Recently, I read Ken Honda’s book, Happy Money: The
Japanese Art of Making Peace with Your Money. I don’t recommend reading the
book. I do recommend pondering his basic question, “What is your attitude about
money?”
Honda suggests that many, perhaps most, people live with
attitudes of fear and anxiety about money. These people fear they will have
insufficient money to fulfill their wants and needs; they are anxious that
their money will not afford them adequate security against hunger,
houselessness, etc. He contends that our individual attitudes of fear and
anxiety originate in a broader societal attitude of scarcity. Never will there
be enough money for all to be happy and for all to live abundantly.
Honda believes that money symbolizes energy. A person may
achieve happiness by becoming a “money magnet,” i.e., someone whose persona
attracts the flow of money. Once a person becomes a money magnet, then s/he
person needs to manage their money in a way that produces personal happiness.
He describes himself as a self-help author focused on the
connection between money and happiness. This best-selling author has sold seven
million books in Japan. He characterizes the book that I read as pointing to
the Zen of money.
Although Honda consistently emphasizes the importance of
generosity as a help in learning to hold money loosely and as a source of
happiness, I found his message strangely at odds with the Christian attitude
toward money. His thought does resonate with the “prosperity gospel,” a warped
interpretation of Jesus’ teachings premised the idea that God wants everyone to
enjoy material wealth.
Christianity, understood more traditionally, teaches that
money, per se, is unimportant. Money is a tool for facilitating exchanges
(e.g., buying food) and storing value. Money is not a source of happiness.
Happiness always and only comes from a person’s relationship
with God, a relationship frequently manifest in our relationship with other
people, with creation and with self. Abundant living, as Honda acknowledges can
be found in impoverished people, e.g., a person who has chosen a monastic
lifestyle or among the people of Bhutan, often identified as the happiest
people in spite of their very low incomes and levels of wealth. Research in the
U.S. and other developed nations consistently suggests that above a certain
income level (now about $75,000) a higher income is no assurance of increased
happiness.
By ancient design, communion wafers resemble a coin in
shape. The IHS imprinted on many communion wafers represent the first three
letters of Jesus’ name in Latin, evocative of coinage minted with the monarch’s
name or bust. (The dollar sign, incidentally, is a stylized form of the IHS
symbol.) And as with; money, the bread and wine of Holy Communion are called
species.[1]
In other words, God claims our money as God's own because all things ultimately
belong to God, creation’s author. As Jesus said, one cannot serve God and
mammon.
Consequently, each person, according to Jesus, is God's steward
responsible for using her/his talents, time and treasure in a Godly way. Life
is not about me. Life is about us, us understood in its broadest, most
inclusive sense. (For
more on caring for creation, cf. Restoring
God's Earth: A Year of Personal Action.)
Furthermore, faithful stewards acquire an attitude of
thankfulness (Honda calls this arigato, the Japanese word for thank
you). Honda fails to link thankfulness to stewardship. Thankfulness transforms
anxiety and fear into peace, trusting that our security and well-being depend
not upon money but upon relationships. A young Mao Tse Tung reportedly said, “Money
is the father and grandfather of the mean of spirit.”[2]
Thankfulness develops as we cultivate mutually life-giving and loving relationships
with others, with the world around us and with our innermost self. Thankfulness
points toward life’s deepest mystery, that which we call God.
[1] Mark C.
Taylor, About Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p.
154.
[2] Max Boot,
Invisible Armies: An Epic History of Guerrilla Warfare from Ancient Times to
the Present (New York: W.W. Norton, 2013), p. 434.
No comments:
Post a Comment