Money, Money, Money

Money is money my friend. And the talk about money (as I have come to know from many people who talk about it) almost always comes out money-ish. Money-ish because money is like an affair – well known and regarded by many, but rarely talked about. It is like an affair because it is ‘better’ left underground than exposed or talked about. That is how we all feel at most. Money-ish talk is hated because many people tend to assume that we don’t talk about money unless we are loaded and again reloaded… meaning that we should be having money in order to talk about money. I don’t know if that is right, and considering that I am a man, and that men “don’t love talking about money because such talk demands too much from them”, I tend to also bow my head and try to whisper on this post rather than shout as I always do…

I think that it is petty thinking for someone to think that we should only talk about stuff when we are ‘well equipped’ to do so. Maybe what we should consider is that – the more you surge into the unknown, the more you will have the urge to become better in such depths, [maybe] while being motivated by the power of overcoming the underdog spirit and the possibility of being better at a game you were thought to be a failure at... So the question becomes: How can we ever invent new ways of doing things or dealing with issues and become anew [and better], while at the same time avoid being like our predecessors unless we try out the things they never tried when they were our age and do (not just try to do) the things they never did?

So what I call money-ish talk in this post is such talk about money that comes out as expensive, intricate and more financial – and by financial I mean “talk of finances/money-related-issues-gurus”. Gurus talk money-ish talk. I talk money-talk. The common thing about the two is money, but the difference is money. Money-ish talk leaves one breathless and suffocated, judged and tormented, helpless and blurred. Money-talk is just between us – no professionalism included. Just plain money and all that… So I want you to ease yourself because I am not going to be money-ish - at least not for today…

I have been walking around, relating with and making observations and also engaging with people both in the Christian and secular world just to find out views of young people like myself on issues of money. I have no statistics but I have observations; and those are enough to make statistics, right?

One thing that I have found-out out there is that people tend to value or devalue others with regard to the presence or absence of money. Society depicts us as relative and able to be accommodated when we have something to offer… when we can bring something to the table… when we can call out shots with the influencing power of finances… when we are stable pocketwise… when we can’t and won’t beg… when we command things around and give orders to two or three people who submissively obey us… when our money, money, money language is at tops and can’t be locally challenged…

A lady or a guy [or gentleman] today is likely to accept to be in a [working] relationship with a man [or woman] more in the following order (considering and assuming that love or the chemistry between them is triggered by the degree affluence of either); they should look good (most of which is determined by what they wear that requires money in order to afford – from clothing to shoes, to grooming), they should be of good status (as determined by the gadgets they possess – phone, laptop, car, a great house…), they should be educated (who buys ‘good English’ anymore, or a ‘paper degree’ in any case? – good schooling needs money, and that translates to one coming from a financially stable family or they themselves being stable), they should be supportive (above 50% of the support being financial)…

So we come to realize that if the other party scores below the bar (whatever the set bar may be), and they are in most cases neglected, discriminated or assumed when matters of money, money, money collide with their desires. It is that bad. Life becomes that challenging to the single man/woman… Money, money, money… No wonder there are many single people claiming that they just can’t find THAT right person for them, bla bla bla…

70% [that is my guess] of relationships and marriages today are either made or unmade by the presence or absence of money. It is always money this, and money that… and a relationship or marriage is thus put into weird parts of a balance…

And to move further, the chaos is even in the church – this money, money, money thing. It can be seen when one family or person is respected, honored and highly regarded by others (leave alone the pastor) and more cared for… just because they are better in giving more offering or tithe, or because they contribute more to church projects…

When one is moneyed, they can’t hide. Money is too loud. It shouts all day, and hails your countenance all night. It magnifies one’s presence that a short man will never be short when money is what he/she daily multiplies. Money hides no one, and no one eternally hides their financial ability. Money speaks a language of its own that keeps popping up details about a given man/woman. Money says so many things about a person that is mostly left unspoken. That is money my friend… That is money. Money and its power on our countenance… Ecclesiastes 7:12a [NIV]: “Wisdom is a shelter as money is a shelter…”

Money is all about knowing that it exists, and that in its existence, it has power. It is all about knowing how to honestly get it and that it is beautiful when it is well used; and [partially] acknowledging that your desire to meet it (and in one way or another, to use it) is probably more saturated than that towards your Bible… It is also important to acknowledge that we all need a level of financial independence or stability in our friends or family or in our own lives; and that today’s world is so much centered on money – it being almost what makes up what men/women do today. We need to realize that the talk is no longer about the basic needs we were taught about while growing up, but about another that we have learned is more essential today… money, money, money… Our generation has taught us something different. Our orientation towards money has increased. And it is increasing more and more as generations go by. Our longing for money has heightened. That is the way it is… We therefore live with that reality…

But on the other hand, we need to accept the realities availed to us, evaluate them, and later sweep them over with a broom of Truth – that the countenance of a man is not made up of wealth and things thereof… but of his relationship(s) with fellow men and with God. Thus if money is of greater importance to a man than another’s comfort, respect or welfare, that man has forgotten that which Christ did for us, and that which He became in order that we may come forth as the people we should be  (2 Corinthians 8:9: For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich.) I am not saying that we should be poor, as in poor, but that the Scripture above points out Christ, the greatest of them all, to not have valued His heavenly wealth and pomp (at least for a time) in order to make us acquire that which we even never knew of – the Kingdom of heaven; yet we who should be His most devoted followers, act prejudiciously against others and value the wealth of this world above fellow men… We should be more ashamed, and more humiliated at the direction of our filthy actions… for our righteousness has become like filthy rags…But more important, even in the event of our filthiness, we should with repentant hearts remember that “…the love of money [above all else] is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs…” (1 Timothy 6:10) …

So what shall we do? Nothing?

Shall we say and do nothing?

No, we will neither say nor do nothing

For ‘nothing’ should exist not to the living

We will tell it loud to everyone assembled

That money, money, money; that sweet and tasty thing

That mighty and destructive thing - is only momentary

It shall fade away; it shall drawn away

So allow not yourself to drain away… with it…

O, money, money, money

You little paper thing

You small clustered metal

That on the minds of men

Cries, “Honey, honey, honey”…

Money, money, money

Shall we ever know today how to live with,

And henceforth kill your might?

Morris.

What Is More Important?

-         There is worship, and there is warship, and both belong to a soul…

The philosophy of materialism replies to the question of “What really matters in life?” with one answer, “Hedonism is the answer to every question that has satisfaction somewhere in the middle…” Such a philosophy declares to the entire world that mankind is a slave to his schemes of endlessly seeking for satisfaction. It openly confesses that he cannot save himself from the pleasure he indulges in or creates, nor can he redeem his soul from the influence of affluence; thus copying and pasting into our present times the timeless mentality theme of money being man’s main source of contentment – a driving force that keeps pushing him towards itself…

I don’t mind that money is important, because it is important. Money is special and important. I don’t question the power and potential it carries, because it is what it is – it has potential. And power. Even the Bible says so. Money has power – a power that increases with its accumulation; but a closer observation into the affairs of the present world – and the past ages too - forces us to understand (or misunderstand) the question of wealth (money), pleasure, intellectualism, meaning and satisfaction. The many things we may learn or might have learnt as life shoots before us may teach us (or might have taught us) facts on hedonism that have a broken tail and with no head in view; but if present, confused all through… The question of what I value most in my life today is wanting. I may not even know what I really want. Many accept and appreciate that without questioning. It is common nowadays. It seems normal not to know where I am coming from or where I am going to. I am excused not be sure of what really drives my life. I am allowed not even care to know. That is the life we experience in we people who live today – a life without meaning and direction – and we all seem so okayed with it; but eventually, we find out that life succumbs right before us and we sooner than later are drying and dying and diminishing and ending into frailty day by day, thanks to the lack of knowledge of what we are doing or why we are doing what we are doing.

Deeper within, the life fact is that something somewhere should more important than everything else in our lives, even if we can’t definitely speak out the to’s and fro’s of our deepest beings – even if it is so loudly unspoken… and that unspoken words speak loudest… - that very essence of such an existence screams so loud into our ears that we may end up being scared that it is us being addressed, thus destruct us from getting in touch with reality… Money haunts us most – the lack or presence of it. It haunts us most. Money loves us most – the pull and push of it. It is our conflict and our resolution. Somehow, every part of today’s world hovers around money. To get it. To have it. To use it. To maneuver through times with (and by) it. To just be moneyed… It may be true that the voiceless noises of poverty have killed our right view of how good money is or the search for it, and also deviated our optimism towards gaining it… Such a poor thing that makes people “rich”…

And schooling has just made it worse - meet a young man (or young woman in any case) and ask them why they go to school. They may (or may not) answer you back with the accent of superiority of learnedness to illiteracy. They may imply to you that it is constructive - and it is. We value education. It is good to be educated. Intellectualism has become our greatest ego booster. But neither education or shear intellectualism has the capacity to fill the vacuums created by lack of true knowledge and wisdom. They are only but fluff in the game of wisdom.

But get me right on this one. I am neither complaining (or hating) about education nor wealth nor pleasure; but about the vision thereof and the attitude compounded in such crimsons. I am not against intellectualism, because what you read here is a result of such strives. But I am just loudly wondering why we at all have to crown our educational abilities as the main source of a better status in life… I am just wondering why we should think that being educated makes us run into a “better” world… No wonder one Malcolm Muggeridge wrote and said, “We have educated ourselves into imbecility”. We live lives intertwined with philosophies. Philosophies of wealth and money. We live like philosophies. Philosophies of well-being and aptness. We think philosophies. We imagine philosophies. We create some and trash some, but always live many – empty philosophies. We are proud of intellectualism because education is a philosophy on its own – that which owns our minds and twists all rounds of our thinking. We were born into the present generation thinking of and knowing that education has all that we need for our future. We have become lazy in factualism and positive dialectics, but have adopted argument and “policy thinking” as our sources of what is right. Many of our lives somehow hang on one word or another breathed out of the mouths of gurus and nerds teaching us in the lone class of “respect-cum-honor bound fellas”.

Such lives as described above leave us with so many ‘if only’s’. We live in the ‘if-only’ era. An era that values words and thoughts of our own and of fellow men than those of a well intended source. We always will regret later. Yes we will. Our relationships are always held on the loose. Our relationship with God. And with fellow men. And with friends. And with our spouses. And with ourselves… they fade away slowly and we end up realizing that we can’t even meet ourselves anywhere – all at the expense of loving money and education. Broken relationships. Divorces. Emptiness. Broken selves. Forgotten selves. The price for highly regarding hedonism and intellectualism is quite expensive. Time has proved it thus. We will be heard crying, “If only I had known” or “If only I had done this or that…” We should not allow it to happen to us too late in the game of life, because those questions are always asked with a lot of bitterness in the heart and with fear and failure furiously staring us in the face… And we may never have the answers right then. We may never manage to deal with the reality of things…

I am not ashamed to confess that so many of us today can’t unblinkingly answer that question up there with confidence and without mentioning money or status somewhere between – just as the philosophy of materialism depicts. We tend to say, “My name is Bonface Morris Otunga, I studied (or study) bla bla bla, at bla bla bla with the likes of bla bla bla, I hold a bla bla bla in… I work at bla bla bla… I live at bla bla bla…” and the story is endless… That has inseparably become our definition of us. Titles. Names. Status. Power. Origin. Education. Ego. It has become who we are. They have become who we are. Right? Yeah, all those are cool. They should be there. They are meant to be there. But what carries most of the weight of our definition of us is who we remain to be to our families, friends, spouses (or boyfriend/girlfriend) and most important, to God. Having the titles and taking care of our relationships is what should be our goal- our ultimate goal. Striking the balance between all this is what determines how well we can define who we really are and what is really important to us; and if at all what we believe in is meaningful to all…

In Foundations of Achievement (A character development program by John E. Schrock), under the Management Principle of Debt, he writes and says, ”You cannot be happy by being independent. We were designed to be relational…” and C. S. Lewis once said, “Prosperity knits a man to the World. He feels that he is "finding his place in it," while really it is finding its place in him....

Two songs I do wish you would listen to:

“Identity” by Lecrae (ft. Da’ T.R.U.T.H. & JR) and “Fantasy” by Da’ T.R.U.T.H. (ft. JR)…

So once again, “What is really important… to you?”

Morris.