Money - New Evangelizers

This year, on Black Friday, that secular feast-day of money when people physically fight with each other in stores to buy things cheaply, you can buy a book called The Cold Hard Truth on Men, Women, and Money. This is Kevin O’Leary’s first book — yes, that Kevin O’Leary, famous investment guru and star of Shark Tank. Kevin’s longstanding views on the importance of money are no secret:

Working 24 hours a day isn’t enough anymore. You have to be
willing to sacrifice everything to be successful, including your
personal life, your family life, maybe more. If people think it’s any
less, they’re wrong, and they will fail.” Kevin O’Leary

To make money, Kevin is willing to be fierce:

Business is war. I go out there, I want to kill the competitors. I
want to make their lives miserable. I want to steal their market
share. I want them to fear me and I want everyone on my team
thinking we’re going to win. Kevin O’Leary

I’m not trying to make friends, I’m just trying to make money. Kevin O’Leary

But why?

You may lose your wife, you may lose your dog, your mother may
hate you. None of those things matter. What matters is that you
achieve success and become free. Then you can do whatever you like. Kevin O’Leary

But Kevin himself knows that money is not forever:

When I turned 50, something clicked in my head and I said, ‘I’m
not going to live to 100. I’m half-cooked already.’ I set the family
down and I said, ‘Listen everybody, we’re now entering the decade
of Daddy. We’re going to start doing things that I want to do.’  Kevin O’Leary

Jesus puts his finger on the real problem:

….this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?” Luke 12:20

Instead of sacrificing friendship for money, Jesus tells us it should be
the other way around:

I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth, so
that when it fails you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. Luke 16:9

Jesus’ advice is very different than Kevin’s:

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth
and decay destroy, and thieves break in and steal. But store up
treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor decay destroys, nor
thieves break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there also
will your heart be.  Matthew 6:19-21

Kevin O’Leary’s “decade of Daddy”, when he does what he wants with his money, is not going to last, and he knows it. So why work for money at the expense of all else? Let us take Jesus’ advice rather than Kevin’s: Jesus will not make us rich, but he will make us good, and in the end, the treasure he gives will last forever, the gift of eternal life.

Copyright 2015, Agapios Theophilus

Agapios Theophilus

Agapios Theophilus is the "nom de plume" of a catholic layman who has loved Jesus from when, as a young boy in the 1970s, he first learned about him. His First Communion, at the age of seven, was the happiest day of his life, and he celebrates its anniversary each year. He lives in a large city with his beloved wife, two wonderful children, and an affectionate orange and white cat. He has no formal qualifications whatsoever to write about Jesus: he writes only because he has been given the great gift of knowing and loving him, and he would like others to come to know and love him too. See Agapios' posts at https://sites.google.com/view/agapios-theophilus and follow Agapios on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/a9apios