The Problem with Money

Why is the love of money the root of all evil?

Money has no value of itself. Any perceived value is artificially infused into it by those using it and relying on it to provide for their needs and desires.

Money is the core representation of the entire system of economy. Economy is one of the three main pillars that constitute Satan's counterfeit kingdom now called civilization. The function of economics is founded squarely on the concept of exchanging things that have artificially assigned value. Money is the medium of liquidation by which we transfer perceived value of something for empty promises of value – currency. We then take those promissory notes and in return look for someone else that has something we want and then offer them those same empty promises (promissory notes or currency) in hopes that they will believe in them enough to give us what we want in exchange.

The key concept here is the practice of exchange, but not direct exchange such as might be found in bartering. By funneling everything through money the powers in charge maintain control by which they can siphon off currency value from the lives of those engaged in this exchange of goods and services. So you can see that not only is currency exchanged directly with money by transactions, but the ability to directly control and manipulate the lives of most everyone also has a major role in the direction of society.

God's kingdom is of a very different order and is not of this world. God does not want His children infected with the mindset promoted in the practices of exchange using artificial value. He wants to wean us away from mentality with each other as well as it is vital for us to become free of such thinking if we want to be transformed in preparation for living in the pure, free atmosphere of heavenly beings. Why is this?

The notion of exchange of value short-circuits the very foundational principles of heaven and defies the core truth about who God is and what He is like and how He operates His kingdom. Currency exchange in nearly every aspect undermines the core truths of the kingdom of heaven and distorts our thinking about God and everything He has created. Satan knows that if he can keep us believing in and embracing the inherent lies embedded in his system of control and manipulation and power that we will remain trapped in a way of thinking that inhibits our ability to trust God. It is trust in God that is the key to our freedom from the bondage of sin. As long as we believe lies about God and how He operates, we will always have corresponding fears and distrust of Him.

It is becoming clear that God does not want us to think in terms of earning our way to heaven. When put that way it is easy to see the danger in that way of thinking. However, the devil is not at all stupid as he is described as the most subtle of creatures, and everything he does is meant to deceive us into believing lies that will lead toward death. So he immerses our thinking and living with systems designed to appear good and beneficial that in reality are designed to deceive us about God and cause us to doubt His goodness, compassion and especially His agape love.

God is love. That is the core message of the Bible. We are very familiar with those words, but most of the time we fall short of actually embracing what they really mean in our everyday living and thinking. We fail to take sufficient time to reflect, meditate and allow the real truth and implications of what constitutes real love to actually soak deep into our psyche and change our heart.

What is agape love? And why is it so important to grasp it at a much deeper level than what we do?

Agape kind of love – the love that defines the very essence of God, not just something He does or some aspect of Him – is completely selfless, other-centered, caring, concerned and intent on blessing others.

So what problems do we run into when we get trapped by the love of money?

Remember that money is the key ingredient involved in the whole concept of artificial value exchange. The purpose of money is to function as an intermediary, a medium that we depend on to supposedly transfer value from one person to another. Do you start to smell a rat here yet? Why are we living in dependence an something completely artificial and arbitrary that has no inherent value like currency to transfer assumed value from one person to another?

Multiple alarms start to emerge at this point in the alert thinker. First of all, one of the biggest problems we encounter in our economic systems based on sin and selfishness is our ever-present craving for more value deep in our souls. This constant emptiness is a result of sin bringing us shame – defined as removing value from us – and works as a constant urge to seek other sources from which we might acquire more sense of value. This quickly fuels a spirit of greed which itself is simply an intense version of obsessive craving for anything that promises to make us feel more valuable and satisfy the deep hunger we feel inside to feel worthy and loved.

There is a subtle and diabolical message inherent in all the world's systems and especially in economics, that to receive anything of value you must give something of value in exchange for it or you have no right to receive anything. Thus we are set up to believe one of the most damning lies of Satan that blocks so many from entering into the 'joy of the Lord' as Jesus put it. Because of the heavy influence of the very logic embedded within our reasons for using money, we become predisposed to believe that we cannot expect or accept anything from God unless we are prepared to offer something of value back to Him in exchange.

Of course at this point we run right into a serious problem with God. How can we offer Him anything of real value to induce Him to give us the things we need and want from Him? Can we arouse a sense of need inside of Him that corresponds to how we relate to others in our system of economics? Our whole system of economy would quickly collapse if it were not for the ever-present cravings and greed and intense desires in every person who want things that other people have to offer. If we cannot get others to want what we have to offer or the money we have, then we cannot continue the facade of money that makes economics viable. If people don't buy things and spend money the economists get very concerned and rush to urge people to spend more money to keep the economy growing.

But here is a core problem that we must come to see more clearly. The very concept of mutual exchange of value suddenly falls flat when it comes to dealing with the God of heaven. Our God is the God of agape love, and the very nature of agape love does not crave anything for itself but is ever focused on giving, blessing freely, unconditionally serving without any ulterior motive of getting anything back for itself.

Now we can begin to sense a real conflict emerging here. Agape love suddenly emerges as totally incompatible and even hostile to the very core motive in economics. The system of economics to function as designed requires that people must have at least a basic level of desire to exchange things of value with others expecting something in return for what they have to offer. If people began living selflessly without expecting anything in return for what they gave to others, very quickly our whole economy would collapse and all the counterfeit systems dependent on it would also be exposed for the frauds that they are. For a glimpse of this, read Revelation 18.

Selfishness is the main fuel that keeps Satan's kingdoms functioning as designed. It is vital that people feel at least some sense of emptiness and selfish desire to want what other people have. It is also helpful to feel obligated to earn what they want for the whole system to function well. Because this is the very design upon which economics operates, it is found to be incompatible with the 'economics' of heaven in which there is no sense of emptiness driving people to make offers of exchange with others or tempting them to exploit people for their own advantage.

The problem in a love of money is not just about loving something that inherently has no value, although that is an extremely demeaning aspect of it. Yes, loving a medium of exchange that we use to attempt to get our needs met and try to satisfy our empty souls is a really dysfunctional idea. Loving money that is devoid of real worth and offering only promises of value that don't really satisfy is not a wise investment. But the real problem goes much deeper.

Loving money is symptomatic of an addiction to the whole notion of thinking we can earn or buy what we need from God. Money is the key representation of the logic in economics which embraces the system of thinking we have to earn things as opposed to living in mutual love and care for each other. Relying on money to get what we need constantly fuels a false belief that we can somehow work hard enough to deserve getting what we need instead of simply accepting it from a loving, generous, caring Father eager to provide all of our needs from His rich resources without demanding anything in return.

Love of money undermines the very core of what we need to understand about God if we want to escape the darkness of lies about Him inherent in Satan's systems. God is selfless love, never greedy, manipulative or only giving to those who deserve. Satan's counterfeit system is rooted in the core concepts represented by the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil; and that tree is about dualism, balancing good and evil by systems of reward and punishment, earning and deserving, economics, control through artificial laws and differing stratas of value assigned to various classes of people.

This diabolical notion of different people having differing levels of value is straight from the pit of hell. It too is one of the three foundations of what we term civilization and is one of the deceptive ways in which our pictures of God becomes so twisted. In this way Satan distorts our sense of value which in turn empowers the systems of economy. Both of these systems are enforced by the third foundation of this false system which is artificial law. Earthly systems of law are the counterfeit of God's system of inherent natural principles operating totally by cause and effect. Counterfeit, arbitrary systems of law use methods of control and coercion and manipulation that promote the evil agendas of this world, separating people into different classes of perceived value and exploiting some for the advantage of others through the artificial manipulation of economics.

The influences of these three fundamental pillars of Satan's kind of civilization all contribute largely to our distorted views of how God relates to His children. Pretty much every false idea we hold in our thinking about God can be traced back to the influence of these counterfeit systems of the enemy. This is the legacy of sin in this world and until we become cognizant of the roots of these false systems it is very hard to break free of their influence over our thinking to embrace the true principles of the kingdom of heaven and enter into the freedom and joy we can experience there.

To love money is to embrace the false systems that perpetuate lies about God promoted by His great accuser.

To love money is to entertain a spirit of greed which is just obsessive selfishness.

To love money is to prefer a counterfeit over the original.

To love money is to hang onto a belief that we must earn everything we receive, and this thinking prevents us from embracing the salvation that is offered to us freely.

To love money is to focus our affections and hopes and worship even, on something that promises to give us life but in the end proves to be the ways of death.

It will be next to impossible for anyone infected with this deadly virus of love for money to experience effective healing coming through the grace of God. For though grace is of extreme value, it cannot be earned contrary to what economics teaches about value. We cannot remain reliant on the principles of worldly economics and still relate to heaven's system effectively. For the kingdom of Jesus is not like the kingdoms of this world; neither are heavenly economics anything like the economics of earth founded on the principle of selfishness.

To enter into life and begin to experience the kind of living that Jesus demonstrated and offers to all of us, we have to renounce the core principles that have guided us all our lives in order to embrace a whole new way of thinking and living. In the kingdom of agape love, there is no room for the notion of earning or deserving or expecting returns of equal value for our investments in other lives. This is all foreign to the principles that govern relationships in heaven's kingdom. God's kingdom is not of this world but operates on superior principles that bring true life and produce lasting satisfaction like we have never known before.

This issue exposes one of the core problems we have in relating to God's love for us. Many Christians teach that God offers us love, forgiveness, pardon and blessings. But in return He expects obedience, worship and love in return. On the surface that seems reasonable. But this logic is because of our deep involvement in the counterfeit system of this world that presumes we must always have something to offer in exchange for anything we receive of value.

There is no way of completely avoiding the truth about God's position as Creator of everything. If God already owns everything because it was He who created everything, how can we offer Him something He already owns while thinking we are giving Him something in exchange for what He is offering to us? If you loan me something to use for awhile and then I try to offer that back to you expecting something in return, acting as if I now owned what you loaned me originally, wouldn't that seem a bit illogical? The same applies to everything we have when it comes to God. We have nothing that we actually own and so have nothing to offer God that is not already His to start with.

But, we say, God expects us to give Him our hearts, our affection, our service in return for His gifts to us. Again, that may sound pious and religious on the surface, but underneath it is actually seeking to prop up more false assumptions inherent in Satan's counterfeit system that perverts the grace of God insinuating that God is not really agape love. For agape love by its very nature does not operate like the kingdoms of this world and that must become very clear in our thinking or we will continue to live in confusion about our relationship to Him.

Everything that we offer back to God in response to the things He gives to us must be free of the contamination of the notions and motivations that drive economics. We do not earn or deserve any of God's blessings and likewise we cannot in any way repay Him for His blessings, even through efforts to be obedient, through offerings of money or affection or anything else we think might be of value. Rather, all the things we offer in response to God's extravagant gifts to us must just be reflective of the agape love that we are seeing in the way He treats us. In other words, as we increasingly appreciate the very nature of the agape, selfless, disinterested (without ulterior motives) benevolence and love with which He treats us, our reflection of His love begins to mimic that same kind of thinking in our own relationship to Him and with those around us. By beholding we become changed – transformed into acting and thinking like Him.

This transformation may require us to progressively dis-invest in the counterfeit systems of this world's kingdoms. When we begin to appreciate and value God's ways of doing things in contrast to the motives this world relies on, fear will begin to disappear from our lives and our hearts will begin to awaken and bond with others as God's selfless kind of love increasingly heals us and restores us to the kind of living we were meant to enjoy from the first days of creation. Then we will no longer react in fear when we read in Revelation of a time soon coming when all who do not embrace the systems of this world – accepting the mark of the beast or the number of his name – will be barred from participating in the economics of this earth. Instead of being afraid of that day we will start to see it as a time when our separation will become so distinct that we will be closer to total freedom from entanglement in this world's way of living. However, we will need to have learned by that time how to live fully within the kingdom of heaven freed from all the illogic of this world's counterfeit systems that blind us to the real truth about our God. Then we will know how to live in total dependence on our true Father who has promised to supply all of our needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.