Countless books and articles have explored the connection between money and happiness. And they’ve come to some helpful conclusions. Money spent on experiences tends to be more satisfying than money spent on stuff, and spending money on services that save us time tends to feel like money well spent. But all of the ink spilled on this topic may have missed a larger, more important point.
What if...
One of the best marriage books I’ve read is Sacred Marriage by Gary Thomas. Early on, Thomas asks, “What if God designed marriage to make us holy more than to make us happy?”
What a good and challenging question. Even as one who is happily married, I can see the wisdom behind the question. (I’m sure my wife can, too!)
As Thomas explains, “This isn’t a book that seeks to tell you how to have a happier marriage. This is a book that looks at how we can use the challenges, joys, struggles, and celebrations of marriage to draw closer to God and to grow in Christian character.”
Re-reading the book recently, I was struck by all the parallels with money. In fact, wouldn’t it be helpful to live with this question in mind: What if God designed money to make us holy more than to make us happy?
The intertwined journeys of faith and finances
My own experience of coming to faith was tightly tied to money. It was through an unintentional reenactment of the parable of the prodigal son — inheriting money, traveling to distant countries, squandering the money, coming to my senses and returning home, the whole bit — that God drew me into a relationship with Him and set me on a new career path.
Since then, I can see countless ways God has refined me through various financial situations and decisions, but one of the biggest faith/finance lessons He has taught me is similar to this point that Thomas makes about marriage: “If [our relationship with God] is right, we won’t make such severe demands on our marriage, asking each other, expecting each other, to compensate for spiritual emptiness… We need to remind ourselves of the ridiculousness of looking for something from other humans that only God can provide.”
The Bible never describes money or material things as inherently evil. In fact, it says God gives us everything for our enjoyment (1 Timothy 6:17). However, I’ve learned not to look to money and what it can buy for what only God can provide.
Discerning “the thing itself”
Chronic disappointment in our use of money—and let’s face it, our consumer culture is fueled by the constant creation of disappointment—can leave us running on the so-called hedonic treadmill, always seeking more to satisfy an unquenchable thirst.
Or it can lead us to God. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience of this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”
Gary Thomas said something very similar about marriage: “If we find that the same kinds of challenges face every marriage, we might assume that God designed a purpose in this challenge that transcends something as illusory as happiness.”
The key, it seems, is not to try to kill our desires, were that even possible, but to see our desires for the healthy pleasures of this world—an especially meaningful conversation with our spouse or a good friend, a wonderful vacation—ultimately as a desire for the true joy only God can provide.
Here’s Lewis again: “…it (is) not in them. It only comes through them and what (comes) through them (is) longing…For they are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never visited.”
Mistaking the pleasures of this world for the thing itself is where we go wrong. That’s true of our marriage, as Thomas points out: “I was created with a spirit that craves God. Anything less than God, and I’ll feel an ache.”
And it’s true of our stuff. Mistaking money and what it can buy for the thing itself is what can leave us trapped in the cycle of wanting, buying, enjoying, and then all too quickly wanting again.
A glimpse of heaven
My understanding of Paul’s words from Romans 8, where he talks about having “the firstfruits of the Spirit,” is that the Holy Spirit’s presence within us gives Christ-followers the ability to experience little glimpses of heaven right here and right now, that the healthy, God-honoring pleasures of this world are foretastes of our ultimate joy.
Realizing that the things of this world will never completely satisfy our deepest longings is not bad news; it’s helpful news. Seeing them as little, wonderful samples of a far greater joy yet to come frees us to stop looking to them for something they’re incapable of delivering. And that actually enables us to enjoy them more.
I’ve learned that seeing them as good gifts from God, but not the basis of my identity, security, or ultimate happiness, is essential for a healthy, satisfying relationship with money and what it can buy. It conditions me to regularly give thanks to God, and it reminds me that my relationship with Him is my greatest joy.
I like how John Eldredge summed up the “patient yearning” Paul spoke of in the same passage where he described the firstfruits of the Spirit: We express our longing for God best when we “enjoy what there is now to enjoy, while waiting with eager anticipation for the feast to come.”
In what ways has God used money to help you grow in your relationship with Him?
