You Cannot Serve Both God and Mammon
I was recently in conversation with a friend when he suddenly made the statement, “Life is meaningless. I get up every day and do the same damn stuff every day – work, eat, shit, sleep, work, eat, shit, sleep and then one day I die.” For whatever reason, this statement got me to reflecting on the words of Jesus from the Sermon On The Mount – “No man can serve two masters: for he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon…….Seek ye first the kingdom of God.”
You cannot serve both God and mammon. They are diametrically opposed forces. One is within you, the other is outside of you.
How do you recognize the concept of God, the eternal I Am. Of course, the easy answer is that God is undefinable. Nevertheless, the answer to that question is very personal and differs from person to person. The author, Barbara Brown Taylor, puts forth an interesting answer – ” My own idea of God, as imperfect and evolving as it is, right now would be (this) – the glue that holds everything together, the consciousness that moves between all living things. When I use the word God, I do not envision a large person with two arms, two legs, a nose and two eyes. I envision instead, a presence so beyond my being, a presence that knows the stars by name and knows me by name as well, that is not here to be useful to me, that is not here to give me things as much as to ask me to give myself away for love. When I say I believe in God, I mean I trust. I trust the goodness of life, of being. I trust that beyond all reason. I trust that with my life. That’s what I mean by God.” The theologian Paul Tillich gave this definition – “God is not a being, God is being itself”. And from the Wall Street legend John Templeton, ” The wonderful substance of God flows in and through us and extends in every direction. There is no place we can go where we are not bathed in the infinite sea of this harmonizing glue of the universe”. Finally there is this from the mystic Neville Goddard regarding the nature of God – “I AM or the awareness of being is the only reality.”
So what is “mammon”? The traditional definition is money, wealth, riches. Researching the word mammon in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics comes the suggestion that the Aramaic word mamon was a loanword from Mishmaic Hebrew meaning money, wealth, possessions although there are indications that it may also have meant “that in which one trusts”. That is the core idea behind mammon – Putting your trust in your money, your investments, your real estate, your employer, your contacts, your education, your intelligence, your family, your friends, your skills, your charisma, your neighbors, your church, your…….well, you get the idea. Mammon is anything outside of the awareness of God.
Texas Hold ‘Em Poker
Have you ever watched The World Series of Poker on television? It is perhaps the best known of the many poker tournaments that are regularly scheduled on network and general audience cable tv. Sports networks such as ESPN have made it a staple of their television lineup. The popularity of the televised tournaments featuring the style of poker known as “Texas Hold ‘Em” surged when they began using hole card or lipstick cams to show the viewer at home the hole (turned down) cards. This engaged the viewer in devising strategy and decision-making during the game. One of the most dramatic events during a game takes place when one of the players decides to go “all-in” by pushing every last chip that they have into the pot. There is that suspenseful moment right before the last cards are dealt. At that point the player who went “all-in” either wins a huge pot or goes bust and has to leave the game.
In the statement, Ye cannot serve God and mammon, you are playing an ethereal game of Texas Hold ‘Em and you are going ‘all-in” on either serving God or mammon. The former choice earns you the biggest pot of them all, communion with God, while sadly the latter choice leaves you spiritually broke. Now this is not to say that you cannot serve God and manifest money as well. What it means however is, in everything, from wake-up to fall-asleep, where do you place your trust? Is your trust in your awareness of being or is it in anything outside of that. Seek first – Seek above all else – the Kingdom of God for from this Kingdom all good things come forth.
The Choice Is Yours
Emmet Fox, the eminent twentieth century author and lecturer, stated with crystal clarity in his essay, “The Golden Key” that every problem of any type can be dealt with effectively by dwelling on God instead of the problem. He envisioned centering your thoughts on God as a “golden key” accessible to everybody, everywhere that would unlock any closed door that you run into in life. If you are in communion with “The Harmonizing Glue of Everything” through employing your divine gift of Imagination, you are serving God. If you place your trust in any person, any group of people, any set of circumstances, any event, you are serving mammon. God is not some guy sitting up in the sky somewhere or on top of Mount Olympus. The Kingdom of God is within each and every one of us. Jesus told the stone cold truth. Manifest your chosen reality by just letting go and going “all-in” by trusting in the power of the Kingdom of God within you.
Step right up ladies and gentlemen and make your choice. You cannot serve both, it’s either God or mammon. One leads to a path of Universal Source, Universal Intelligence, Universal Power, Universal Peace, Universal Love. The other leads to a path of an extremely alluring yet ultimately deceptive dead end. It is your choice. It always has been and always will be until you draw your last breath and the show is over.
Conceive. Believe. Receive.