Wanting Isnʼt Bad, Billionaires Are
thoughts on a subpar sermon
Welcome to my recently-renamed publication, Halleylujah! Iʼve always thought it was rather fun that my name, Halley, was built into the word hallelujah, save the y. This space will not be triumphant in that sense of hallelujah (except when thereʼs good reason to be). Instead, think of the name as ʼHalleyʼs musings on religion and faith—and whatever the hell else she feels like writing about.ʼ
On Fatherʼs Day, our family went to church, which is a pretty irregułalr occurrance for us (well, for me and the kids. My husband goes a little more than we do). The church is fully inclusive of all LGBTQIA identities and affirms women at all levels of church leadership—I wonʼt have anything to do with a church that doesnʼt meet those two requirements. The service was fine—itʼs usually fine. Not great, but not bad. The sermon was about money (yay) and in the context of a series on the topic (I did not listen to the preceding sermons, nor those that followed). So I recognize that my opinion is not fully informed.
That said, because of my trauma from evangelicalism, sermons about greed make me uneasy. On the one hand, yes, say that greed is bad—it is—but youʼve gotta be careful about a subtext that communicates that wanting is also bad. Actually, itʼs more than a subtext when the post-sermon song is I Shall Not Want by Audrey Assad (side note—I love Assadʼs music, particularly her newer stuff, which this is not). We absolutely live in a consumerist society, and retail therapy easily gets out of hand, and amassing wealth absolutely leads to problems. But some of us come from backgrounds that taught us that we were not allowed to want anything. A couple of humdingers from Proverbs were used to shove this down my throat in my youth:
“Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.” Psalm 37:4
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.” Proverbs 3:5-6
With the Psalms verse, it was understood that the desires of your heart really meant the desires of Godʼs heart. And from Proverbs we learned that our minds were faulty and not to be trusted—so if you wanted something, that definitely meant you shouldnʼt have it. This resulted in my internalizing the belief that it was wrong to want all manner of ʼwordlyʼ things—love, sex, joy, success, achievements, and more.
You were supposed to want JESUS—thatʼs it.
So, okay, pastor, I get it. Donʼt be a shallow person who focuses on buying yachts. And donʼt hoard money and refuse to be generous with others. Iʼm on board. But the phrase I shall not want takes me right back to the vilification of desire, and for all the Churchʼs warnings about the slippery slope of faith deconstruction, this is the real slippery slope.
Especially for women—no one says, ʼWell men can want things; itʼs only sinful when women want things,ʼ but thatʼs often implied. Eve wanted that damn apple, and that led to the fall of humanity! Thatʼs the narrative. Women are already socialized to focus on contentment (while men are socialized to focus on achievement), so the message to eschew desires hits women and men differently. It shouldnʼt be surprising that less than 13% of billionaires are women.
When pastors address their congregations without considering how gender (and race, and socioeconomic state, and age, and ability, etc etc) affects how people hear their words, bad things happen. Some women are going to make themselves smaller because of the message to want less. Maybe some men will be moved toward generosity, but is that worth it? Iʼm not saying you canʼt preach about greed. But nuance matters.
Another thing: the sermon focused purely on the individual sin of greed, not the societal sin of greed. Like, bro, how can you talk about greed without addressing the existence of billionaires? How can you tell us middle-class Midwesterners not to needlessly renovate our kitchens, but not say anything about Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos? How can you not talk about capitalism infecting everything? Christians should be anti-billionaire and opposed to dark money in politics. I do want to be chałlenged to reconsider my personal behaviors, but if we are not also focused on systemic problems, well, itʼs a huge facepalm.
So, to our sort-of church that meets my base requirements, I need more nuance, awareness, and social consciousness.
I subscribed because I’m an exvangelical, too. I thought I subscribed to the Midwife version and I wondered if it carries over to halleylujah, but in case not, I subscribed to the new.
I liked the Midwife name—maybe because I remember Halley’s Bible Handbook, which I took to task in my own writing. But you can help “overwrite” that Halley with your own, so it’s all good.
One thought about “Thou shall not want.” It was always translated, in my own hearing, as you shall not lack. Entirely different meaning. Goes to show that translation matters. And conservative guy preachers pick the meaning they want to flog.
The monks are climbing that this is a divine intervention and will strike a stunning historic event as everyone unites behind this. They claim that it is all entirely testable by science and therefore scientifically they are explaining everything in the universe so that we can better get to the question of why we are here and what is going on. It's an extraordinary story and I would love some kind of help to get it out if you have some clever way to do that?