Thought for the Week: The religious dimension of money
Robert Kyte consideres the religious dimension of money
Money must be important to us since we have so many words for it. There’s loot, buck, dime, quid, dough, bread, dosh, cash, readies, lolly, lucre, moolah, wonga, bob, tanner and many more. References to money also appear in many of the phrases we use, for example ‘to pay on the nail’, ‘to pay through the nose’, ‘to be as rich as Croesus’ and ‘to be as poor as a church mouse’.
The Bible contains many stories concerning money. These include the parable of the talents, the widow’s mite, the rich man and the camel passing through the eye of a needle, the love of money being the root of evil and the story of the Kingdom of Heaven being like a great treasure hidden in a field. They include the parable of the workers in the vineyard; the prodigal son who spends his inheritance but is still welcomed back by his father; the Good Samaritan who pays the innkeeper to look after the man who was set upon by thieves; and the story of Jesus overturning the tables of the money lenders in the temple and his response to the question whether it was right to pay taxes to Caesar. Jesus regularly used parables about money to illustrate a point he wanted to make. Finally, there are the thirty pieces of silver for which he was betrayed.
