To celebrate this new chapter, Dean thoroughly
decontextualizes Matthew 6:19 to turn it into a screed against
saving money (it is here where he will find resolution to what he calls the “BIG MYSTERY of the teachings of Our Lord
about YOUR MONEY for you”), and again Luke 6:30 (see previous section).
Dean
is right to point to the need to serve God and not money; but he is oblivious
to the point that not all were told to give up their wealth (Zacchaeus,
Nicodemus, etc.) and certainly not all at once. Nor did Paul tell wealthy
Corinthians and Philippians to contribute all they had to spare. The bottom
line is that “serving mammon” in the NT world meant much more obsession that in
would today; it does not “serve mammon”
to leave money in a bank where you do not need to do so much as visit it.
Thus
it is patently false and an absurdity for Dean to claim that “the word mammon was the DIRECT EQUIVALENT
to what we now call 'SAVINGS'”. The answer is not to get rid of mammon
completely but to put it in the place of priority it belongs: behind God. Dean's
screeds against money “deciding” life
choices is like most of his points, gold tarnished by absurdity, a tension that
finds its resolution in the principle of stewardship that parables like the
five and ten coins illustrate. Perhaps Dean needs a reminder that Jesus' own
ministry was financed by people with plenty of money (Luke 8:3) as was Paul's.
Some are therefore arguably predestined to be Christianity's “breadwinners”.