Is Money The Root Of All Evil?

IT is a common saying that “money is the root of all evil.”

The saying originated in the New Testament. “For the love of money is the root of all evil.”Timothy, 6:10.How fair is it to blame all evil, or even any evil, on a medium of exchange? I think it would be a much more accurate statement to say that the root of most evil is man’s desire for status: either greed to increase one’s status, or jealousy over losing in the status game to others.Money is the most obvious measure of one’s status, so it’s easy to confuse the two, but they are certainly not the same thing at all.Money is just one way of keeping score.Blaming money for evil is like blaming the scoreboard for the baseball game.One of the very first acts of evil committed in the Bible has nothing to do with money.In the book of Genesis, Cain kills his brother Abel because he is jealous that Abel’s offering to God was better received than his own.He is jealous that Abel has achieved higher status than him.Desire for money, or greed for money, is a good thing when people play by the rules, and when their desire for money and status results in better ways of doing business and inventions that help people and that make the world a better place.Desire for money and status is only bad when people do bad things in order to obtain what they desire.The goal of a government should be to create rules to ensure that competition for money results in good for society.L H Mandema Via e-mail”For the love of money is the root of all evil.”Timothy, 6:10.How fair is it to blame all evil, or even any evil, on a medium of exchange? I think it would be a much more accurate statement to say that the root of most evil is man’s desire for status: either greed to increase one’s status, or jealousy over losing in the status game to others.Money is the most obvious measure of one’s status, so it’s easy to confuse the two, but they are certainly not the same thing at all.Money is just one way of keeping score.Blaming money for evil is like blaming the scoreboard for the baseball game.One of the very first acts of evil committed in the Bible has nothing to do with money.In the book of Genesis, Cain kills his brother Abel because he is jealous that Abel’s offering to God was better received than his own.He is jealous that Abel has achieved higher status than him.Desire for money, or greed for money, is a good thing when people play by the rules, and when their desire for money and status results in better ways of doing business and inventions that help people and that make the world a better place.Desire for money and status is only bad when people do bad things in order to obtain what they desire.The goal of a government should be to create rules to ensure that competition for money results in good for society.L H Mandema Via e-mail