Mormonism and Mammon
A Wayfare Symposium on Wealth and Merit
What should we do about money? In particular, what should we do when some people have a lot and others have a little? Wealth, and more generally our means of procuring and disposing of our material possessions, has been inextricably bound up with our desire to live a godly life since the time Adam was commanded to sacrifice the first of his flock. The Christian worldview, along with many wisdom traditions, offers some fundamentals on the questions of how to get wealth and what to do when we have it. No man can serve two masters; have your eye single to the glory of god; if you have done it unto the least of these, you have done it unto me; you must lose your life to find it. Nevertheless, from these simple premises we manage to find plenty of ways to improvise and differentiate distinct economic philosophies.
In this Wayfare symposium, we invited four thinkers, Justin Pack, Jon Ogden, Zack Gubler, and Nathaniel Givens, to elaborate their views on the moral and spiritual implications of wealth and our means of acquiring it.
Justin Pack and Jon Ogden write about the moral valence of our individual choices. How do our choices about how we earn and spend money reflect our understanding of God’s abundant grace? Can we make categorical judgments about the morality of wealth, and in particular about other people’s pursuit and use of wealth? How can we be wise about money?
Zack Gubler and Nathaniel Givens consider not only the moral value of our choices around wealth but also the spiritual value. The economic arrangements we make both personally and as a society can and do affect our spiritual development. Does our current economic system have a moral teleology? What is left out, forgotten, or hidden from this economic orientation? As a Zion-seeking people, what qualities do we want to cultivate in ourselves and in our communities, and how can we integrate our economic system into that endeavor?
Christianity has a rich heritage of wisdom on the question of wealth, yet the question never grows stale. As individuals, we work out for ourselves the best way to fulfill God’s instruction to eat by the sweat of our brows; as communities in an ever-changing milieu of technology and political structures, we constantly renew our interpretations of the vision God offers us of human sociality. We hope that the insights of these four authors will help us answer God’s call to live a more abundant life together.
Viewed from a theological angle, our economic relationships can be something beautiful, serving much more than a sterile functionality. Our souls would be impoverished if we only looked for God in the world created by economic exchange, but so too would they be if we refused to give God any place there. As Christians, we live simultaneously in two modes: one hand stretched out to receive, and the other extended to offer a blessing. But no mere machines are we, simply conduits to distribute God’s wealth. We are vessels after the pattern of Mary, changed by the experience of transforming our portion of God’s blessings into blessings for others, and thus blessings for all.
Art by J. Kirk Richards, @jkirkrichards
