Money Therapy (Part 3)

Psychotherapist/author, Dr. Bonnie Weil, interestingly calls it "financial infidelity," to borrow a term from her best selling book bearing the same title.

Can you imagine the scene? It happens every day. We see a man working 7 days a week in pursuit of a financial target who suddenly drops dead of a heart attack. We can see a woman who commits immorality and sacrifices honor in exchange for money or advancement. And how about those who cheat or corrupt others to fight and win their way to the big time and the big bucks?

Dr. Chuck Swindoll once wrote, "Greed and materialism have no built-in safeguards or satisfying limits."

Solomon, the richest man who ever lived, affirms that truth when he writes this line in Scriptures: "He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves abundance with its income. This too is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 5:10). Who can be better qualified to speak about money than him?  Note the word "loves" which Solomon uses, not "possesses."  This is not an indictment on those who possess wealth. This is an indictment on the greed of those who are "lovers of money" (1 Timothy 6:10).  A critique of the materialistic and greedy who must have more and more!

To the money-disordered, the money-hungry, there is never enough.  It's a destructive affair, an addiction, that's always grabbing. Did you catch how Solomon described it?  Empty. "This too is vanity."

Empty? Vanity? I think Solomon means "you can't take it with you." It's not forever. "As he had come naked from his mother's womb, so will he return as he came. He will take nothing from the fruit of his labor that he can carry in his hand" (Ecclesiastes 5: 15).

Money disorders tend to ignore or deny an inevitable reality: the moment of death. Then you face Someone, the one who gave you life, with whom you must give an account (Hebrews 9:27).

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