The Attractions of Christian Metaphysics: Part 7, Metaphysics or Money

I had planned to end this series with the last post (which I wrote over the summer), but I'm inserting one more most today (here in October).

I'm just starting to read Philip Goodchild’s Theology of Money. I'm barely into it, but Goodchild makes an argument that I'd like to tack onto this series.

It's important, I think, as Goodchild points out, that Jesus pitted God against Mammon. Why that particular choice?

It has to be because Jesus saw Mammon as God's one True Rival. That where God doesn't exist money fills the vacuum. When God is dead mammon takes God's place. When God is removed from the stage money becomes the great animating and unifying force in the world.  

When there is no supreme value--no metaphysics--money becomes our ultimate value, the supreme value, the value which judges all other values. The market is the Invisible Hand of god, the spectral force providentially guiding human affairs, rewarding the righteous and punishing the wicked.

The only way we can displace money is by making it submit to a higher value. Again, metaphysics. If God doesn't stand above money, then money fills the metaphysical vacuum to become the supreme value. That's the choice.

God or Mammon.

Metaphysics or money.

It's either/or. Submit to money, or make money submit to God.

Your call.