Two Stories About Money

Regular readers may know that I'm sympathetic to Hugh Nibley's description of money as "congealed wickedness," so I couldn't help but laugh--and think deeply--when a couple of stories recently caught my attention in which money became an important substitute for something like faith or love. Consider, for example, the recent example of an entire town in Cambodia which converted to Christianity in order to save money: 

At upwards of US$500, the cost of slaughtering a buffalo to revive a relative condemned to ill-health by the spirits has pushed the Jarai indigenous minority residents of Somkul village in Ratanakkiri to a more affordable religious option: Christianity.

In the village in O’Yadav district’s Som Thom commune, about 80 per cent of the community have given up on spirits and ghosts in favour of Sunday sermons and modern medicine. 

Sev Chel, 38, said she made the switch because when she used to get sick, it could cost her hundreds of dollars to appease the gods with a sacrificial package that might include a cow or buffalo, a chicken, bananas, incense and rice wine.

“So if I sold that buffalo and took the money to pay for medicine, it is about 30,000 riel to 40,000 riel [for them to] get better, so we are strong believers in Jesus,” she said. “If I did not believe in Jesus, maybe at this time I would still be poor and not know anything besides my community.” 

It's tempting to celebrate these conversions and the capitalist logic that inspired them, but I suspect that such a celebration would risk placing the end (conversion!) before the means (capitalism)--and I very much believe in a God of MEANS, who is more concerned with how we enter the waters of baptism than with the fact that we made it in. And as long as we're talking about money, it's worth noting that while converting to Christianity might save Cambodians money, that saved money likely won't improve the quality of their marriages. 

According to researchers at Brigham Young University, a strong interest in wealth bodes poorly for prospects of marital happiness: 

Scholars at Brigham Young University studied 1,734 married couples across the United States. Each couple completed a relationship evaluation, part of which asked how much they value "having money and lots of things."

The researchers' statistical analysis showed that couples who say money is not important to them score about 10 to 15 percent better on marriage stability and other measures of relationship quality than couples where one or both are materialistic.

"Couples where both spouses are materialistic were worse off on nearly every measure we looked at," said Jason Carroll, a BYU professor of family life and lead author of the study. "There is a pervasive pattern in the data of eroding communication, poor conflict resolution and low responsiveness to each other."

I'm not quite sure how to synthesize these two stories about money and its impact on our prospects for happiness or heaven, but I feel confident in saying that money is a more complex phenomenon than Nibley's snarkily glib quote suggests. What say ye readers--anyone willing to take a vow of poverty in exchange for improved prospects of marital bliss? Interested in shopping for a church that will save you tithing money?