“No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
-Luke 16:13, NLT
When I first married, the wedding celebration was rife with conversation from my (now ex) in-law family as I remember it worrying about how much money I would make.
They worried that a philosophy major–my undergraduate major–was worthless and had no shame in voicing their worries to my own family on my wedding day!
It was like a Jane Austen novel where I was being evaluated just as each man was evaluated for marriage eligibility based upon how much wealth he had. To me, this is just as disgusting as if a groom’s family evaluated the potential bride for beauty and fertility.
It is an utterly pagan perspective!
Looking back, I know recognize this sort of fixation on money as a red flag–a difference in values, and possibly god.
The contrast with Mrs. DM on this matter could not be even more stark:
We got engaged while I was between jobs. In fact, I was on unemployment at the time living in my parents’ basement.
It does not get more cliche for “poor marriage material” than that (unless you add that I was living with my cat as well).
Mrs. DM was a single mom. If anyone had a legitimate reason to resist marriage until I had a steady income, she did.
But she did not.
I was the one who insisted we waited to get married until after I had landed my next job! Mrs. DM did not marry me for my wealth or the way of life I could give her. She married me for me.
That said, the point is not to say money is completely unimportant. My point is to say we never ought to make it of the utmost importance. God is.
Money comes and goes. So do jobs. Our security needs to be based upon God, not upon the wealth of our (soon to be) spouse or even our own.
Any teaching on marriage that fails to point this out is a teaching giving married couples a cracked foundation for future flood waters to fill and burst open. Such teaching is money worship.
