Spiritual Wealth

Human beings cannot manage without turning material things into more useful form, that is without producing wealth. Of course, we get some or even many of our necessities directly from nature, but not quite enough of them. We need to, or someone needs to, till the ground, harvest the crops and to bring where they will be used or sold and so on.

God says in the Bible that we ought to be perfect, as He is perfect. We need that. Perfection is our end. And none of us is perfect. So, we are left with the task of producing spiritual or moral wealth. Tilling the ground of our hearts, harvesting the crop and making good use of it. Now, the question is, how is one to become perfect. How to produce spiritual wealth?

This is a very important question for economists as well. One of the founding fathers of modern economics, Alfred Marshall, said that the ultimate aim of the economist was to develop unselfishness in oneself and in others. And he added that two of the greatest forming agencies of human morality and spirituality are the religious and the economic.

It matters a lot how we use our money. We can use it so that it makes us worse or so that it makes us better. The key to spiritual development is obedience. If we do a good act for any other reason but because we love the other person or because we love and respect God, then we are not really doing a good act. If we do it to show of, or out of jealousy or envy, the good act only makes us worse.

The problem, then, is how does one become obedient. How does one learn to love God and so learn to trust Him. The way to learn to love God is to know God. God loves us, and when we really grasp that, we start to trust Him and as we trust in Him and see that it works, we fall in love with Him. This is the way to spiritual development and this is why Jesus is so very important:

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.”

The Right Use of Wealth

"I'm telling you, make friends for yourselves by means of wealth so that when they're gone you'll be welcomed into eternal homes."

Jesus Christ in the Gospel according to St. Luke, International Standard Version

"And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness; that, when ye fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations."

Jesus Christ in the Gospel according to St. Luke, King James Version

Mammon of unrighteousness

"Mammon of unrighteousness is not spoken of goods that are gotten wrongly, for God will have our bountifulness to the poor proceed and come from a good fountain: but he calls those things riches of iniquity which men use wickedly."

Geneva Study Bible

Receivers to everlasting habitations

"The poor Christians will be the ones to receive us into everlasting habitations: for they are the inheritors of these habitations."

Geneva Study Bible

Function of the use unrighteous mammon

"Money is not here made the key to heaven, more than "the deeds done in the body" in general, according to which, as a test of character - but not by the merit of which - men are to be judged."

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Commentary

Some Practical Issues

"How should we act so as to increase the good and diminish the evil influences of economic freedom, both in its ultimate results and in the course of its progress? If the first are good and the latter evil, but those who suffer the evil, do not reap the good; how far is it right that they should suffer for the benefit of others?

Taking it for granted that a more equal distribution of wealth is to be desired, how far would this justify changes in the institutions of property, or limitations of free enterprise even when they would be likely to diminish the aggregate of wealth? In other words, how far should an increase in the income of the poorer classes and a diminution of their work be aimed at, even if it involved some lessening of national material wealth? How far could this be done without injustice, and without slackening the energies of the leaders of progress? How ought the burdens of taxation to be distributed among the different classes of society?

Ought we to rest content with the existing forms of division of labour? Is it necessary that large numbers of the people should be exclusively occupied with work that has no elevating character? Is it possible to educate gradually among the great mass of workers a new capacity for the higher kinds of work; and in particular for undertaking co-operatively the management of the business in which they are themselves employed?

What are the proper relations of individual and collective action in a stage of civilization such as ours? How far ought voluntary association in its various forms, old and new, to be left to supply collective action for those purposes for which such action has special advantages? What business affairs should be undertaken by society itself acting through its government, imperial or local? Have we, for instance, carried as far as we should the plan of collective ownership and use of open spaces, of works of art, of the means of instruction and amusement, as well as of those material requisites of a civilized life, the supply of which requires united action, such as gas and water, and railways?

When government does not itself directly intervene, how far should it allow individuals and corporations to conduct their own affairs as they please? How far should it regulate the management of railways and other concerns which are to some extent in a position of monopoly, and again of land and other things the quantity of which cannot be increased by man? Is it necessary to retain in their full force all the existing rights of property; or have the original necessities for which they were meant to provide, in some measure passed away?

Are the prevailing methods of using wealth entirely justifiable? What scope is there for the moral pressure of social opinion in constraining and directing individual action in those economic relations in which the rigidity and violence of government interference would be likely to do more harm than good? In what respect do the duties of one nation to another in economic matters differ from those of members of the same nation to one another?"

Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics

Possibility of Scarcity

"Yet again, if the fixed nature of matter prevents it from being always, and in all its dispositions, equally agreeable even to a single soul, much less is it possible for the matter of the universe at any moment to be distributed so that it is equally convenient and pleasurable to each member of a society. If a man travelling in one direction is having a journey down hill, a man going in the opposite direction must be going up hill. If even a pebble lies where I want it to lie, it cannot, except by a coincidence, be where you want it to lie. And this is very far from being an evil: on the contrary, it furnishes occasion for all those acts of courtesy, respect, and unselfishness by which love and good humour and modesty express themselves. But it certainly leaves the way open to a great evil, that of competition and hostility."

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Philosophy of Wealth versus Economics

"For suppose that the person, whom we saw doubting between several little gratifications for himself, had thought after a while of a poor invalid whom he would pass on his way home; and had spent some time in making up his mind whether he would choose a physical gratification for himself, or would do a kindly act and rejoice in another's joy. As his desires turned now towards the one, now the other, there would be change in the quality of his mental states; and the philosopher is bound to study the nature of the change. But the economist studies mental states rather through their manifestations than in themselves; and if he finds they afford evenly balanced incentives to action, he treats them primâ facie as for his purpose equal."

Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics

Consumption

"Consumption may be regarded as negative production. Just as man can produce only utilities, so he can consume nothing more. He can produce services and other immaterial products, and he can consume them. But as his production of material products is really nothing more than a rearrangement of matter which gives it new utilities; so his consumption of them is nothing more than a disarrangement of matter, which diminishes or destroys its utilities."

Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics

Production

"Man cannot create material things... when he is said to produce material things, he really only produces utilities; or in other words, his efforts and sacrifices result in changing the form or arrangement of matter to adapt it better for the satisfaction of wants. All that he can do in the physical world is either to readjust matter so as to make it more useful, as when he makes a log of wood into a table; or to put it in the way of being made more useful by nature, as when he puts seed where the forces of nature will make it burst out into life."

Alfred Marshall, Principles of Economics