My first real job was with the Welfare Department. I had to interview families applying for aid, then drive to the outer regions of the county to make home visits with these prospective clients. More than once I found myself walking into shacks with no floors or windowpanes, or stumbling over babies sleeping on piles of dirty laundry.
Nothing was sadder, it seemed to me, than people who had somehow been cut out of the economic system — the unwed teenaged mothers, the mentally deficient, the homeless alcoholics mutely displaying their “Will Work for Food” signs on downtown street corners.
My conclusion? Money was the divider between people who did what they wanted in life and people who were forced to take whatever came their way.
When in my thirties I married Mike and suddenly found myself at the shared helm of an unwieldy stepfamily, money became an even bigger issue for me, especially when we made the tough decision that I would return to college to finish my B.A., then go on for a master’s degree so I could teach. To get through school as quickly as possible, I had to give up my full-time job.
Yet as soon as I stopped working, we began to slide into serious debt. My fantasy during this scary time was that we had a magic, self-replenishing savings account we could tap into if we really, really needed it.
Certainly I knew (at an intellectual level) that money cannot buy security. I’d learned this years ago in Sunday school. Hadn’t Jesus warned us about “storing up for ourselves treasures on earth, where moth and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal” (Mt 6:19-21)? Hadn’t he reminded us, over and over again, that God will provide? “Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin? Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge. Even all the hairs of your head are counted. So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows” (Mt 10:29-31).
The plain fact was, however, that these comforting words did not seem very realistic. I told myself that Jesus would not have said them had He lived in our modern capitalist society. He would have understood that we really have no choice — He would have allowed for the fact that nowadays money is everything.
Yet if this were true, then what were we to do with His firm statement that “no one can serve two masters”? Or with His warning that we will “either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon” (Mt 6:24)?
Much as I wanted to avoid it, the inescapable fact seemed to be that relying on money for our security is not an option for those of us who call ourselves Christians. In this one stark passage, Jesus cut through all the usual hemming and hawing we do over how much wealth is okay and how much is bad for us.
I’d been missing the point. For Jesus, the issue was not money at all; it was our self-protective refusal to trust in His promise to provide. Yet we have a hard time acknowledging this refusal until we see the two placed side by side — God and money — and have to confess, with sinking heart, which one it is we really worship.
It was harder to think about the people I used to visit in my welfare job. What about the poor? What about the homeless, the refugees, the starving? Could these people rely on God’s providence too? Then I remembered a line from a book called The Divine Conspiracy, a statement that filled me with awe the first time I read it. In it, theologian Dallas Willard reminds us that this is a “God-bathed world,” a “perfectly safe place for us to be.”
Did I really believe this? More, could I believe this in spite of those who are truly in want? I had to confess that much of the time I could not see this pain-filled world as “perfectly safe.” Just as I always had, I instinctively turned to mammon as my hedge against fearful insecurity.
One day, however, I tried repeating a famous old prayer instead. Now, if I am quick enough, I can say it just in time: Lord, I believe. Help thou my unbelief.
Paula Huston’s most recent book is The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life (Loyola, 2003). She is also co-editor and a contributing essayist for Signatures of Grace: Catholic Writers on the Sacraments (Dutton, 2000). A National Endowment of the Arts Fellow in Creative Writing, she is the author of a novel, Daughters of Song (Random House, 1995) and numerous short stories. She is married, has four children, and is a Camaldolese Benedictine oblate. For more information, visit her website at www.paulahuston.com.
(This article was excerpted from The Holy Way: Practices for a Simple Life by Paula Huston (Loyola Press, 2003). Reprinted with permission of Loyola Press. To order copies of this book, call 1-800-621-1008 or visit www.loyolabooks.org.)
