Is liking money a sin? After all, it does say in the Bible, “One cannot serve two masters, therefore you can’t love God and love money.” (Paraphrased.)

A lot of people like to take this into account and make it sound like celebrities or millionaires can’t be Christians, which is a pretty dumb thing. (If you feel like I’m calling you out, I’m not, I believed this as well.)

‘ “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” ‘
Luke 16:13 NIV

This is something I think that we can all really relate to these days. Money is such a big part of our culture–being able to buy the newest iPhone, Nikes, Lululemon leggings, a nice car, whatever! We have become so reliant on money that it’s become our idol.

I don’t know about you, but I like me some money. Being able to buy my own things is a great feeling! And the Bible isn’t saying, “You can’t use money.” That’s literally impossible for survival in this day and age, and honestly in any day and age!

But it’s okay because that’s not what Jesus was saying. He was saying, “You cannot serve both.”

According to Webster’s Dictionary, ‘serve’ means to be a servant of.

Take a look at this example:

In Africa, the tribes hunt for baboons. Y’all, baboons are scary. They carry off and kill children of the tribes but they provide good nutrition and food. (According to my pastor, who used to live in Africa as a missionary, they are really tasty.) So in order to protect their children and provide food for the tribes, the Africans would hunt baboons.

Now, like I said, baboons are scary. They’re fierce, they bite, they fight back and they fight back big time. But they also have their weaknesses: shiny stuff. So the tribes members devised a plan to capture the baboons. They’d take a log, make a hole in it, and stick giant nails around the hole so that they came in on the inside of the log. Then, they would take something of value, something shiny, and place it in the hole in the log. The baboon would see it and stick its hand in the whole to get the shiny thing. But its hand would get trapped from the nails, and every time it resisted, the nails would tear up the baboon’s hand.

Meanwhile, the tribesmen would be circling around it with their spears to kill it. The baboon would be going crazy, screaming and jumping in one place, but the men aren’t afraid because they know what’s going to happen.

Now, there is one way for the baboon to escape: let go of the shiny thing.

But that doesn’t even come to mind, so as the baboon is holding on to the valuable trinket, he is basically awaiting his death.

This baboon has become a servant to the trinket. And as humans, we do the same thing. We get stuck, holding on to our fun toy (or money) and as bad stuff encircles us, we freak out and don’t know how to run away.

All we have to do is let go and realize that we are a servant to money.

So that’s what’s happening. We can use money, we can have money, but we cannot serve money. We are supposed to serve one thing and one thing only: God.

I hope this made sense. :) Thanks for reading!
~Willow