In the summer of 2001 prior to 9/11, I was working hard in Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley in the Banks group and co-headed what would now be called FinTech. It was four years into the job I had dreamed dating back to my early days in Allendale NJ with my Dad and I watching Wall Street Week with Louis Rukeyser there at Tallman Place. On the weekends, I would travel from Manhattan or Connecticut to the cape, often flying straight from work on a Friday evening out of LaGuardia airport into the scenic dunes of Provincetown airport where I had left a car in the parking lot from the weekend prior.
My family was up on Cape Cod for the summer staying at our house in Eastham on Cape Cod’s bay side, not far from where I had grown up going in the summers of my youth. It was a special place where I often escaped to, to be with Bridgette and our daughter Claire (who was one at the time). It was also a time away to pray and be with the Lord. It was a place of retreat.
That year, I was interviewing for a new job at Deutsche Bank with some of my ex-Morgan Stanley collogues. This new job opportunity was in management, would be a promotion, in a new area of banking for me personally (Equities Sales and Trading) and with that, my hope for landing a big contract with some “lumber” (parlance for # of millions by # of years in contract). Maybe a 3 by 3. Or even a 5 by 3.
However as 2000 turned into 2001 and time went on, the Wall Street job market got worse and people were starting to get laid off left and right. I was getting burnt out at work, with my zeal for forward progress at Morgan impacted by political knives out and the market for deals being shrunk through the post-internet bubble breaking in 2000. Had I missed the window?
I still hoped for the best. The opportunity was a big one, with big responsibility. I still had dreams of some big lumber in my head. I aways saw this just reward for hard work, talent, and experience rewarded. I definitely felt underpaid currently when measuring myself against my peers.
So one weekend I was resting in bed and heard a sweet voice – maybe a sickly sweet voice – say
Money Loves You
I woke up with a start. I’m like that really weird. Isn’t there a scripture about that? Is this good or bad?
I grabbed the NIV study bible my Dad and Mom had given me for my birthday that year. It was near my bed. I flipped to the index. Looked up “Money” and found what I was looking for. Here it is
The Love of Money is the root of all evil
1 Timothy 6:10
So, here I am thinking, well money itself is not bad. And a worker is worth his wages. It’s the love of money that at issue. But what does money loves me mean? I could do good with my money. If I had more, I could do more good, right?
I quickly concluded this voice was not of God, it was a temptation, a trap. A warning to understand that this was the line of temptation I was being set up for perhaps. If “big” money was a temptation, an enticement, I needed to be careful.
Later, I came to understand that mammon is connected with spirits that animated money issues. These spirits make you feel certain ways about money. If your running low on money, the temptation to that an unhealthy spirit of fear can rise up inside you and be associated with a spirit of anxiety tied to running out of money. It can be so acute as to feeling like your going to die.
God has not given us a spirit of fear, but one of power, of love, and a sound mind.
2 Timothy 1:7
And the desire to get more money, whether to avoid ever running out (like a survival instinct, or a squirrel squirreling away as many nuts before winter as possible), or to accumulate more and more for our own desires, our own pleasures.
You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.
James 4:3
So, even though money is an inert object, these feelings, these spirits that surrounded money are not good. In fact, Jesus had some very strong things to say about anyone trying to serve money, which is like saying making money the point or priority of doing whatever we do.
No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
Matthew 6:24
Here I was. Pondering these matters. Was I too fixated on getting this big contract? Even if my desire to give more was genuine, what about my desire for material goods or possessions? Like houses, cars, boats, even planes, etc.
2001 turned out to be a pivotal year in my life.