MONEY According to the Bible,
...the love of money is the root of all evil... (I Timothy 6:10)
This has to be one of the most famous verses in all of Scripture. Seems you're always hearing it in a movie or television show. I've got my own problems with money, i.e., the idea of money. It centers around what it essentially is. Once you sort it and sift it, down to its finest essence, it's easy to see that money is nothing more than access to resources. Put simply, the more money you have, the more stuff you can buy. But therein lies the problem. Stuff, you see, and I'm talking all stuff, is based upon resources. And believe it or not, the Bible has something to say about them. I know, the word, resources is not in the Bible, but that which we suggest whenever we use the word is unquestionably a biblical issue.
The earth is the Lord's, and the fullness thereof. (Psalms 24:1)
All resources come from the same place: the earth. They are clearly suggested in the phrase, "and the fullness thereof." In case you haven't been paying attention, the earth is the place where we go digging for all the stuff out of which we make even more stuff. And the Bible plainly says that the earth belongs to God. So what's the point? Well, it's actually very simple. Just think about it logically. If you have something in your hand, something that you bought and paid for, or perhaps something that someone gave you, or that you made, you might say, when asked about it, that it's yours. Logically, that means that it's not mine, or anyone else's. In the same way, if the earth is the Lord's, then, logically, it doesn't belong to anyone else. It's His. He made it. So what does it have to do with money? Once again, the answer is pretty simple. Money, remember, is access to resources, all of which come from the earth, which nobody owns but God. Do you know someone who is wealthy? If you do, it's a sure bet they have access to a lot of resources, usually in the form of big houses, land, cars, boats and so on. But they don't own the resources. No one does. They belong to God. That means that all the stuff they have doesn't even belong to them, at least not in the eyes of God. In contrast, do you know someone who is poor? Their situation is just the reverse of the rich person. They do not have access to resources that belong to God. There is no kind of wealth you can name that is not somehow based on resources, human or material. Yes, human labor and ingenuity are also resources. Once again, I give you Psalms 24:1, but this time in its entirety:
The earth is the LORD's, and the fulness thereof; the world, and they that dwell therein.
The human resources also belong to God!
... the world, and they that dwell therein.
When you see it this way, you begin to understand Jesus' contempt for the rich. They are virtual thieves. They are stealing, hoarding and squandering resources that don't even belong to them, resources which, if God were to have His way (if His will were to be done as Jesus admonished us to pray), would be shared equally by everyone. Resources are misused, and will continue to be misused, because of something we call an economic system, all of which, all over the world, are based upon some type of currency, i.e, money. In the world of Tecnocracy, which is the world of the future, money will not be used as the medium of exchange. Using money inevitably results in disparity, in some having more, which (logically) means that others will have less. Technocracy will replace money with energy credits. The world is made of energy and there is more than enough of it for everyone to have all they need, with plenty left over. It is only our method of accessing the energy (money) that prevents it from happening.
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