no apologies for the bad poetry.
my point is that poverty is not a virtue. ask your children.
it has been my belief that gnosticism was an attempt by some to extricate themselves from moral dogma of the programming of conscience.
i thought that was what the black iron prison was. the trap of conscience.
a man of concience will die of thirst before he will drink another man`s water.
he will struggle against his own will to live to prove his ego`s conscience.
that`s how strong the religious programming is.
i have even heard it said that work is it`s own reward!
only a protestant would say such a thing.
February 22nd, 2006 at 8:34 am
I agree that money = energy, and any econometrician will tell you so. The Jung quote, with the substitution, is brilliant.
One thing, though (and it is, of course, my bias to lean towards politics in any discussion that includes both “money” and “religion”): the bit about the camel passing through the eye… the issue seems to be that amassing great wealth is evil, and the meaning of money makes it clear why. This is not the same thing as “money = evil”… it’s that the concentration of wealth, which is the same as stealing psychic energy away from a large number of other individuals for the benefit of one individual, is essentially evil. In this way, one can understand why gluttony is a deadly sin (unnecessary appropriation of energy from other life forms), lust is a deadly sin (unnecessary appropriation of chi from other humans), etc. And the Christian mythology of evil is that Satan is trying to steal your soul, i.e. appropriate your psychic energy.
The good/evil dichotomy is all very dualistic, and I’m aware of that. But even if you abandon that dichotomy in favor of a more Eastern/Buddhist approach, you are left with the idea that the over-concentration of energy to one individual (or small group) involves a failure of compassion and, as you say, mistaking the symbol for the source.
February 22nd, 2006 at 8:44 am
I think I want to emphasize my point in the previous post. One could read all of the traditional Christian prohibitions (the ones that aren’t based on institutional mind control) as warnings to remain in balance with your environment. The central characteristic of all “sin” seems to be a form of insanity where greater energy is consumed/appropriated than is needed. “Greed” makes this explicit in the equation of money with energy. I’m not saying that eating, fucking, and making money are evil. It’s that the unbalanced practice of eating too much, fucking too many, etc. creates a spiritual problem.
Following the folks at anthropik.com, one can read civilization itself as one big unbalanced energy grab. And so, original sin, the explusion from the garden, really could be about the collective decision to take on civilization. Now, our preoccupation with maintaining civilization keeps us from the beautiful simplicity of the forager life, i.e. the garden.
So, maybe the problem with the unbalanced relationship to energy, e.g. greed, is that it is a feedback loop that requires constant maintenance, and tends to take one further and further away from the garden.
OK, I’m rambling now, so I’ll stop.
February 22nd, 2006 at 8:50 am
It is not money that roots evil, but the love of money, the inclination towards money.
The birds and flowers are provided for, so shall we be provided for.
I do not want to hide from money, but to disenchant myself of it! Fiat money has no intrinsic value whatsoever, it is the exemplar of an enchanted object, one which everyone treats in a particular way, a formalized, ritual way. We count it, make transactions, attend school for a decade and a half so that we can work for it.
Fotamecus? C’mon. Compare how tiny that servitor is compared to the international market, a real leviathan.
Our old pal Dollar is feeling the heat, lately, though. His intrinsic non-value is starting to catch up with him, too bad for us Americans. The war between him and his cross-the-pond cousin may lead to war in Persia.
There are too many specially-prepared dinosaur bodies buried in that holy land. Dollar has successfully positioned himself as the arbiter of who gets those buried treasures, but the Iranian oil bourse is going to boot him just like that.
All that ranting aside, it seems there might be a Hermes-Money connection, his “gatekeeper” role aligns with money’s fungibility.
February 22nd, 2006 at 9:01 am
I agree. The Christ never described his path as any but the “narrow path”. “Sin” is roughly equivalent to “pathology”, some process run awry. Whether it is from egomania or sulky self-hatred it is all obsessive self-ishness.
And boy is that self a bastard. Until one really tries to put him under, or set him aside, one has no idea!
Oyez, of course every one has seen: this kinda stuff, right?
February 22nd, 2006 at 10:21 am
well said. the real orthodox religion of our times (though many pay lip service to other creeds) is consumerism, and Money is its central symbol. the priests and theocrats who control the rules of Money (bankers, the Fed, business and political “leaders” who print more money, decide interest rates, taxes) control a key part of our reality in a consumerist state.
what is interesting to me is that ever since the US has been off the gold standard (or any kind of standard) the value of it’s money is by fiat - in other words, belief in the power of Money is what now gives it value. (the fact that oil is only denominated in dollars and a there’s very large American military to encourage that belief doesnt hurt, though)…
February 22nd, 2006 at 12:22 pm
Well, I guess I wasn’t really talking about money at all. I was just using that as a launching off point to talk about being destroyed by or losing everything that you’ve come to rely on and take comfort in. What I’m really saying I guess is that I’m feeling pretty “poor in spirit” and trying to find some comfort in that distress.
February 22nd, 2006 at 12:36 pm
Get that out of your mouth its not a toothbrush
February 22nd, 2006 at 2:10 pm
Eckhart on this episode naturally explains the temple as the body and the money changers are then the aspects of ourselves which attempt to bargain with God.
This can be taken on a moral level, where we should not attempt to exchange anything with that which already possess ourselves and all we have more than we do.
On a deeper level, it is a metaphysical statment: there is nothing to be gained or lost, there is no exchange, all that we might desire we already have in our poverty. All that grasps and reaches, throw out, thow out all that hopes for the world to come. Why should we dream of the world to come? The blessing is NOW, and we cannot conceive of it anyway.
Eckhart and his followers, unlike most Christian mystics I’ve read, writes on multiple levels at once and reads the scripture on multiple levels at once. When rightly understood, the literal, moral and metaphysical levels are seen to be identical, or maybe more accurately, fundamentally inseperable.
February 22nd, 2006 at 2:32 pm
Tim,
“I’m feeling pretty ‘poor in spirit’”
Sounds like its time for a fast. Nothing solidifies the spirit more than praying and fasting. Not just food. Turn off the media. TV, Computer, radio, music, books. You and your prayer. Natural surrooundings can be helpful, or indoors so long as the room is symbol free.
February 22nd, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Thanks for your thoughtfulness, but I’m really not interested in advice, although I do appreciate the sentiment.
February 22nd, 2006 at 6:02 pm
the symbol itself– the ‘S’ with two parallel lines slashed through it– to me represent the essence of mans relationship with nature. the parallel lines (being our human ability to shape nature) which moderate nature ( the chaotic, curvy s shape). Like trains tracks over the curvy earth. This is how we can go forward, we can’t accomodate every nook and cranny of the landscape, but can get the gist of it, and chart a coarse that conserves our energy, while still delivering us forward.
my 2 cents…..
February 23rd, 2006 at 8:42 pm
Blame the Industrial Revolution. Before that time, families worked for different reasons, and they counted on God to ultimately provide for them. There was no money factor really– people didn’t bale cotton by hand because they were entrepreneurs looking to get rich quick.
As industrialization grew, the priorities shifted from God to personal wealth.
February 25th, 2006 at 2:19 pm
So where is the Pop Occulture merchandise page? If I had a site with this much traffic, I’d have a page full of goodies.
February 25th, 2006 at 8:58 pm
Yeah I know, I need to get on that. I have a lot of revisions I need to do and that’s just one of many on the list.
October 17th, 2007 at 3:01 pm
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