“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.”

I have read that passage for years but only recently did I wonder how someone so beyond imagination as God could be compared to something as concrete and tangible as money. Is Matthew saying money is powerful enough to be the opposite of God? Maybe we have limited what he is saying by translating Mammon merely as money. Perhaps there is something larger at stake and actually compelling enough to be compared to God. We all know the verses in 1 Timothy and James about the love of money and the temptations of both desiring to be rich and actually being rich. We know the parable of the rich fool who built bigger barns to hold his wealth at the price of his soul. Those are certainly cautions we need to take seriously but I believe Mammon is far more dangerous and all-consuming than money.

In “Paradise Lost” John Milton describes a council of the outcast angels who, having fallen in the lake of fire, are now considering where they go from here. How will they respond to their damnation? Several of them speak and offer options. First is Moloch who argues for an outright attack on heaven even though he accepts they will surely be defeated. It is better to fight a losing war than submitting to the King. Belial speaks next and admits that their situation is dire but the best course is to accept their fate. Next is Mammon and his counsel is what caught my attention. While he knows fighting a losing battle is foolish but so is doing nothing. He counters with what I believe to be the true nature and attraction of Mammon.

He grants there is no possibility of true happiness as that would mean a return to obedience. This is their lot and while they must accept that they can also aspire to build a world that will rival the glory of Heaven itself. It will be what Mammon himself calls “hard liberty.” Their exile can be made into, according to Sara Erickson,  a “happy, fruitful existence by building Hell into a place that might someday rival Heaven in beauty and splendor.”  How? By each devil choosing “our own good from ourselves,” as Milton writes. They can mimic virtue. Some will engage in sport while others will compose music celebrating their melancholy fate by distracting them from what they have lost. Others will engage in philosophy to discuss good and evil, glory and shame, but all their conclusions will be false. Some will band together to explore Hell and see if they can find a more pleasant spot only to find even more awful things leading to the conclusion that they reside in a “universe of death” that is “monstrous, abominable, perverse, unutterable.”

That is the true spirit of Mammon, isn’t it? In fact, nothing about money is mentioned in his description of what will make their world not only pleasant but comparable to Heaven itself. It will be a world of futility distracted by attempts at virtue, pleasure and meaning. It will be a world that eventually will make them long for death as the world they inhabit will be increasingly abominable and perverse.

I know a few people who love money. We read about those who have accumulated more wealth than any other time in history. We sometimes celebrate them until they crumble under the weight of their own appetites. We sometimes even envy them for their influence, power and standing. Yes, there are those but there are also others who have clearly chosen to serve Mammon and the spirit of Mammon that is so much more than the desire for more money. Serving Mammon is the act of giving yourself over to making a world that even while it is a universe of death and has no use for God, it appears to be, at first, a heaven on earth. A Godless paradise. All the problems can be fixed with better planning, more resources, smarter innovators, and time. It is the world of self-fulfillment and self-aggrandizement.  Of course, even in their devilish minds there is the nagging thought that the ultimate solution is escaping to another place on earth that is less plagued with problems or leaving the planet altogether. In the end it is the same.

That, I believe, is the choice we must make. Do we serve a transcendent Creator whose desire for us is joy or serve the spirit of Mammon, a false and ultimately hellish existence that is far more than a simple love of money.

Art by Paul Pigeon