According to the Bible “the love of money is the root of all evil”. People misunderstand that quote believing that money itself is bad. They believe it to say “money is the root of all evil” which is not what it says at all. It is merely telling us not to cherish money so much that we do evil things to get it. We should also be cautious not to put money above those closest to us.
The root of anything is its core for support and nourishment. If evil is the plant the root is what nourishes and causes it to grow. If you cut the roots off of a plant, eventually it will die or it will grow a new set of roots. It cannot live without the roots! If you neglect those you love like your family merely for the sake of having money, which can be an evil. I am not talking about making money to survive. I am talking about the people who must have expensive things that they can’t afford “just because”. The key to anything in life is balance.
The thought of having a lot of money can cause some people to not strive to succeed because they think it will make them a bad person. If you do good things to acquire money, that is good. If you do evil to acquire the money then that is bad. The deed to attain the money is “the good” or “the evil”.
If you have noticed that at either end of the spectrum the very poor or the very rich there is some form of lust for money. In your poorer neighborhoods you see very high crime rates, why because people lack the money to meet even there most basic necessities. In the richer neighborhoods there is crime because of a different form of evil, greed. Money is neither good, nor bad, just the motivating factor to either meet or exceed our needs, wants and desires.
Look at the good things that are done every day with money! Donations to charities, without it churches couldn’t run, more children would starve, more people would be homeless, animals could not be rescued and there would be no research for treatment of all the terrible diseases that are out there among other things.
Money in and of itself is not evil, what is done with the money or to get it can be evil. Money confiscated from a drug dealer and given to a homeless shelter, is it evil? NO! Is it good? NO! The money doesn’t and can’t care what is done with it, it is an inanimate object, a thing. The deed is what makes the money good or evil.
All in all the morale of the story is; do not neglect that which should be closest to you simply for the sake of money.
Rich
