If our behaviour patterns have shaped our consciousness towards money-domination, it is new behaviour patterns that will be the form of our resistance. Naming the idol and its power is a start. Insisting that our congregations see money as a spiritual issue, to be struggled with in Lent, for instance, is another step forward. Joining the Christian Council for Monetary Justice (www.ccmj.org) or other campaigns that help us to rehearse for a different world is next. Supporting actions that will rein in the debt explosion and restore to the people and their representatives control over the instruments of exchange is the aim.
When, last autumn, St Paul’s Institute published “Value and Values”, its survey of the Âattitudes of finance-sector Âprofessionals, one aspect was enormously striking. While the majority of those surveyed thought they were overpaid, they also admitted that it was the money that kept them in the work. And while they thought deregulation was vital, they also thought it lowered ethical standards. It is this sense of lived contradiction that tells us that we need to stop shouting “greed” and work with the professionals to understand this trap. After all, bankers reflect our values too.
Our slavery to the principalities and powers represented by what money has been allowed to become has to be broken. Among the blandishments of choice that money seems to offer, one choice is often hidden: “You cannot be slave to God and Mammon.”