MONEY—Paul, writing to his young companion and assistant, Timothy (1 Tim. 6:10) said: "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil."
I think I understand where Paul was coming from. But keep in mind that, in his day, all economies were almost entirely barter economies. That is, they were based on the exchange of commodities--goods and services--not, as in modern times, on the exchange of pieces of paper--fiat currencies, which are backed by nothing but how much we trust one another. Who said we lack faith?
In Jesus day, it was possible for people to live at an agrarian standard of living without having to have moneta--bronze, silver and gold.
OURS IS A MONEY-BASED ECONOMY
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I suspect that if Paul were alive today he would say something like as follows:
"The lack of a just, moral, ethical, people-based and loving money system which I consider to be the root of much evil. Some people have too much of it, and some people have too little. This is a greed-based-imbalanced and unjust money system, which is the root cause of much of the unrest and lack of harmony and peace there is in the world. This problem must be solved.PAUL'S CONCERN WAS ABOUT WHAT THE ABUSE OF MONEY DOES TO THE RICH AS WELL AS TO THE POOR
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Read what Paul says around the key verse I quote above: With real concern in his heart, for the happiness of the well-to-do, he speaks about how the rich fall into temptation, get, "caught in the trap of many foolish and harmful desires, which pull them down to ruin and destruction." He laments that many of them have, "wandered away from the faith and have broken their hearts with many sorrows." Ask the CEO's of once great corporations (Enron, World Com, Hollinger, etc.) who are either in or headed for jail.
WHAT IS MONEY?
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The Latin and Italian for money is, moneta. It comes from the name of the goddess, Juno Moneta (meaning the protector). Juno Moneta was the wife of Jupiter (Zeus was the Greek equivalent), king of the Roman gods. It was in Juno Moneta's temple that Roman coins were minted.
Money has a long and fascinating history. Historians tell us that money, in one form or another,came into being long before recorded history. Long before paper and coins with numbers were used, animals--cattle, sheep, pigs, fowl, etc.,--were used. So were crops, such as grains and tobacco.
When more complex social units, such as tribes and cities, came into being--led by individuals with god-like powers--more and more use was made of metals. Gold, silver, copper, bronze, etc., which traded by weight, were the most portable and, therefore, convenient. Coins with numbers on them came much later.
But keep in mind that metals were, in effect, barter items--that is, they had intrinsic value. Paper money, with no intrinsic value, came much later.
THE POUND AND THE DOLLAR
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The Latin and Italian for pound is lira, the French is livre. This why we use the symbol "L".
It is said that the original pound was a pound of copper.
By the way, it was expected that a pound of any
metal--gold, silver, copper, whatever, was not some debased amalgam. More details can be found at the sites listed below.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Money#The_emergence_of_moneyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CurrencyWhat about paper money? For an answer to this question check out:
THE SILKROAD FOUNDATION
"The Bridge between Eastern and Western Cultures"
http://www.silkroadfoundation.org/artl/papermoney.shtmlAccording to the silkroadfoundation.org,"Paper currency was a
by-product of Chinese block-printing. It started in the Tang dynasty, but it was not until the Song dynasty that it became institutionalized as a governmental policy ... Unfortunately no written documents exist today which enable us to know how this system of paper currency actually functioned prior to the Yuan period." Interestingly, modern China calls it money yuans.
WE ARE SLOW LEARNERS, OR WHAT?
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Also interesting is that, "When Marco Polo travelled to China, in the 13th century, he was so impressed by the idea of paper money that he described how it was made, used and valued. Despite this, paper money was not commonly used in Europe until the 17th century." Four hundred years! This goes to show how so slow we human beings often really are when it comes to learning new ways of doing things.
GOVERNMENTS, AT ALL LEVELS! WHAT'S THE PROBLEM?
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When you tell us that many socially useful projects have to go undone, I want to ask: Is it because of the lack of money? Or is there an actual lack of people, goods and services to get the job done?
Now, if the problem is an actual lack of capital resources--including the lack of bricks, mortars and other commodities, trades people, labourers and the like--I can accept this. However, if you tell me that the problem is the lack of money—the unit of measurement, I want to ask, how come?
This is like a contractor saying to me: "Mr. King, we cannot complete building your house, because our trades people have run out of inches.
THE RE-INVENTION OF PAPER MONEY IN EUROPE
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The story goes that—and no one knows, exactly, how it actually
happened—paper money was re-invented, in Europe, not by any
government, but by certain enterprising entrepreneurs, who made a
business of storing coins and precious metals, belonging to the
well-to-do, for a fee. Knights and others, returning from the
Crusades, had need of a place to store the precious metals which they had earned, and/or stolen, while on their crusades. On the deposit of the precious metals—much of it gold and silver—the warehouse-owners gave the depositors paper receipts. Perhaps most of them were honest; but some were less so.
Most depositors simply kept their gold in storage, and used their
receipts like we, today, use paper money to pay debts. Instead of
redeeming the notes for metal—which the note bearers presumed remained on deposit—most recipients simply used them over and over again. By the way, until the 1960's, our banknotes actually carried the words,
"The Bank of Canada will pay the bearer..." (I have a couple of such
notes). Supposedly, they were backed by metal. Today's banknotes,
which are not backed by bank-held metals, carry the simple statement:
"This is legal tender". This is called fiat currency.
It wasn't long before savvy warehouse owners noticed that a large
percentage of the deposited metals remained, un-redeemed, in their
vaults. Yielding to temptation, certain vault owners , without fully
disclosing what they were doing—that the gold in their vaults actually
belonged to others—started creating unsecured paper money loans, and
loaned it out, at interest—to the war-like nobility and adventurers
clamouring for loans. In other words, the vault owners created money,
in the form of paper, and out of thin air. Sound familiar? And some of
them made fortunes. Some lost everything. Later, with the help of the
powerful nobility and legal advisers, which created the laws of the
land, this way of doing business—And let us not be afraid to name it
for what it was, fraud—was actually made legal. It became what we now
call fractional-reserve banking.
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If you think I am making this up, check out any of the basic texts on
economics. For example, see pages 278-279, Basic Economics, by Richard
Echaus, Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Interestingly, Chapter 14 of
Marshal McLuhan's book, Understanding
Media, is all about that most important medium, money.
