Two Masters

Any site like this one has to sit with this verse, and sit with it honestly.

Jesus does not say “you cannot have money”. Many of the faithful people in Scripture were wealthy, and the early church depended on believers who had homes and means to share. He says you cannot serve both God and Mammon. Mammon is an Aramaic word for wealth, and Jesus speaks of it as a master: something that gives orders, sets priorities, demands loyalty. The question is not what is in your wallet. It is who is giving the orders.

How would we know? A few honest tests:

• When the price moves, does your mood move with it?
• When you think about the future, do you feel safe because of what you own, or because of who holds you?
• As your holdings have grown, has your generosity grown with them, or quietly shrunk?
• Do you find yourself defending money more passionately than you defend the poor?

None of us passes these tests perfectly. That is the point of reading the verse slowly.

Look at what comes right after it. Jesus goes on: Therefore I tell you, don’t be anxious for your life (Matthew 6:25). Then the birds that don’t sow, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns (Matthew 6:26), and still the Father feeds them. Then the promise: But seek first God’s Kingdom and his righteousness; and all these things will be given to you as well. (Matthew 6:33)

This is uncomfortable for anyone who saves, Bitcoin holders included. Many of us came to sound money out of a kind of anxiety: about inflation, about governments, about the future of our children. Some of that is prudence, and Scripture honors prudence. But anxiety is not the same as wisdom, and no store of value, however sound, can carry the weight of our fear. Only God can carry that.

Just before this passage Jesus says, Don’t lay up treasures for yourselves on the earth (Matthew 6:19). Christians have heard that in different ways, from monks who kept nothing to parents who save for their children’s schooling, but none of us should hear it comfortably.

So the verse may not forbid every kind of saving, but it does ask us to change masters. Money makes an excellent servant: it can feed a family, fund a mission, rescue a neighbor. It makes a terrible lord. The way to keep it in its place is the way Jesus points to: put the kingdom first, hold everything else loosely, and practice giving it away often enough that we never forget who is in charge.