I wrote in an earlier post that money wasn’t the root of all evil – it’s deception in all its forms. Money, when it’s used as evil, is a subset of that. That puts money in as a close second.
It’s not just money. It’s what the bible would call mammon. Mammon is materialism. It’s the purposeful worship of wealth and things before the worship of God. Mammon is contrary to God.
Before you think that I’m going to go off with another post about spirituality and the nature of God, I’ll clarify that this post is about the opposite. This post is about the measures people take to produce a life that is lacking in God.
Many a person has solicited money while representing themselves as the vicar of God. You see it with the man behind the pulpit, with the evangelical on the screen, and with the Pope in Rome. It’s a practice that’s been going on for a long, long time. How is it that these people have God’s ear, or even favor, when many of their actions are coveting, thieving and deception? Why do holy men live in opulence while their flock lives in desperation?
I’m not here to convince you that your TV ‘pastor’ isn’t the next coming. If you’re there the only thing that could yank your mind from that is if the preaching person went to your home, burned it down in front of you and then laughed as they drove away in your car with your credit card. Actually, that’s happening, it’s just not quite that literal.
The reason I lead with the religionist is that this level of deception is the highest level of blasphemy against self and most certainly God. Anytime money is brought into play as a tradeoff for forgiveness or salvation it’s certain that many souls are perpetuating their own turmoil. The only thing that’s going to fix that is more money with god’s messenger as the beneficiary. Nowhere is God getting a cut, and from what I can tell, God doesn’t take payoffs in exchange for reward. I’ll put it simply – the human soul is not for sale – or at least shouldn’t be.
It’s one thing to tithe to a church, or any community organization, with real world expectations that the community works toward. This is putting labor value into service that benefits others working to better themselves. Giving to people and seeing the hands-on benefit to your local neighbors and community creates balance and is reciprocal. This is the true value of tithing – to enhance your environment in a way that produces long-term and realized results.
Contrast that with sending money off to a stranger. It’s a person that doesn’t know you and has no intention of knowing you. Your importance to the con-artist religionist lies only in your wallet. The stranger’s god is mammon. The stranger’s god is your tithe to their life, which gives them the purchasing power that satisfies their ego. At the same time, it sucks dry the labor value that you held for perhaps a greater purpose, even your own sustenance.
Is it fair to call a preacher profiteer the devil? If the person isn’t acting in a reciprocal manner that demands truth, then they are the antithesis of God. The antithesis of God is also the devil. Selfishness, self-serving, taking without giving, and deception are all qualities of the most insidious characters in all history. When a person is claiming they are doing it for God and no good comes from it, they are acting as the devil.
I know these qualities from my own addictions. I know them from the people I see and the people I counsel for addiction. It takes money to be addicted. It also requires a support system. The support system is used, lied to, stolen from and harmed in a continual cycle of take for self-serving means. While there are many definitions of an addiction, a good one is a person that justifies harming themselves and harming others parasitically. And where do all of the payoffs go to? To the dealers of their self-destruction. Every payoff to the manufacturers of chemical existence is tithes to the worst among us. Every purchase of the unhealthy, of participation in that which stains the soul with dread, despair, blood and tears is a race to a bitter end.
The providers of drugs, alcohol, gambling, obesity, sex, laziness, and even violence are all self-serving jackals that prey on people that have lost the ability to face life on its terms. The failure to meet these terms become excuses to perpetuate addictions. The excuses are valid, but the means of treating the underlying trauma is flawed. The addictive action covers up the pain and discomfort for brief periods of time. It’s a means of escape and a tool of cover-up. The amount of effort put forth to pay for temporary relief could have instead been put forth to properly treat the underlying causes of the dis-ease.
Each time self-destructive behavior is engaged in, others suffer financially, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Once the siphon is inserted, the life-sucker takes whatever they can to appease their god. Their god could be a drug dealer, a bar owner, an artificial-food manufacturer or a gambling app. It could also be a false prophet of any ilk.
Contrast tithing your time and money to people, organizations and neighbors with giving your time and money to dealers of addiction in all their forms. Who is God here? Does God have a spiritual nature that demands natural interactions, or is a god something that we steal from everyone to make ourselves feel less hell – one hit at a time? Isn’t a life of hell built up one hit at a time? Isn’t every hit a tithe to purchase some form of poison purveyor that ultimately destroys the soul?
It is difficult to accept that we are flawed. It is difficult to accept that we lack the courage to do what is necessary to face our greatest fears and extinguish them. The decisions we make to use temporary rewards as a permanent cycle of relief are exactly what fuels the decline of our spiritual nature. The rewards as validation and fulfillment that could come from natural positive behavior and servitude are instead paid for in a giant vapid vending machine. Preacher, politician and drug dealer all have the potential to be life-sucking parasites, and each has no problem enriching their corporation in the process.
Ultimately, a tithe is a thing that represents some of a person’s life value given to something perceived as necessary. What happens after that offering is where the trouble lies. A tithe to something that benefits self, neighbors, community, local ecology etc., is service to those elements. A tithe to strangers with unknown or insidious intentions is something else entirely. Think about it. Would you show up and work to build a wrecking-ball machine that would ultimately be used to destroy your home? Now compare the practices and payments of your own life. What is your payment doing to benefit you or anyone else for that matter? Where are the efforts of your mental, physical and spiritual labor aimed at, and ultimately who is profiting from that?
The ultimate question is what are you getting in return?
When I say that, I’m not talking about keeping score. Keeping score with life’s interactions is a losing proposition. That’s primarily because the scorekeeper is biased. What we perceive as our own valuable efforts versus what we get in return is one sided. Even if things were judged fairly, there is a difference in timeline for how things balance out.
I am a great believer in balance. If a person’s tithes are for self-destructive and nefarious purposes, then the balance that will come from that will be self-destruction and a life of negative reactions. That balance point doesn’t necessarily come in the timeframe one might imagine. For my own life, it took years of drinking until what was casual became habit, then habit became addiction. The balance point for me was the ultimate destruction of my liver and facing certain death. One thing that saved me was another individual had created a balance point in their own life, with the forethought to donate organs to someone in need. There’s no scorekeeping there on either end. From my own perspective, I owe a debt to my life until I die, which is an extended debt to another’s life because they died. This is an incredible point of devotion to my recovery and sobriety. Can I make up for the sacrifice of another that required their own death? I don’t feel like I can pay it back, but I also feel that kind of scorekeeping is not important because I am going to pay it forward as long as I’m capable of. I am of permanent service to my life because it’s the only way my life will be of service to me.
Once again, balance. Once again, reciprocity.
What we put out intentions toward, whether it’s money, mammon, spirit, action or service, is ultimately what we’ll get out of our life. If each of us begins by laying the groundwork for what we want to attract and then wait patiently for a balance point to come, that balance point will come. It may not be the immediate result we crave. And it may not come in the exact form we envisioned. But good in equals good out. Recovery involves putting in the good work to see the good results in our own lives and in the lives of others.