Transactional or Relational? Grappling with Scripture and Thoughts on Money

Yesterday I had the honor of sharing my reflections with my church community. It is ever humbling to have the task of offering my limited understanding, my thoughts-in-process. Still I offer what I can and hope that it will invite you into reflection, whether your understanding is similar or different from mine.

Amos 8:4-7; 1 Timothy 2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13

(Cue bass guitar…drums…vocals) Money, money, money, money. Money!

When I teach nonviolent communication, I ask the question, “If you were to ask any person, at any time in history, in any place in the world, what makes for a good life, what would be common answers?” People often say things like love, safety, food, a sense of purpose, acceptance. Another response I often hear is “money.” When that answer comes up, I ask if a baby or an indigenous person living deep in the Amazon needs money.

The point of the question is to lift up the universal human needs that guide our words and actions. Money is not a universal human need. It’s a tool. It’s a shortcut to represent value. Money is an invention. Humans made it up so long ago that we forget that it’s made up. Money is now so tied to how we meet needs for food, shelter, safety, security, and other things, that many of us, myself included, spend a lot of time and effort thinking about, trying to get, and trying to use money wisely. We often talk about how much money we want to or do “make” in exchange for work we do. As a single, self-employed person working in a gig economy, trying to reconcile my deepest values with “making money” while also honoring the value of my work doesn’t always feel easy. What does that even mean, “making money,” especially in a time when the most common way to exchange money is electronically? Many of us trust money to provide safety and security. We have savings accounts and retirement accounts. That we are taught to rely on money as a primary means of safety and security feels like a tragedy.

Even as I say this, I want to return to this idea: money is neutral. It is a tool that can be used to magnify love, joy, connection, and creation or to magnify hate, apathy, fear, and destruction. When the first reading from Amos condemns people for “trampl[ing] on the needy,”  he’s not condemning money in and of itself, but rather he is calling out prioritizing money over people, and thus exacerbating harm.

Similarly, it is not having money that Jesus critiques in his parable, but putting money before relationship. Jesus cautions putting too much trust in money and goods, because someday we may lose them. In Jesus’ parable the steward tries to protect himself by getting in the good graces of the landowner’s debtors. He tries to build a foundation for reciprocity, albeit hastily and precariously, so that when he’s fired, he can call on those people to care for him. In the end he doesn’t get fired or have to rely on the debtors to support him. Though things worked out for the steward, Jesus is not inviting us to be like him, but rather drawing a contrast between the actions of the devious steward and a trustworthy one.

The contrast these readings highlight is between transactional and relational ways. When we relate in a transactional way, as our dominant cultural paradigm promotes, we see people, other beings, and our Earth Mother as a means to an end. This paradigm values speed, unfettered growth, people and resources as utilitarian and disposable, and acquisition of money. The dominant culture values profits, stock prices, and speedy work or production. It celebrates the accumulation of vast sums of monetary wealth, even if those doing the labor for the ones acquiring the vast sums rely on public assistance to meet their basic needs. This cultural framework encourages mistrust, destructive competition, disconnection, and both the idea that the natural resources we extract from Mother Earth are inexhaustible and a scarcity mindset. We are disconnectedly connected as we both rely on the labor of people from all over the world for our food, clothing, and other goods, and don’t know or think about who those people are. Thankfully, this way of disconnection and transaction is not the only way to be.

Worshipping God, our God who is a model of relational being, offers us another way. In our worship of God we acknowledge and live into our inherent interconnection, seeing people, other beings, our Earth Mother as our family, our beloved community.  Honoring God means valuing slowness, depth, relationships, and a trust in abundance that invites gratitude for what we have rather than a never-ending quest to acquire more. We act from a place of care rather than utility, from a place of attentive reciprocity, in an ebb and flow of giving and receiving. Worshipping God means slowing down to pray for the well-being of all, with “petitions, intercessions, and thanskgivings.” Author and activist adrienne maree brown writes about “mov[ing] at the speed of trust” and “build[ing] resilience by build[ing} relationships.” Worshipping God, we are invited to move at the slow speed of humanity, building relationships with our siblings, human and beyond.  

Though we are all affected by weight of the dominant culture, and likely contribute to it, we simultaneously see, practice, and strengthen our worship of God. In our St. William community, we do this through prayers, visits, calls, emails, letters, and meal trains for one another. We do this when we gather on Sundays with a hybrid model so that all who want to participate can do so. We do this as we pray for and stay in long-distance relationship with our siblings in Esquipulas. We do this by public signage, statements, and actions that affirm the full humanity of all people, particularly those whose value may be denied or diminished in the dominant cultural paradigm. We do this by sharing books in our Little Library. We do this in our ongoing questioning of how to be in deeper connection with our neighbors and when we consider how solar panels, air conditioning, and other aspects of the building’s physical structure impact Mother Earth. We do this when we join local, national, and international actions that support truth, justice, and healing. We do this in so many ways.

I celebrate a few other ways in which people lean into the idea that plenty that is about more than money. A dramatic example is how the owners of Patagonia recently gave away the company to support efforts directed at climate change. More ordinary examples (though I wish the Patagonia owners’ actions were ordinary!) include Really Really Free Markets and Louisville Freegans, clothing and food swaps, sharing plants and garden abundance, community organizing, and creating networks of mutual aid.

We know how to worship God. I suspect that, even with this knowing and even with the best of intentions, many of us waver between worshipping God and worshipping money. We may swing between trusting in financial security and trusting in relationships.  Dorothy Day wrote, “We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community.” May we hold each other in care and accountability, gently orienting and re-orienting each other toward God when we turn away. May we be trustworthy stewards, holding the tool of money loosely, using it or whatever we may have to cultivate care, joy, community, the Kindom.