Author Andreas Schroeder tells about a poor farm boy from Iowa named Oscar Hartzell who in 1913 devised a scheme for separating a good many people from their life savings. He cooked up the idea of contacting everyone in the United States with the last name of Drake. He told them he’d made an astonishing discovery: due to a bureaucratic bungle, the estate of the famous British pirate Sir Francis Drake had never been paid out to his heirs. It had just been sitting there for over 300 years, gathering interest. So by now it was worth an eye‑popping four trillion dollars--enough money to buy all of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales combined! Hartzell invited people named Drake from all over North America to invest in his campaign to take the British government to court to retrieve that money. He promised that everyone would make at least $500 for every dollar invested.
You wouldn’t believe how many people fell for that scam. Not just thousands--tens of thousands. Housewives sent Hartzell their grocery money. Kids sent him their allowance. Retirees sent him their life savings. Some ministers even sent him their church offerings! The former farmer’s boy from Iowa who came up with this scam was able to move to England, become a duke, and live like a king in a mansion with maids, cooks, butlers, gardeners, and drivers.
Even after the FBI checked out his story and announced that it was a total lie, that Sir Francis Drake’s wife had inherited and duly received her husband’s estate back in 1597, people kept sending Hartzell their money. Even after Hartzell was arrested, tried, and sent to Leavenworth Penitentiary, people still kept sending him their cash. They didn’t stop until he finally died, in prison, after operating his scam for over 30 years. (1)
Are people crazy? We want to ask. Are they greedy? Are they that desperate? You say, well that was back in a simpler time when people were naïve. Oh? Have you ever received an e-mail from the wife of a certain Nigerian prince? That scam is still emptying the pockets of thousands of people each year, I’m told.
A cartoon came across the Internet recently. It showed a room full of money. The caption read like this: “A Nigerian man dies and authorities find $27 billion in his apartment. He had been trying to give it away for 15 years but no one would return his e-mails.” That’s hilarious. People can still be very foolish when it comes to money.
Which brings us to a very well-known story from the ministry of Jesus. A man ran up to Jesus one day and fell on his knees in front of him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“Why do you call me good?” Jesus answered. “No one is good--except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not steal, you shall not give false testimony, you shall not defraud, honor your father and mother.’”
“Teacher,” he declared, “all these I have kept since I was a boy.”
Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!”
The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, “Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
Is there anyone here today who truly believes that all your problems will be solved if you just had a little more money? O.K., how about lots more money?
One guy said, “I’m planning to retire and live off my savings. What I’ll do the second day, I have no idea.” Maybe that’s your situation.
Of course, it’s no fun to be short of cash. Did you ever see the commercial on TV where a man is sitting in the chair at a tattoo parlor expressing his love to his girl Donna by getting her name tattooed on his arm? Part way through the procedure he asks how much it will cost. “$50,” says the tattoo artist. The man pulls out his wallet and says, “Oh, I only have $41.” The camera cuts to the couple outside on the sidewalk, Donna is storming off and the guy is yelling after her, “I’ll get it fixed.”
The camera zooms in on the tattoo which reads, “I love Don.” (2)
We know that more money will not solve all our problems, but it also can be uncomfortable to run out of money at an inconvenient time. Some of us may be having a difficult time financially. We don’t want to minimize the difficulty with that.
Still, we need to confront the fact that Jesus warned time and time again against the danger of materialism--of loving money more than God. He says in this passage that a rich man will have a hard time getting into heaven. On another occasion he talked about a rich man who built barns to hold his surplus crops and then died in the night. Jesus called him a fool because he had not laid up treasure in heaven.
In another story he describes a man who woke up one day in hell because the man had great wealth and he ignored the needs of a beggar who lay at his gates. On another occasion Jesus told his disciples not to be anxious about what they should eat, or what they should drink, or what they should put on. We are not to worry about these. We are to trust in God, not in our bank account. Jesus warned time and time again about reliance on money.
Notice, he did not say that it is impossible for a rich man to get into heaven. There are many wealthy figures in the Old and New Testaments who were good people and who were not condemned. But again, to be fair to our religion and fair to our responsibilities, we need to be reminded from time to time of the dangers of the drive for wealth. What are some of those dangers? Well, let’s think about that for a moment.
For one thing, the drive for wealth can be dangerous if it causes you to neglect people you love. Am I making anyone uncomfortable yet? It could be your spouse. It could be your children. It could be your aging parents. It’s not my intent to make anyone feel guilty about the hard choices you make concerning your responsibilities to your employer and your responsibilities to the people you love. It is simply to say that some families have a real problem finding a work/life balance.
It caused some people to do a double-take a few years ago when it was reported that a different kind of rental agency had opened up in Japan. This agency didn’t rent automobiles or tools or homes or any of the other items that are usually offered for rent. Instead this agency was called, “Rent-a-Family.” This service catered to elderly people who are alone. Most of them have genuine families, but those families are too busy to give them much attention. This agency offers a stand-in family that visits these lonely elders for a few hours and acts like “real” family. Reports tell of customers paying more than $1,000 a visit for the service.
During “Rent-a-Family” visits, elderly people treat the actors whose time they are renting like their own children and grandchildren. They often hand out pocket money to the stand-in “grandchildren” and berate those playing their “children” for not visiting more often. The president of the “Rent-a-Family” agency explains, “There are lots of people who feel lonely because everyone is chasing money and no one pays attention to the human need for love and acceptance.”
Mrs. Suzuki, a retired doll-maker who rented a family, wrote about it: “From the bottom of my heart, I felt as though they could be my family. I know they’re not my real family, but there was a real feeling of warmth.” (3)
How sad. Old people who pay younger people to give them a little attention because their own families ignore them. Of course, maybe there ought to be a “Rent-a-Dad” agency in every community or a “Rent-a-Spouse” agency. It’s not only the elderly who get neglected. In many cases the biggest loser turns out to be the one who does the neglecting, because he or she one day finds themselves alone because of their neglect of the people closest to them. The drive for wealth can be dangerous if it causes you to neglect people you love.
The drive for wealth can be dangerous if it causes you to get your values out of whack. Motivational speaker and best-selling author Tony Robbins in his book Unshakeable gives us a glaring example of somebody who let his drive for wealth get out of control. His name is Johnny Depp and, as many of you know, he one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood. Robbins notes that Depp has made more than $650 million on blockbuster movies like Pirates of the Caribbean and as the face of luxury brands like Dior. And yet this fine actor is now reported to be in serious financial trouble. While he maintains it’s due to mismanagement by his financial managers, his managers point to Depp’s lavish spending. According to his managers, Depp was spending $30,000 per month on wine, and even paid $3 million to blast the ashes of the late journalist Hunter S. Thompson out of a custom-made cannon. (4)
Of course, as we often say, this is a free country and you can spend your money any way you please, but not every expenditure is a wise one and some people do very foolish things with their money.
Each year thousands of people visit the renowned Hearst Castle on the west coast, the home of the fabulously wealthy William Randolph Hearst. Pastor John Ortberg notes that Hearst accumulated “3,500-year-old Egyptian statues, medieval Flemish tapestries, and centuries-old hand-carved ceilings, and some of the greatest works of art of all time, most of which came from Sweden. He built a house of 72,000 square feet to put his stuff in. He acquired property for his house: 265,000 acres; he originally owned fifty miles of California coastline. He collected stuff for eighty-eight years. Then you know what he did?” asks John Ortberg. “He died.” (5) He died. You know how much William Randolph Hearst left behind? That’s right . . . all of it.
“The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest,” said Jesus in one of his parables. “He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”’
“But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’
“This is how it will be,” Jesus concluded, “with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:13-21).
Do you take Jesus seriously or not? It’s a serious question. Now you and I will never be as wealthy as Johnny Depp or William Randolph Hearst, but the same principles apply to the use of our financial resources as it did to theirs. Are we neglecting people that we love because of our chase of the almighty dollar? Are we using the resources that God has given us wisely? Are we generous with those who are not as fortunate as we are? Are we laying up treasure in heaven as well as on earth? These are sensible questions we need to ask regardless of our income.
Why is this all so important? It is because money has a way of distancing us from God. It is an unusual person who can balance possession of great wealth with the call to follow Jesus.
A man named Richard Koch recently wrote a book titled, Living the 80/20 Way: Work Less, Worry Less, Succeed More, Enjoy More. In it he cited a recent survey of people who were asked how much more money they would need for them to be free of worrying about money. It turned out that those with incomes over $100,000 thought they needed far more money than those with incomes under $40,000. The high earners were five times more likely to say they needed at least another $90,000 annual income in order not to worry about money.
Does that make sense to you? Shouldn’t a person making only $40,000 dollars a year worry more about money than a person making $100,000 a year? But that’s not how it works. Invariably the more money you have, the more money you need to make you happy. If you doubt that, there is concrete scientific evidence to back it up.
Two prominent psychologists, Jim Loehr and Martin Seligman, cite studies that demonstrate that after a person accumulates a certain level of wealth, further accumulation has an inverse effect on their happiness and general well-being. It seems that if you extract wealth well beyond what you actually need, according to their studies, it turns on you. The more you have, the less happiness it brings. (6)
There can come a point where money becomes so important in your life that it not only distances you from God, it actually becomes your God. That is why Jesus was quite direct when he said in Matthew 6:24, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
A man ran up to Jesus one day and fell on his knees in front of him. “Good teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?” . . .
Jesus looked at him and loved him. “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” At this the man’s face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth. This is a sad story. This man’s money had become more important to him than following Jesus. How about you? How about me? Do we need to examine ourselves and ask if material wealth has become too important in our lives so that it affects our relationships with others, so that it is affecting our satisfaction with our lives, and most important of all, so that it is creating a distance between ourselves and God?
1. Scams, True Stories from the Edge (Buffalo, NY: Annick Press Ltd., 2004), pp. 2-3.
2. I have misplaced the source of this illustration.
3. G. Krause, “Rent-a-family.” Cited in 600 minutes with God: 200 Devotionals for Christian Men by Dick Duerksen and Ray Dabrowski, editors (AdvenTalk Media, 1996), p. 8.
4. Unshakeable: Your Financial Freedom Playbook (Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition).
5. When the Game Is Over, It All Goes Back in the Box (Kindle Edition).
6. Steve Bivans, The End of Fear Itself: How to Crush Your Limitations, Manifest Success, Achieve Health, Happiness, & Save the World (Shireness Publishing, Kindle Edition).