A feast is made for laughter, wine makes life merry, and money is the answer for everything (Ecclesiastes 10:19 NIV).
This
evening I will focus on the above quotation from Ecclesiastes and
address what it says about money. What I will consider is how
isolated texts of Scripture by themselves through myopic application
can lead to a form of extremism or radicalism in any faith.
The
first possible response of a faithful believer to this passage—a
misguided response in my opinion—can be to assert that the Bible is
never wrong, period. Therefore an attempt is made to rationalize the
statement that “money is the answer to everything.” They might
say something like the following: money here is another name for
resources and it is a tautology that everything in one way or another
depends upon resources. That is, for example, the air we breathe is
really not free, but is dependent upon a measure of purity that
requires resources in one form or another that can be in theory or
practice monetized. I find this sort of dealing with the phrase
“money is the answer for everything” a little too strained to be
reassuring.
Another
approach is much more difficult for me to quibble with for I engage
in it frequently myself. This approach recognizes that most any
statement can be made defendable if it is tagged with the phrase “in
a sense.” That is, though I am nearly 70 years old, I can always
assert that I am a young man…in a sense. Or, for that matter, that
I am a child, low even an infant… “in a sense.” One might even
say the devil is an angel “in a sense.” “Money [it can be
said] is an answer for everything” in the sense that everything
requires some effort that is readily obtainable through exchange
using the common and liquid medium of money. Contrarily, there can
be a sense in which “money is the answer for everything” is dead
wrong due to the effect of diminishing returns and the hard-earned
experience that throwing money at a problem can be counterproductive.
The
purpose of this blog is to consider how isolated texts of Scripture
by themselves through myopic application can lead to a form of
extremism or radicalism in any faith. How can I assert this with such
confidence ignorant as I am of many faiths? It is because I am well
aware that any complete sentence and even sentence fragment can lend
itself to interpretive abuse due to the perversity of human
perception that too often sees what it wants to see. And religion is
particularly vulnerable to this as it deals in certitudes of
convictions and belief. There is a phrase that says “where one
stands depends upon where one sits.” It is also true that how and
what one sees depend upon ones mental prism. Rationalization and the
penchant for seeing a statement imbued with the color of one’s own
prejudices can be determinative in assigning meaning. For example, a
greedy, hateful SOB mean as hell will surely see the statement “money
is the answer for everything”differently from a generous
philanthropist who has seen miracles realized through funded
distribution of vaccines in afflicted countries. In short, what is
on the page in Holy Writ can be less important than what is in the
head of the true believer. The stimulus derives not so much from the
page but from the heart imbued, as it were, with light or darkness.
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