Got a dollar bill in your pocket? Take it out and look at it.

Is it a Baptist or a Catholic dollar bill?

It isn’t atheist, it seems; after all, it says we trust in God.

What’s the morality of a dollar bill? Of money?

Your dollar. Our dollar. You don’t really care about that particular dollar bill; you’d be just as happy with another one.

Your dollar bill. Ask yourself this question: Would this dollar be equally comfortable in the pocket of a priest as in the purse of a prostitute? Damn. Seems like the answer must be “yes”.

Myself, I always laugh when I hear someone described as a “Christian businessman”. I doubt that there is such a thing.

Christ wasn’t too keen on money. The only time he got really angry was with the bankers changing money in the Temple. When the lawyers asked him a snarky question about money, he told them to give the government what belongs to the government as long as you were careful to give God what is His. He ignored the popular hatred of taxes — maybe you remember him asking the taxman to come out of the tree. He also was pretty clear about our love of Polo shirts and DKNY dresses: in the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, he tells us that the lillies of the field are well dressed and he’d take care of our clothes and not to worry about such things. He also said that we can’t love money and love God both at the same time. He tells us not to worry even about the most basic things, food, for example.

How can you be a Christian and a businessman since to be a businessman is to worry about nothing BUT money?

Even the 10 Commandments of the Old Testament makes it clear that it is a sin to want the things your neighbors have. Very different from the “keep up with the Joneses” culture of the good ole U.S. of A.

Historically, Americans knew this stuff up until the end of the 19th Century when we got the idea from the very rich that there was something called Social Darwinism. It’s the idea that God blesses some people with great wealth. Poppycock! It’s the last thing God would do. Besides, don’t you know good people who lose thier jobs, get sick and otherwise struggle to keep body and soul together? You know it isn’t true, but we act like it’s true. The Prayer of Jabez, indeed!

Your dollar bill has no more morality than the Godless, souless, bloodless, perpetual corporations that run your life.

Your unease about your spiritual life begins at the mall.

The love of money is the root of all evil.

The American Dream is not God’s dream, it comes from someplace entirely different.