Money Power and Goodness

"If I had money, I would use it to do good."

I think that many of the people I know employ this kind of reasoning as a justification for their pursuit of wealth. The problem is that many of those people have set the pursuit of wealth as their highest goal, and so they are being shaped by the pursuit of wealth. When they have money they may well try to find outlets to use some of it for good, but being people shaped first by the pursuit of wealth, they lack an essential part of the foundation for deeply knowing and doing good. 

Similarly, many people convince themselves that their pursuit of power is justified by their reasoning that if they had power, they would use it for good. But, if the pursuit of power is the highest goal, then those people are being shaped, not by the desire to do good, but by the pursuit of power. Their souls are more fundamentally oriented toward power-seeking and not toward goodness. So, they may become people with power, but they will be people whose pursuit of goodness is merely a leakage from their true aim, and their desire to do good will always submit to the pursuit of power. 

But, if you will pursue goodness as the highest goal, then you will be shaped by this pursuit. Your soul will gradually become oriented toward the pursuit of goodness. Your priorities will be ordered accordingly. The pursuit of money or power can be submitted to the commitment to goodness. If you have money or power it will come as an outflow of your true priorities, and it can be used in that direction. You will have the ability to know and see goodness deeply. You will have the ability to do good in a way that people who are shaped by the pursuit of money or power cannot do. 

And to do good - to be shaped by that value - you must be committed to becoming good. As a Christian I believe that this is inextricably bound up in my relationship to God. He is empowering me by his Spirit to become like Christ. I am in the process of having my longings transformed. I am being shaped by the pursuit of of true goodness and my soul is gradually being oriented toward it, because it is being gradually oriented toward Him.

Become a person who is committed to goodness, a person whose soul is turning toward the Good and who is being shaped by that pursuit. Don't just pursue power or money with the underlying conviction that you will be one of the few who do good with it. Instead, pursue goodness. And little by little, let that commitment direct the way you use your time, your money, your power. Gradually, your capacity for knowing and doing good will grow, and you will be able to find the resources necessary to accomplish a true vision of goodness, which will itself expand and deepen. You will be increasingly less susceptible to the corrupting influence of money and power because they aren't your highest aim.

This is a picture of Christian spirituality which is very different from the one that is found in many churches where God is employed merely as a vehicle for acquiring the money and power that we are told we are entitled to as Christians. And it is certainly different from the system of priorities typically at work in the worlds of business and politics.

The whole machinery of business is normally bent toward the production of wealth as the highest aim. If an interest in goodness is present at all, it is an awkward byproduct appreciated by a select few; and it is often used as a way of appeasing the consciences of those benefitting from a system shaped first by the pursuit of wealth.

The messy political situations in the U.S., in the U.K., and in Turkey where I live, are evidence of this. Those systems are full of people shaped by the pursuit of power. The systems themselves have become shaped by it, and so many consumers of the system benefit from that corrupted priority. In the candidates for office in those places, I don't see people who are committed to goodness, and who rise to power as a way of enacting their vision of goodness on a grand scale. I see people who don't really care about goodness, but who will use the language of virtue and righteousness to appease the consciences of people who are hoping that some power and money will trickle down to them. 

This isn't a defense of a utopian ideal. All of us are people of mixed motives and our priorities sometimes waiver. But, aiming at the right ordering of priorities is certainly possible. The living examples of so many of my colleagues and mentors demonstrates it. It is possible to become people committed to the pursuit of goodness. It is possible to seek that value in the people we choose for positions of power. And it is possible to build systems that are moving in that direction, to push back against the encroaching corruption that inevitably takes hold when give way to the pursuit of money or power.