Worshiping Mammon instead of Jesus.

Matthew 6.24, Luke 16.13

Some years ago there was a meme going round social media, warning folks what might happen if society went cashless. Some of the memes claim Dave Ramsey wrote it; he didn’t. Like most memes which go viral quickly, it’s meant to frighten people—and this one played right into many a Christian’s fears about the End Times, so Christians helped spread it. That’s how I came to see it.

My comment after yet another friend posted it on Facebook: “Isn’t it funny? The first thing Christians worry about when the Beast comes… is Mammon.”

Jesus used the Syriac word ܡܳܡܽܘܢܳܐ/mamoná once in his his Sermon on the Mount—and in its parallel verse in Luke—to describe wealth. It got transliterated into Greek as μαμωνᾷ/mamoná (and the Textus Receptus adds a letter μ/my, so “mammoná”); then into Latin as mamonæ. John Wycliffe translated it “riches,” as did the Geneva Bible, but the King James Version turned it back into “mammon.”

Matthew 6.24 KWL

“Nobody’s able to be a slave to two masters.

Either they’ll¹ hate one and love the other,

or look up to one and down on the other:

Can’t be a slave to God and Mammon.”

Luke 16.13 KWL

“No slave is able to be a slave to two masters.

Either they’ll¹ hate one and love the other,

or look up to one and down on the other:

Can’t be a slave to God and Mammon.”

Why’d the authors of the gospels go with “mammon” instead of the usual Greek words for wealth, πλοῦτος/plútos or χρῆμα/hríma or εὐπορία/evporía? Or, because this verse is so often translated, “You cannot serve both God and money” (GNB, NIV, NLT), why not the word for money (literally “silver”), ἀργύριον/argýrion?

Well, we don’t know. It’s likely because the ancient Christians first memorized this Jesus-saying with the Syriac word deliberately kept in it. The original-language word was important to them, and if Jesus is the one who made ’em memorize the saying, it’s likely important to him too. He wants us Christians to pay more attention to this word.

So we did. In fact when the ancient Christians preached on mamoná, they Grecianized it—they tacked on a Greek noun-ending, turning into not just a Greek word, but a Greek name. That’s why so many Christians, myself included, capitalize it. They treated Mammon like a person, ’cause Jesus said you can’t serve Mammon as well as God—and it must therefore be a competitor god. Obviously a false god, but still.

And since mamoná is a cognate of the Hebrew word מַטְמוֹן/matmón, “secret riches,” people imagine Mammon is therefore be a god of riches, wealth, or money.

In Luke, Jesus speaks of Mammon right after his Shrewd Butler Story. Maybe you remember it; maybe not, ’cause pastors hesitate to teach on it, ’cause Jesus straight-up praises an embezzler. In it, a butler makes friends by undercharging his boss’s debtors. Lk 16.1-9 Jesus’s moral: “Make yourselves friends with your filthy lucre,” Lk 16.9 or as the KJV puts it, “the mammon of unrighteousness.” And the Pharisees in his audience responded by rejecting it—’cause they were φιλάργυροι/filárgyri, “silver-lovers.” Lk 16.14

So… is Mammon the pagan god of money? Or simply Jesus’s personification of money? Or a mistranslation?

Sucking up to God.

All my life I’ve heard Christian prayer leaders instruct me that before we start asking God for things, it’s only proper to begin with praise. Tell God how great he is. How mighty. How awesome. Supposedly that’s how Jesus demonstrated we’re to start in the Lord’s Prayer, with “Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done…” Because we wanna make his name holy and embrace his will.

This attitude reminds me way too much of the sycophantic prayer we find in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life:

CHAPLAIN. “Let us praise God. Oh Lord…”

CONGREGATION. [ritually repeating] “Oh Lord…”

CHAPLAIN. “Oooh you are so big!”

CONGREGATION. “Oooh you are so big.”

CHAPLAIN. “So absolutely huge!”

CONGREGATION. “So absolutely huge.”

CHAPLAIN. “Gosh, we’re all really impressed down here, I can tell you!”

CONGREGATION. “Gosh, we're all really impressed down here, I can tell you.”

CHAPLAIN. “Forgive us, O Lord, for this dreadful toadying.”

CONGREGATION. “And bare-faced flattery.”

CHAPLAIN. “But you are so strong and, well, just so super!”

CONGREGATION. “Fantastic.”

The problem with it? It’s not what the Lord’s Prayer means… and to a large degree it’s hypocrisy. When we come to God with legitimate prayer requests, small or serious, and begin with the fawning adulation, how is this significantly different from a teenager telling her dad “I love you so much” before she asks him for money? I kiss God’s boots; I earn his favor. Now he owes me. Right?

Of course it’s wrong. Yet it’s what we see: Christians figuring the more we praise God, the better he thinks of us. Or as pagans would put it, the more karma they’re generating. The more apt he is to give us what we ask, even when we really shouldn’t ask for such things ’cause our ulterior motives are bad. Jm 4.3 But we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking this is how prayer should be done. It’s not honest praise; it’s a quid pro quo.

In reality prayer requests are about grace. They’re about God giving us what he wants to give us, only because he loves us, and not because we merit or earned it.

Likewise praise is about appreciating God, about reminding ourselves of his greatness. If you wanna do a lot of that, I direct you to Psalms. But the Lord’s Prayer doesn’t actually include praise—unless you’re using the Didache version which includes, “For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory.”

And in that case it follows the examples shown in Psalms: The psalmists tended to pour out their heart to God first. Express their woes, state their problem, ask for help. Then—after God talked ’em down, or told them he’d take care of it—then they ended their prayers with praise and gratitude. Honest gratitude.

Generosity and stinginess in God’s kingdom.

Matthew 6.22-23, Luke 11.34-36.

Some of Jesus’s teachings tend to get skipped entirely. Sometimes because they’re too hard to understand—and they’re not really; we just need to learn their historical context. Today’s Sermon on the Mount passage is one such example.

And sometimes because we just don’t like them. Libertines hate what Jesus has to say about still following the Law, ’cause they don’t wanna. Hypocrites hate what Jesus has to say about public acts of devotion, ’cause it’s way easier to do that than produce good fruit. Ingrates hate what Jesus has to say about loving the “unloveable,” forgiving the “unforgivable,” and going the extra mile. Mammonists hate what Jesus has to say about money—and today’s passage is about money, so it’s likewise one such example.

Yep, it’s about money, not opthamology. But because people are unfamiliar with what ancient middle easterners meant by “good eye” and “evil eye”—and presume they’re about what Romans and westerners mean by it, and think they have to do with all-purpose blessings and curses—we interpret this passage all kinds of wrong. Or claim it’s too obscure, and skip it, and focus on the verses we understand, and like better.

Well. In Matthew, right after saying we oughta keep our treasures in heaven, Jesus says this:

Matthew 6.22-23 KWL

22“The body’s light is the eye.

So when your¹ eye is clear,

your¹ whole body is illuminated.

23When your¹ eye is bad,

your¹ whole body is dark.

So if the light in you¹ is dark,

how dark are you?”

Luke 11.34-36 KWL

34“The body’s light is your¹ eye.

{So} whenever your¹ eye is clear,

your¹ whole body is illuminated too.

Once it’s bad,

your¹ body is dark too.

35So watch out

so the light in you¹ isn’t dark.

36So if your¹ whole body is illuminated,

without having any parts dark,

the whole will be bright—

as if a lamp could shine lightning for you¹.”

In both gospels the King James Version uses these words to describe the eye:

• Ἁπλοῦς/aplús, “all together,” is translated “single.”
• Πονηρὸς/ponirós, “bad,” is translated “evil.”

Why? ’Cause that’s how William Tyndale translated it, and that’s what the Geneva Bible went with. It was tradition. The translators were simply following the tradition handed down by the Vulgate, which turned aplús into simplex/“single,” and ponirós into nequam, “wicked.” Thanks to St. Jerome’s inaccurate interpretation in the 390s, Christians misinterpreted this passage for centuries, and continued to misinterpret it this way even after they learned ancient Greek for themselves and tried to retranslate it into English.

These are middle eastern idioms. Jerome translated those words literally, and thought he was right to; and a lot of translators likewise think they’re right to translate idioms literally. They’re not. Idioms need to be interpreted. Literal interpretations of idioms always give people the wrong idea. If I describe an eager student as “bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” then have that phrase translated into Chinese, my poor Chinese friend would be stunned to hear she has a tail at all, much less a bushy one. And wait, doesn’t she have brown eyes?…

By aplús and ponirós, Jesus meant how I translated it: A clear eye. One with neither blurry vision nor cataracts. Or a bad eye; not an evil one, though it might certainly feel evil to you when your eyes don’t work. When your eyes are cloudy, vision’s a problem, and you’re gonna be in the dark. When your eyes are healthy, you see just fine: Light could enter your body “as if a lamp could shine lightning for you,” Lk 11.36 which interestingly is exactly how 19th-century arc lamps worked.

But even so, Jesus isn’t trying to teach anatomy. “Clear eye” and “bad eye” aren’t literally about eyes. They’re about generosity and stinginess. This is, as I said, a teaching about money.

Biblical judges: Ancient Israel’s chiefs.

When the Septuagint translated the Old Testament into Greek, it translated the Hebrew word שֹׁפֵט֙/šofét, “decision-maker,” into δικαστής/dikastís, “judge.” From there the Vulgate turned it into judex, “judge”; John Wycliffe turned it into juge, “judge”; and the Geneva Bible made it “judge,” and that’s what we have in our bibles today.

But yeah, it’d be better translated “decision-maker” or “decider.” Judges nowadays are quite different civic leaders than the biblical judges. Thanks to the separation of powers, which most governments have adopted to a certain degree, judges handle criminal and civic court cases. They don’t run the country—unless they either leave the bench and run for office, or lead a coup and take over the country. And once they become the country’s chief executive, they leave the judging to other, full-time judges—again, unless they’re dictators who decide they’ll take over the powers of the country’s supreme court, and maybe hear cases themselves.

Biblical judges, in contrast, were ancient Israel’s chief executives. They ruled the country. Although there are some commentators who aren’t sure all of ’em ruled the whole country; some judges might only have led their tribe. But the judges of the book of Judges are all described as judging “Israel,” not individual tribes. They all appear to be national leaders. Or, in some cases, comtemporary leaders—judges whose lifespans overlapped, who briefly led Israel alongside fellow judges.

And no, these weren’t kings. More like dictators. They took power, then ruled for life. Their kids usually didn’t succeed them.

A list? Sure, I’ll make a list. No, I have no exact dates; no one does. We have rough dates.

1. Moses ben Amram, Levite, circa 1440s BC. Ex-Dt
2. Joshua ben Nun, Ephraimite, ca. 1400 BC. Js
3. Othniel ben Kenaz, Judahite, ca. 1350 BC. Jg 3.7-11
4. Ehud ben Gera, Benjamite, ca. 1300 BC. Jg 3.12-30
5. Shamgar ben Anath, ca. 1220 BC. Jg 3.31
6. Deborah wife of Lappidoth, Ephraimite, ca. 1200 BC. Jg 4-5
7. Gideon Jerubbaal ben Joash, Manassite, ca. 1190 BC. Jg 6-8
8. Tola ben Puah, Issacharite, ca. 1140 BC. Jg 10.1-2
9. Jair ben Segub, ca. 1110 BC. Jg 10.3-5
10. Jephthah of Gilead, Manassite, ca. 1110 BC. Jg 10.6-12.7
11. Ibzan of Bethlehem, Judahite, ca. 1090 BC. Jg 12.8-10
12. Elon the Zebulunite, ca. 1080 BC. Jg 12.11-12
13. Abdon ben Hillel, Ephraimite, ca. 1070 BC. Jg 12.13-15
14. Samson ben Manoah, Judahite, ca. 1110 BC. Jg 13-16
15. Eli the head priest, Levite, ca. 1120 BC. 1Sa 1-4
16. Samuel ben Elkanah, Ephraimite, ca. 1060 BC. 1Sa 7-12, 15-16

Most lists only include the judges named in the book of Judges—Othniel through Samson. Hence no Moses nor Joshua, no Eli nor Samuel. Nothing against those guys, but the list-makers only wanna include the judges in that one book. That way you get 12 judges, and hey, God loves the number 12—maybe that means something! But nah.

Some lists include Abimelech ben Gideon, Jg 9 but not legitimately. More about him in a minute.

Samuel makes reference to a rescueer of Israel named Bedan. 1Sa 12.11 We don’t know who that is. There’s a Bedan ben Ulam of Manasseh, 1Ch 7.17 KJV but we’ve no idea if that’s him. The Septuagint changes him to Barak, so some translations do too. 1Sa 12.11 ESV And some lists include Barak ben Abinoam, Deborah’s general, as one of the judges. But that’s mainly because the lists are written by sexists who despise the iea of a woman judge, and wanna mitigate Deborah’s existence by saying she co-judged along with Barak. But the bible never calls Barak a judge. (To be fair, it actually doesn’t call Ehud or Gideon judges either.) Yes Barak rescued Israel; yes he’s a hero of faith. He 11.32 Nothing against him! But elevating him to judgeship is for the Holy Spirit, not these guys who think testicles grant them innate authority.

And sometimes people don’t include Moses and Joshua in this list because they’re only counting people who became judge as part of the cycle.

The prayer of faith. Or, y’know, not.

There’s a blog I used to follow. He’s a pastor who likes to talk about politics. Over time he’s allowed his politics to corrupt his interpretation of Christianity… although it might be more accurate to say his interpretations were always compromised, and he’s just publicly admitting it. Anyway, once I realized what he was doing, I stopped reading.

One of the articles which made me say, “Whoa, waitaminnit,” was on how he stopped believing in prayer. That is, he doesn’t believe it cures the sick. He tried to cure the sick; as a pastor he’s in thousands of situations where somebody asked Pastor to pray for the sick and dying. He’s led prayer vigils and prayer chains, and begged God time and again to cure people or let ’em live. But he didn’t get the results he asked for. Either God didn’t cure them (or didn’t cure them enough), or didn’t let them live.

So he’s concluded prayer must not work that way. It’s not, he says, about making our petitions known to God, hoping God might intervene in human history and do us a miracle. It’s only about being God-mindful, and letting that mindset transform us and our attitudes.

He’s not the first Christian to claim this. I grew up in cessationist churches, and heard it all the time from Christians who likewise don’t believe God does miracles anymore, so there’s no point in asking for one. To cessationists, the best God will do for you is grant you wise doctors, or keep other things from interfering with the body’s natural healing processes. But praying for miracles is just the act of desperate people who can’t accept reality. You just gotta accept the fact God’s allowing this to happen, and slog it out. Hey, suffering builds character.

I might be inclined to believe this too… but then again I read the bible. Specifically James.

James 5.13-18 NIV

13Is anyone among you in trouble? Let them pray. Is anyone happy? Let them sing songs of praise. 14Is anyone among you sick? Let them call the elders of the church to pray over them and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord. 15And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well; the Lord will raise them up. If they have sinned, they will be forgiven. 16Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

17Elijah was a human being, even as we are. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years. 18Again he prayed, and the heavens gave rain, and the earth produced its crops.

Sure sounds like James bar Joseph, brother of Christ Jesus, believed prayers can cure the sick.

Based on what? Duh; based on personal experience—read Acts. In James’s day, Christians prayed for one another and for strangers, and got straight-up cured. Cured like when Jesus cured the sick, ’cause it’s the very same Holy Spirit who empowers the curing. James recommended elders of the church, the mature believers among them. When newbies make these prayers, sometimes they lack the maturity and faith for effective prayer. They’ll learn; give ’em time.

Cured like people got cured back in bible times. For James, “bible times” was Old Testament times—when Elijah performed miracles, which is why he pointed to Elijah in verses 17-18. Well, the same Holy Spirit who empowered Elijah, empowered Christians of his day, and empowers Christians of our day. God never turned off the miracles. They still happen.

I’ve had this same personal experience. I’ve seen sick people get cured, right in front of me. Prayed for them, and the Holy Spirit cured them. They prayed for me, and the Holy Spirit cured me. No I didn’t psyche myself into thinking the Spirit cured me; I was honestly skeptical he’d do anything, and he graciously cured me anyway. Wasn’t my faith that cured me; it was the person praying for me. That’s all the Spirit wants to see.

So why do I have experiences which jibe with the bible, and this blogger doesn’t?

Don’t needlessly provoke your government.

1 Peter 2.13-17.

First I wanna remind you Simon Peter, when commanded by the Judean senate to shut up about Christ Jesus and how they had him killed, informed them, “We ought to obey God rather than men.” Ac 5.29 KJV Then two decades later, he wrote the following passage in 1 Peter:

1 Peter 2.13-17 KWL

13{So} submit yourselves² to every human institution,

because of the Master—

whether to kings,

to authority figures like kings;

14whether to leaders,

to agents sent by them to punish evildoers

and to praise those who do good.

15For this is God’s will:

Those who do good are to silence

the ignorance of foolish people.

16Be like freemen—

not like those looking for an excuse for evil,

but like God’s slaves.

17Treat everyone with respect.

Love the Christian brotherhood.

Reverently fear God.

Respect the king.

There are two ways I’ve seen people tackle this passage. More often it’s the folks who insist, “This passage tells us to obey our leaders, our institutions, and our elders”—and never notice this therefore creates a massive discrepancy between the Simon Peter who write this, and the Simon Peter who stood up to the Judean senate and told them he couldn’t obey them. I’ve pointed this out to these people, and it makes ’em hem and haw for a minute, as they’re desperately trying to think up a quick ’n dirty way out of this new bible difficulty I’ve presented them. Relax; it’s not a bible difficulty. They’re just interpreting 1 Peter wrong.

Then there are the folks who ignore it entirely. Most of ’em haven’t even read the letters of Simon Peter, though they will quote ’em to proof-text their favorite End Times beliefs. They might know this passage, but they hand-wave it away, and do as they please—and don’t respect human institutions. Don’t respect the government. Don’t respect federal and state agents, don’t respect cops and the military, don’t respect elected representatives. To them, government is bad, and anyone who works for the government is bad. And they might believe this for religious reasons—iike certain Mennonites, Quakers, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Nation of Islam, who believe human governments are forms of treason against God’s kingdom and Jesus’s reign. (Well, not the Muslims, who believe Jesus doesn’t reign till his second coming.) But most of the folks I know, believe this for libertarian reasons: Human governments are usurpations of their reign. They believe they are sovereign, and answer to no one.

Neither of them is correct. Neither misinterpretation, nor no interpretation, is the way to go. The ancient biblical worldview is that God rules all… but God allows humans to set up our own little kingdoms for the sake of law and order. and approves of them when we do right, and doesn’t approve—and sometimes intervenes, and has ’em overthrown—when we don’t. And, contrary to Christian nationalists, God doesn’t need them to be Christian or Israeli to get his approval. You do realize every human government outside of ancient Israel was neither Christian nor Israeli?—and that most governments on earth today are neither? But if they’re just, and stop evildoers from murder and theft and exploiting the weak, God’s usually okay with them. Someday Jesus will overthrow them all, but for now, they can do their thing.

The Roman Empire and Judean senate of Peter’s day were none of those things, and the United States federal government of our day is none of those things. God help us all. But that’s the proper historical context of this scripture. We gotta take that into consideration when we interpret it. Peter’s not writing about obeying a righteous government, nor only obeying a righteous government, nor obeying an unrighteous pagan government. But we do have to take our governments into consideration when we live under them. And that, not blind obedience, is what submission is actually about.

Treasures in heaven.

Matthew 6.19-21, Luke 12.33-34.

In Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount, after he finished objecting to hypocrisy in giving to charity, in types of prayer, and in public fasting, he moved on to talk about wealth and money.

You’ll notice the three verses in Matthew I’m gonna point to today, don’t by themselves nail down precisely how we’re to stash our treasures in heaven. That, we actually have to pull from Jesus’s parallel teaching in Luke: Give to charity. And if you know your Old Testament, you might remember this proverb:

Proverbs 19.17 NKJV

He who has pity on the poor lends to the LORD,

And He will pay back what he has given.

Jesus’s first-century audience would’ve known that one… and Jesus’s 21st-century audience had better learn that one.

Matthew 6.19-21 KWL

19“Don’t hoard wealth for yourselves² on earth,

where moths and corrosion ruin it,

where thieves dig for it and steal it.

20Hoard wealth for yourselves² in heaven,

where neither moth nor corrosion ruins,

where thieves don’t dig for it nor steal it:

21Where’s your¹ wealth?

Your¹ mind will be there too.”

Luke 12.33-34 KWL

33“Sell your² possessions and give to charity.

Make yourselves² a wallet which never wears out.

Infallible wealth in the heavens,

which a thief can’t come near, nor moth destroy.

34“Where’s your² wealth?

Your² minds will be there too.”

This passage has been greatly nullified by our culture. Y’see, we have banks and insurance. Nowadays, if our minds are on our money, it’s only because we don’t have those securities; we have too much cash in our wallets, and fear someone might steal it, or we own valuables in a neighborhood full of thieves. Back then, such things were a constant fear—“Is my money secure?”—because the ancients had to secure their own wealth. Neither financial institutions, nor the government, would do it for ’em. Wasn’t their job. Wasn’t anyone’s job.

Americans tend to take property rights for granted. The ancients weren’t so naïve. If the king wanted your stuff, he’d take it. Land, cattle, wives. You remember Abraham was regularly worried different kings would swipe his wife from him—’cause kings did that. Ge 12.12-13, 20.2 Even though Abraham was powerful enough to muster his very own private army to rescue his nephew.

God mitigated this by having, “Don’t steal” Dt 5.19 apply to kings and commoners alike. True, it’s way harder to get justice when the king’s doing the thievery, like when David ben Jesse stole Uriah’s wife, or Ahab ben Omri stole Naboth’s vineyard. The LORD had to personally intervene, because nobody else could.

And in Jesus’s day, Israel wasn’t ruled by a proper king. It was ruled by Roman puppets. You could appeal to the Romans, but good luck getting justice if you didn’t have citizenship; the Romans would treat you just like Americans treat illegal aliens. (Well okay, crucifixion is way worse than how ICE treats foreigners. But still.)

So if you had wealth, you had to secure it. Just like paranoid people do today. Better build a strongroom in your house, or find a clever way to disguise or hide it. Lots of people simply buried it in a hole in the ground, just like the worthless steward in Jesus’s story of the talents. Mt 25.25 Or that buried treasure in Jesus’s other story. Mt 13.44 Hey, if nobody knows where your hole is, thieves can’t dig it up. (The KJV decided to translate διορύσσουσιν/diorýssusin, “dig through” as “break through”—a common enough way to get into a flimsy wooden house in the 17th century, but much harder to do with the solid stone houses of the first century.)

And even so, after all the precautions they took to make sure nobody could find or get at their wealth, the wealthy would worry. ’Cause any disaster could destroy it. Invading armies, or some covetous noble, could grab your land. Earthquakes could flatten your buildings. Determined looters, or even just a fire, could gut your house. Any possession could be lost. Easily.

It’s the very reason we invented insurance. Pay a little each month or year, and your possessions are protected and guaranteed? Brilliant. Now the only thing we need worry about is whether we have enough money.

So we need to climb into the first-century mindset about money before we can really understand Jesus. Imagine you’re in a really bad neighborhood, you’re not carrying a gun or taser or pepper spray, and for some crazy reason you’ve got a roll of $10,000 on you. How secure are you gonna feel about that money?

Got that mental picture? Good. Now imagine having that worry all the time.