The idol of wealth

In American society, we've made an idol out of wealth and comfort. At a national scale, we believe that the GDP is our god and that all of our nationwide policies should become subject to it. Taking immigration as an example, we have let immigrants in to provide cheap labor for the rich and so that the immigrants themselves can make more money. We have not cared who they are or where they come from, or whether they share our history, our cares, or our God. So long as they share what we take to be our ultimate aim, that is, making more money, or can be used as tools for us to make more money, we have let them in. Even those who oppose immigration tend to do so because they believe it will make us poorer, not out of love for the spiritual good of our society or of the immigrants themselves. On both sides, the reasoning is ordered towards bland material economics rather than towards the transcendent spiritual good.

At a city scale, this idol has devastated the way we build. In the past, our cities were crafted with care; every detail meant to serve the good of the community and to orient us upwards. Courthouses, churches, and public squares were built with beauty and purpose. Now, beauty is only tolerated when it attracts profit. Most spaces only exist if they can improve the bottom line. Instead of meaningful civic places, we raise glass boxes, billboards, fast food chains, and sprawling highways.

Even in our daily lives, we find ourselves holding on to this idol. We think that innovation and all the sacrifices we make for money will make us happy and satisfy us. We define success materially. All the people we celebrate are rich; they've all “made it.”

Even our holidays—that is, the days we celebrate what we find to be holy, that which binds us together and what we find to be good—have become recentered around getting more money or getting more stuff. Christmas and our birthdays have become our most important holidays. They have transformed into holidays where we get excited about getting more stuff. You can see this reach into the excitement of small children on these days. Even if we consciously know that getting more stuff and getting more money should not be our ultimate aim, these beliefs are so deeply ingrained into us from an early age that we often find many of our deeper motivations to be driven by these desires regardless.

But sadly, wealth is just an idol. Wealth cannot bind a society. Whatever sacrifices you make towards the idol of wealth might work out in the short term; but in the end, the idol will just eat you. Even if you can get wealth, you'll find yourself feeling as empty as you were before. This idol cannot free us from the cycles of torment that we find ourselves in. In fact, it can make them much worse. It will not connect you to the people around you; it will not offer you genuine friendships, relationships, or a marriage. If money is all you care about, you will find yourself alone, sad, and feeling like you're wasting your life.

If you give a cocaine addict a million dollars, thinking that this will solve his problem, you are a fool. How greater a fool are you if you think the solution to millions of young men being aimless, drifting around without purpose, stuck scrolling on their smartphone, playing video games, and doing drugs is just for them to have more money? You are a fool if you think the goal is to appease their material desires for just a few years longer.

This idolatry is the reason we don't know our neighbors. If the only thing we have in common is wanting more money, this can hardly afford a conversation, much less a friendship, a marriage, a community, a city, or a society.

And, as with all idols, what they promise you, they will never give you; and trying to make us all have more stuff and get more money, we've wasted tons of effort building things that trap us. We find ourselves without homes, unable to afford a family, eating processed food that is bad for us. We have the smartest people in our world tackling how to addict us to our smartphones even more; how to get us more addicted to fast food and snacks; and even now, building AI companions to act as a replacement to real relationships. These same people, these geniuses, could be building beautiful cities, studying the mysteries of being, caring for the poor, but they don't care about that. They don't care about you; they just care about making more money.

The solution to this problem cannot just be political. The problem lies in all of our hearts. The problem lies in what we care about, what we value, and what we worship. We need something deeper than a vote. We need to start valuing, caring about, and worshiping a God that cares about us, and stop making sacrifices to a god that deceives us, like the idol of wealth. We need to celebrate a God that wants what's good for us, not a god that promises us the world, but, in the end, just separates us, destroys all of our relationships, and ultimately destroys our lives.

We can only have one master; we must choose if wealth is our master or if God is our master. And luckily, we can choose who our master is. The power of evil and the problem we find ourselves in only hold on to us so long as we let them. And let them we shall no longer.

Getting rid of these disordered desires and replacing them with something higher is not easy; and, in fact, you cannot do it by yourself. White-knuckling a transformation of your entire being is impossible. You alone cannot transform your desires. You have to open yourself up to the true source of your being. You have to pray and hope that the light that lights up the world will light up your life as well; that this miserable existence will be transformed and glorified; that you will be saved from the idol of wealth and, indeed, all of the idols of this world. And you'll be freed from it if you believe.

This is not to say that the solution will not involve politics. Indeed, it will. But the political solution will only manifest when the parts of the polity have been transformed already. To transform the world by transforming our hearts: this is our mission. Truth, beauty, goodness, and God are all on our side. If we believe, we will win. As always, live in hope, my friends. Resurrection awaits.