Being Good Bankers

Today, almost everyone is worried about the future of their finances. USA Today, on May 5, warned that many grocery items were likely to increase in price because of the Trump administration’s tariffs. Consumers could pay an additional $2,500 to $5,000 for low-cost American vehicles and up to $20,000 for some imported models, CBS reported in April. Goldman Sachs, on May 6, put the likelihood of a recession in the next year at 45 percent.

As Catholics, we know we’re not to prioritize or obsess over money and possessions. “You cannot serve God and mammon,” Jesus warns in the Sermon on the Mount. 

Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? (Matthew 6:24-25) 

Orthodox. Faithful. Free.

Sign up to get Crisis articles delivered to your inbox daily

Email subscribe inline (#4)

Email address

Subscribe

But that’s harder said than done when one has children and the responsibility to feed, clothe, house, and educate them (and if doing so demands going into debt).

Yet, as much as Jesus cautioned us about money, He also taught that we should be “good bankers.” If that sounds to you like something not from the New Testament, you’re correct. Nevertheless, several Church Fathers—including Origen, St. Clement of Alexandria, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. John Cassian—all attest that Jesus preached precisely this. It is one of a number of sayings, called agrapha, attributed to Jesus by early Christian sources but not found in the Gospels—even St. Paul cites one in the Book of Acts, exhorting his listeners to remember “the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’” (Acts 20:35).

Catholic political philosopher Michael Pakaluk stumbled upon this particular agrapha many years ago. Though it seemed at the time somewhat peripheral to the teachings of Jesus, Pakaluk returned to it later as he began an intensive study of the Gospel of Matthew, written, we should remember, by a former tax collector from the Galilean city of Capernaum. In his fascinating new book, Be Good Bankers: The Economic Interpretation of Matthew’s Gospel, Pakaluk offers a fresh consideration of what both Jesus and St. Matthew have to say about business and wealth.

Pakaluk begins by arguing that business is a natural and good human activity for at least three reasons: through the dedication and sacrifice required by business, we become better human beings; we develop a type of language that enables God to speak to us about Himself; and we become capable of perceiving analogies between the spiritual realm and the world of commerce. Indeed, we are all “bankers” in the sense that in the mundane tasks of running our households and managing our own wealth, we all seek to acquire, conserve, grow, and assess value.

In regard to those second and third reasons, consider that a majority of Jesus’ parables discuss money, wealth, or commerce—among them the hidden treasure, the pearl of great price, the tenants, the talents, the rich fool, the lost coin, and the dishonest manager. The same can be said for St. Paul, who often speaks of losing something (social status, wealth, worldly comforts) in order to gain something of much higher value, namely Christ. (Interestingly, Pakaluk observes that translators tend to soften commercial terms in the New Testament, such as changing St. Paul’s reference to “winning” over Jews to the Christian Faith in 1 Corinthians 9:19-22 from the more appropriate word of “gain,” in the sense of a successful commercial enterprise.)

Once you entertain Pakaluk’s thesis, the role of business and wealth in the Gospel of Matthew seems to pop up everywhere, with Jesus constantly urging his audience to make a decision based on a comparative valuation of goods. If the eye causes you to sin, pluck it out; the kingdom of Heaven is like a pearl of great price that is worth everything you own to acquire; if you have great wealth, you may have to surrender it to follow Jesus and attain Heaven. Suffering and sacrifice in this world bring about a reward in the next. 

Plato and Aristotle described a hierarchy of goods which men seek: external (clothing, shelter, money, tools), bodily (strength, vitality, health, comfort), and character (virtues, knowledge, skills, etc.). Jesus, in turn, teaches that there is yet another, higher level to this hierarchy: that of the spiritual, whereby man is able to, in a sense, possess God Himself, the source and end of all those earthly goods. 

Yet man on his own is incapable of reaching God because of His sin, which has incurred a debt too great for man to ever pay. We are, apart from grace, spiritually bankrupt. Thus does God descend in the Word made flesh to pay that debt and enable man to achieve his highest end, the supernatural. This, too, in a sense, carries a certain financial component, as the Incarnation represents a type of transfer of wealth from Heaven to Earth.

Moreover, in solving the problem of our debt of sin (and consequent punishment in Hell) by Christ’s life, death, and Resurrection, God incurs a different kind of debt: one of justice (doing righteous deeds), love (responding to God’s overabundant grace toward us), and emulation or zeal (the desire to follow in Christ’s footsteps). Thus is the life of the Christian a type of reciprocal exchange: we feel a sense of debt that provokes not fear but gratitude and that aims to “pay” that debt by worship and good deeds. We trade both sin and worldly goods for eternal goods in Heaven, “where neither moth nor rust consumes.”

In one sense, that might lead you to think that puts us right back where we started this conversation: we are tempted to spend our days thinking about and seeking to acquire more wealth, while Jesus exhorts us to forget about that and focus our energies on heavenly gain. As Pakaluk argues, it certainly seems the case that Jesus’ extrabiblical exhortation to “be good bankers” means to direct our energies to securing spiritual rather than temporal goods. 

Nevertheless, the very fact that Jesus uses business and wealth as His most common frame of reference for His parables indicates that He recognizes that such things are an ineluctable part of the human condition. His teachings are filled with citations of commerce precisely because He presumes we will understand His analogies—since these are things we are supposed to be doing. (Consider, too, there are no parables where Jesus assumes man’s daily experience is one of theft, adultery, or murder.) 

If that’s the case, it means that at a fundamental level we do not have to choose between seeking to accumulate temporal or spiritual goods. Both are good. And appropriately acquiring, using, and giving away the former is a means by which we can acquire the latter. We acquire wealth to pay for a home for our family; we put money away to pay for our kids’ education. Our task is to be “good bankers” of what God has given us, whether our days be ones of feast or famine.