R: Mammon Maketh Man

One of Charles Dickens’ most unlikeable characters is Mr. Harold Skimpole, a middle-aged aristocrat who has abandoned his family to mooch off his friends’ hospitality. Throughout Dickens’ greatest novel, Bleak House, Skimpole manipulates his friend Mr. Jarndyce into paying off his debts and giving him loan after loan, which Skimpole wastes on cards and trivialities while his neglected wife and children go hungry. Skimpole is a portrait of an irresponsible sponger who dramatically under-values money. But Bleak House also illustrates the dangers of over-valuing money, as dozens of good people are turned wicked lusting after Mr. Jarndyce’s immenbse fortune. This debate asks: how should we properly value money? Does having more money, in general, help us do more good? Do men have a duty to be providers for their families, as Skimpole was not? Is money inherently corrupting, like the Jarndyce fortune, or is it merely a tool? How much should we weigh a paycheck when deciding between jobs or careers?

The affirmative may point to Harold Skimpole or many real-life examples of the dangers of under-valuing money. It is tremendously irresponsible for one to start a family in an unpredictable economic climate if one has no solid plans for providing for that family. Money empowers us to help others’ material needs - first those within our family, and then others. Wealth is only good or bad insofar as it is used well or poorly. Moreover, Christ calls different people to different uses of money: he tells the rich young ruler to immediately give away everything he has (Matthew 19:16-22), but he tells others to be “faithful in unrighteous mammon” by using their money shrewdly, to benefit the kingdom (Luke 16:1-13). We are called to use our talents and funds shrewdly, not profligately, in service of God and a better world. It is only by making and spending money that conservative political projects can be advanced, that laws can be changed, that the culture can be redeemed, that our families can be safe and comfortable.

The negative may point to Richard Carstone, one of the heroes of Bleak House, who begins the novel as a young man full of life but slowly has his enthusiasm and joie de vivre worn away by his endless litigations in pursuit of the Jarndyce fortune. In the end, he literally drops dead when the lawsuit does not go his way and the money slips from his grasp. In the same way, the pursuit of wealth is a deadly dangerous thing, tending toward excess and nearly impossible to moderate. Greed is the most difficult sin to see in one’s self, whether rich or poor. Jesus talks about money far more than he does about sex, heaven, or hell, and he has nothing complimentary to say. Money is inherently corrupting, and people at Yale especially are far too concerned with storing up something that waxes and wanes at the whims of corporate entities and doesn’t go with us when we die. How much money a man makes has no bearing on how he should be evaluated as a husband, father, or individual, nor should we use the excuse of ‘providing for our families’ to chase lucrative jobs that monopolize our time and energy while producing little of substance for the world.