Money and the Way of Wisdom: Insights from the Book of Proverbs

By Timothy J. Sandoval, PhD

Powerful observations from the Book of Proverbs about life and money
can inform your financial choices even today.

These wise words are far more than one-dimensional pieces of folksy advice. Taken together, they form a coherent way of thinking about the world and the importance of committing to a life of wisdom.

Directly encounter the key texts from Proverbs, their historical setting, their structure and purpose. See the impact their profound teachings can have on your financial life today as an individual, as a member of a community, and as a global citizen. Topics include:

• Kindness to the Poor and Vulnerable
• The Rights of the Poor and Other Socially Vulnerable Groups
• Justice in the Marketplace
• Borrowing, Lending and Surety
• Bribes and Gifts
• Wealth’s Advantages
• Wealth and Fundamental Equality

• Language: English
• Publisher: Turner Publishing Company
• Release date: Sep 12, 2013
• ISBN: 9781594735509

Timothy J. Sandoval, PhD

Timothy J. Sandoval, PhD, is associate professor of Hebrew Bible at Chicago Theological Seminary, where he teaches courses on the Bible and economic ethics. He is a published authority on the Book of Proverbs and other Hebrew Bible-related topics for both scholarly and general audiences.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

The richest fifth of the world’s people

consumes 86 percent of all goods and services

while the poorest fifth consumes just 1.3 percent.

—UNITED NATIONS HUMAN DEVELOPMENT REPORT OF 1998

Capitalism can make a society rich.…

Don’t ask it to make you happy as well.

—THE ECONOMIST, VOL. 381

The Predicament of Money

Economic inequalities in our world are staggering. More than 50 percent of the global population scrapes through life in poverty, while those of us who live in the richest countries in the world are becoming more and more defined by what our money and prosperity can buy us.¹ We are bombarded with advertisements—on TV, on radio, in magazines, on billboards, on the Internet—encouraging us to use our money to consume more and more: a fancier car, a bigger house, a better stereo, and that new dining room set. When financial markets start to flag, we are encouraged to spend yet more, if not for ourselves then for the health of the nation’s economy. The implicit promise is that our spending will make for a happy, fulfilled, and meaningful life—a good life in a strong society. As the modern, somewhat cynical proverb goes: The one who dies with the most toys wins!

Yet at the same time, for many of us—whatever our spiritual tradition, or none at all—there is a spiritual vacuum, a lack of meaning amid our prosperity, a sense that the promises of a good life that our consumerist culture offers are hollow, undeliverable. Some of us spend more and more hours in the office, forfeiting the joys that time spent with family and friends might bring and hoping that this investment in time, and the higher earnings it provides, will lead to a significant happiness payoff. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, for instance, the number of college-educated males who regularly work more than fifty hours a week rose from 22 percent in 1980 to 30.5 percent in 2001.² Others among us are persistently anxious about our money, even in the midst of the prosperity that our homes, rich and diverse food, good education and health, and abundant possessions provide us. After all, we still have house payments, grocery bills, the kids’ university tuition, that high-deductible health plan premium, and the new car payments that never seem to end. Plus, we want to continue financially supporting our church, synagogue, or other spiritual home, as well as organizations that are doing such good work downtown or around the globe. In the midst of it all, we may wonder, Will we ever ‘arrive’?

Exacerbating the feelings of hollowness and anxiety that some of us feel—even as we continue to chase happiness via our pocketbooks—is the genuine need we see around us every day, from the homeless vet looking for change on the off-ramp or the migrant laborer struggling clandestinely in a strange land, to the unfathomable reports of famine and global poverty we hear on the evening news. We know we should help—and we will (or we will help more), just as soon as we help ourselves a little more, just as soon as our money and prosperity finally secure our own well-being, our own happiness.

We all have heard that money can’t buy us happiness. But why should any of us dwell on this point, especially those of us who are relatively well off? Money may not be able to buy us happiness, but it can buy a lot that seems to make our lives pretty good.

For one thing, sages across the centuries have long recognized that material prosperity does not inevitably result in spiritual fulfillment and that continued, anxious attempts to buy salvation (as it were) actually diminish human well-being. Our pursuit of the good life through the frenzied pursuit of wealth not only may not pay off, it actually carries its own costs. Even nonsages have begun to recognize that the unbridled pursuit of wealth and money can produce the sort of anxiety and diminished quality of relations with family and friends that we noted above; it can also contribute to things like mental illness. A report by James Montier of the investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, for instance, suggests that paranoia, narcissism and attention deficit disorders are just some of the afflictions more likely to dog you if you pursue purely materialistic goals.³

Large-scale, unbridled quests for money and riches, moreover, can also produce great economic inequalities like those we see in our world today. Significant economic inequality, in turn, can contribute to a range of social problems and generate strife between members of the same community, society, or country. In the rapidly changing nation of China, for example, a 2007 poll by the China Youth Daily found that 57 percent of those questioned were unhappy with the rich and used terms such as extravagant, greedy, and corrupt to describe them. A huge majority, 93 percent, also thought the rich should be socially responsible. Yet the same percentage of people wanted to be rich, too.⁴ Despite a rough but clear sense of the moral dangers that the pursuit and attainment of significant wealth entails (people associate greed and corruption with the rich), most people who responded to this poll nonetheless desired to be rich, believing, one assumes, that wealth somehow holds the key to a good and flourishing life.

Yet the inequalities and class tensions that arise from the pursuit of wealth, as well as the belief that money equals happiness, are not limited to far-off places like China. In the United States and other affluent countries in the West, poor and working-class discontent with the excessive rewards of Wall Street hedge fund managers and executives’ golden parachutes is easy to discern. And although national incomes in these countries have increased significantly over the last several decades, the percentage of people who describe themselves as happy has remained constant.⁵ As Jennifer Michael Hecht, author of The Happiness Myth, has stated, Above the poverty line, money is not the answer to happiness.⁶

Our Response to the Predicament of Money

How, then, ought those of us—whether middle class or people of means—who possess some wealth, but may lack the full, meaningful life we desire, respond to this situation? Some of us, no doubt, have simply decided to live with, or ignore, the tension and anxiety that our money, and our pursuit of money, creates in our lives. Although experience tells us that prosperity does not hold the key to a genuinely good life, somewhere deep inside, a good number of us still hope that with a little more time, a few more promotions, or the right investment strategy, we will get the happiness payoff we so desperately, sometimes secretly, long for. Ultimately we may agree with John D. Rockefeller, who when asked, How much money is enough? supposedly famously quipped, One dollar more.

Others among us, however, seek to move beyond the tension and anxiety. We look to whatever spiritual resource we can find for some sort of enlightenment, some way out of the predicament. Some of us look to simplify our lives, or we seek peace of mind by supporting charities and joining the efforts of causes and organizations working for a more just world. Some of us turn to meditation to calm our troubled and anxious spirits. Others mine the texts and interpretations of Buddhism, Hinduism, or the world’s indigenous peoples for answers, hoping that among the insights of these disparate faiths and cultures we will find some wisdom for living in our world today. We buy whatever spiritual advice book we can get our hands on—maybe even this one. We are consumers, after all.

The Bible and the Book of Proverbs

This book is about helping you break out of the predicament, whatever spiritual path you follow. But it’s different, too. It’s not a self-help book, though it talks about the ways some of us might change how we think about, and what we do with, our money—for example, whether our investments ought to be made in a socially conscious way. But, more important, it asks us both to delve beneath the surface of our individual behaviors and to examine our fundamental moral orientations in order to discover whether our actions and beliefs are beneficial to our spirit and our world. Giving to charity may be a good thing to do—but why, and what are the limitations of such good work? Through this book we can begin to ask the deeper questions of ourselves; in the process, we can discover what our fundamental priorities are for all the ways we deal with our wealth, however much we may possess.

Like many other books, this one looks to the wisdom of people from a time and place very different from our own to help us find our way when it comes to our money and the way we should, and should not, deal with it. Yet the tradition that this book turns to for guidance—the Bible and, especially, the Book of Proverbs—is a touchstone for many people, especially Jews and Christians, and may be a bit more familiar than other spiritual sources.

The Bible is sacred scripture for many. For others, it is an interesting historical document or cultural artifact. Still others may view it as a key tool in religion’s efforts to unduly control and oppress human beings. Over the course of my many years of studying and teaching the Bible in academic and religious environments—in churches, university classrooms, and theological schools—I have witnessed how those who seriously engage the biblical texts, even skeptics and nonreligious students, consistently find much to ponder in the Book of Books. Indeed, even if certain biblical perspectives—for example the role of women in religious communities and society—are not and cannot be adopted by many modern readers of the Bible, those who read the scripture critically but also with an openness to learning are rarely disappointed with the effort. Serious study and reflection on the Bible nearly always leads us to discover new and valuable insights into many of the issues and concerns that we face in our lives and in the contemporary world.

Discovering the Way of Wisdom

More than any other book of the Bible, the biblical Book of Proverbs discusses one of these topics of broad contemporary concern— money and questions of wealth and poverty, the rich and the poor. Although Proverbs is often thought to be nothing more than a simple and straightforward guide to worldly success, including financial success, closer examination shows that the book’s pithy sayings and elegant poems form a sophisticated and clever system of rhetoric that transcends the comparatively superficial advice it appears to give. Instead, it plumbs profound truths about a host of matters we are still concerned with today. The ancient sages who composed and edited the book wanted to convince their original audience, and subsequently those of us who read the book today, to acquire wisdom, or those values and virtues or character traits that can help us lead not merely financially prosperous lives but, more fundamentally, the fulfilled and morally upstanding lives so many of us long for. According to Proverbs, the moral teachings this book holds out to us are of even greater worth than material wealth and should be the primary objects of our search for happiness. For if we have wisdom, we have the key to other blessings, such as peace of mind and a sense of security, harmonious personal and social relations, and a healthy relationship with money. These are the benefits of the way of wisdom that the sages of Proverbs invite us to choose, the characteristics of which we will explore. To reject this path, according to the Book of Proverbs, is to follow the way of folly.

A Modern Sage and the Sages of Proverbs

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once famously asserted that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.⁷ In a very real way, Dr. King’s claim is analogous to the kind of claims the sages of Proverbs make throughout the Book of Proverbs when they, almost naively to modern ears, confidently assume that all will end well for the wise and righteous, but that the foolish and wicked will come to naught. It would be an easy exercise to review the history of any nation or people and their relations to one another and discover a string of wars of aggression, maltreatment of the poor, corruption of legal systems, genocides, and violence in the name of gods and religions—all things that would seem to disprove Dr. King’s claim. Indeed, the Maafa, or destruction of African peoples in the transatlantic slave trade and beyond; or the Shoah (the Jewish Holocaust) carried out by the German Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s; or the fact that 50 percent of the world continues to live on $2 a day or less are enough to make us believe that Dr. King was just plain wrong.⁸ If the real history of human interaction is any guide, we might assert with some justification that rather than the moral arc of the cosmos bending toward justice, it bends toward injustice, violence, destruction, and suffering.

However, this would be to misunderstand Dr. King’s words. Dr. King was not, in my view, offering a kind of statement that might be verified empirically. He was not primarily asking us to look around and see in the great historical events of human history, and in our own day, scientific proof of the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice. As Dr. King said, this arc is long. Like a desert highway that stretches to the horizon, we cannot see from our present position whence it originates, where it ends, the twists and turns it might take beyond the horizon, or even the literal curve it traces over the face of the earth right beneath our feet. Rather, Dr. King’s statement is an assertion of faith regarding the real or true structure of the cosmos. Dr. King was convinced that There is a creative force in this universe, working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, such as racism and poverty.⁹ He was convinced that the genuine shape of the cosmos is one that ultimately favors justice.

Yet if Dr. King’s claim that the arc of the moral cosmos bends toward justice is not the sort of claim that can be empirically verified, what sort of claim is it? What was he attempting to do in uttering such powerful words? I contend that Dr. King’s claim might be understood as doing at least two important things. First, it was the kind of claim that, if accepted, if believed to be true, would serve as a solid foundation for moral or ethical action in the world. From the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s through to our own time, those who have accepted Dr. King’s claim have believed themselves to be standing on the correct or right side of the moral cosmos. They have understood their lives and actions to be in accordance with the true nature of the universe. And an understanding of one’s life and one’s actions in this way is not necessarily something that can be dismissed lightly as mere pie in the sky hope or simplistic faith. Rather, it powerfully grounds our motivation for ethical action in the world. The earnest belief that Dr. King and others held (and many still hold), that the arc of the moral universe does indeed bend toward justice, constructed a

Reviews for Money and the Way of Wisdom

[bostonbibliophile · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Timothy J. Sandoval's new book argues that the Book of Proverbs presents a coherent, consistent system of the morality of money and finance, rather than, as other scholars have argued, an often contradictory or arbitrary collection of sayings. He argues that Proverbs differs from other collections of sayings and morals as found in other cultures in that it represents this singular point of view. He presents his interpretation of the sages' wisdom while addressing modern concerns about finances, such as investing, giving to charity and caring for the poor. He also tries to refute the idea of the Prosperity Gospel.Sandoval divides the book into five sections in which he covers what defines a proverb and what distinguishes Proverbs from proverbs; understanding the origins of Proverbs and its cultural context; then, in the remaining chapters, examining the content of Proverbs. Sandoval discusses issues of social justice and how to start to think about using and earning money in a way that accords with "socially just" goals. He uses examples from popular culture as well as from the Bible to underscore his points and offers a little in the way of direct advice.Money and the Way of Wisdom is more about interpreting the Bible than it is about self-help or financial advice. The book can act as a starting point for thinking about the issues raised in Proverbs and an introduction to interpreting Proverbs as well. The book would be useful to scholars beginning to study Proverbs and to those looking for discussion of issues of money as presented in the Bible. It is recommended for academic collections.