In the chapter of The Lord entitled "Attachment and Detachment," Romano Guardini reflects on the meaning of a particular difficult parable,onewe often refer to as the "dishonest steward." Just what does Jesus mean when he says that his disciples should make friends with the "mammon of wickedness?" Guardini argues that Jesus' words are not primarily a counsel about the "ethical" use of wealth. The critique of wealth is deeper and more fundamental:
The parable is not obvious. The clue to its meaning lies in the words "mammon of wickedness." Mammon is the Phonecian god of weath; his name also means property. But why "of wickedness"? All wealth is wicked, "base wealth." All degrees of prosperity, which we regard so highly, are included in the sweeping judgment. Nor is Jesus differentiating between the honest fruit of hard labor and wealth accumulated effortlessly. He is not encouraging proficiency and integrity; is not suggesting a morejust distribution of material goods. He is saying: No one really owns anything. Neither one dollar nor a million, neither one acre or a hundred. Jesus' words have nothing to do with the ethics of work or the economic order of things...Sin has destroyed the possibility of natural ownership without fetters on the owner or injustice to others. In the sight of God, even the most innocent ownership is unjust. What Jesus is driving at is neither sociological or economic. His words have nothing to do with secular morality; they simply state what sin has done: destroyed paradise. In paradise, property of the one would not have been to the exclusion of others. Just how this could have been is beyond human understanding...Jesus then, is referring to things of faith, pointing to an existence in grace and the Holy Spirit long since lost through sin. Ever since, all human doing and owning is in itself "unjust," a state which cannot be essentially changed by economic or social reform. It can only be raised in its entirety to the plane of faith, there to undergo conversion of salvation.
It's easy to think that the scriptural warnings about wealth apply primarily to, well, the wealthy. Certainly Jesus can't mean me with my relatively modest home, my two small television sets, my 600+ books...er...uh oh...maybe he does mean me after all! The fundamental issue becomes attachment.There is no question that there areat least a fewthings I own to which I am very deeply attached. It's easy to become judgmental about the fellow in the Hummer in the pick up line at school, but who is to say that he is more attached to that vehicle than I am to thousands of pages of paper and ink. It wouldn't surprise me if he was able to give up that car more easily than I could give up my books. So who is more in the grip of the "mammon of wickedness?"
