Dragon Slaying VIII

Sobriety settled his voice as his cadence slowed, becoming more focused and deliberate. I knew this conversation would be unlike any I had experienced.

A friend and I were walking through the neighborhood, talking as we often did about family, life, and faith when the discussion drifted toward work. The usual complaints never surfaced. There was no frustration about salary or resentment toward long hours. Instead, he spoke with visible concern because his business was about to expand beyond anything he had imagined.

He was worried about how much money he was going to make.

Not excited.

Not triumphant.

Worried.

With remarkable self-awareness, he spoke about his growing concern. He externally processed the danger of wealth shaping the soul and how abundance can be an abyss into which one sinks without noticing. He speculated that comfort might dull his dependence upon God. He wondered aloud what kind of man prosperity might make him.

His uncertainty unsettled me. He was an unaware prophet worried about dragons that I desperately hoped to find.

To this day, he remains the only person I have known who possessed a holy fear of greed.

Unlike me. I have no fear of riches.

I want them.

Years earlier, another friend and fellow pastor and I had sat commiserating over scotch and cigars, both underpaid and exhausted, imagining alternate lives we might have lived had we chosen different vocations.

I asked what he would have done and he answered immediately, as if he’d rehearsed the answer in his mind a thousand times over.

“I would have made as much money as humanly possible.”

I wasn’t aghast at such shallowness. I wasn’t concerned about how his heart might be drawn away from ministry, entangled and choked out by the thorns of worldly wealth.

My internal response met his just as quickly.

Me too.

My first friend feared what wealth might do to his soul. I realized my soul would welcome it eagerly, baptizing prosperity as divine blessing.

I am the Dragon

I am Eustace in C.S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, unconcerned about possession reshaping the possessor.

In the story Eustace is an entitled, complaining brat. He stumbles across a pile of dragon’s gold and opts to hoard it unto himself, not knowing that the gold is enchanted. He falls asleep on the treasure and awakens in the body of a dragon. His inward heart became his exterior reality.

The boy does not want to be a dragon, and so he cries out for Aslan the Lion, begging him for healing. Lewis describes the scene in this way.

“You will have to let me undress you,” said the Lion. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it. The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I’ve ever felt….Then he caught hold of me… and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious…And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again.”

My soul does not tremble before the dragon of avarice because I am the dragon: scaled, clawed, and ravenous.

To un-dragon the soul Jesus must rip and tear away the knobby and hardened skin of greed.

This is why He spoke so aggressively when addressing wealth.

Sell everything.

Why Jesus Warned the Rich

Jesus understood that wealth warps the human heart in irreparable ways. He called it Mammon, an ancient demon god that takes the place of the true and living God.

One might look at this section’s title “Warning the Rich” and breathe a sigh of relief.

Well, that’s obviously not me, I’m not rich.

That may be the most deceptive and dangerous thing about wealth. No one ever says, “I have enough.” It is a ravenous beast that is never satisfied.

Our deception deepens in prosperity.

We are the most affluent and comfortable humans in history, yet largely unaware of how much provision we take for granted—or how easily comfort lulls the heart to sleep. Without noticing, our dependence shifts from the Giver to what has been given, trusting in what we possess rather than the only One who truly provides.

Affluence is an anesthesia numbing us to our need.

Comfort dulls awareness of dependence and persuades us that stability originates within our own effort.

Money promises safety, purchases autonomy, and replaces trust. The danger is not possession but possessions possessing the person. The rich young ruler is not condemned for owning wealth but revealed as being owned by it.

Jesus named the surgery required for freedom.

The early spiritual masters recognized this with equal seriousness. John Cassian treated greed not as a minor moral weakness but as a persistent spiritual disease capable of surviving even disciplined religious lives. In Institutes VII he argues that covetousness attaches itself to the heart rather than to material quantity. Moderation alone cannot defeat it because attachment, not abundance, enslaves. His severe counsel begins to make sense once we recognize how deeply the human heart clings to what promises safety.

Greed as a Guide

As with all the vices, to begin to turn from them one must be aware of the desires under the desire.

Beneath the pursuit of more often lies something understandable: the desire for security.

Most people worry about their future and their provision. That concern is normal. Greed begins when legitimate need hardens into hoarding and provision becomes self-protection. We slowly assume responsibility for sustaining ourselves and forget that life itself is received.

Ever since the Fall, sin has convinced us that the abundance and generosity of our God and His creation is actually scarcity. We look at our world and we see limited resources. We look at our bank accounts and set our hope on stockpiling.

But greed is not driven by security alone.

Most of us, the most affluent people to have ever lived, already possess extraordinary security. Even if we “lost everything” we have places to go, people who would take us in, families who would help carry us, and food readily available.

Our anxiety is not about survival.

What we truly fear is the loss of status and the unraveling of the identities we have built around what we have.

Wealth fuses with identity.

Status, neighborhood, income, and lifestyle are the modern’s measure of worth. We befriend the world by fixing our minds on earthly things and treating them as our ultimate source of value.

For the scales to fall away, our gaze must be lifted to what is above, not anchored in what is passing. This means following an impoverished and homeless man who lived through the generosity of others throughout his ministry. A follower of Jesus is continually forsaking the standards of this world, embracing smallness and insignificance in the name of heaven touching earth.

Greed ultimately reveals the god we trust.

We either serve Mammon and the world it represents, or we abandon ourselves to the generosity of our Savior, entrusting our security to him and receiving our identity from his love. This is why Paul speaks so severely when he writes, “Put to death… greed, which is idolatry.”

Between Poverty and Prosperity

So how should we read Jesus and Paul when they say, “Sell everything, put it all to death”?

For some, it is a literal call. Many of the great saints came from wealth yet surrendered it in response to Christ and devoted themselves to the poor.

For most, the task is ongoing discernment, regularly asking whether our possessions own us or whether we are using them to serve others.

Modern Christians often swing between two distortions, poverty and prosperity theology, but the narrow way is a middle ground between the extremes.

Prosperity theology claims wealth demonstrates divine favor, while poverty theology assumes deprivation signals spiritual purity. Both make the same mistake by locating holiness in economic condition rather than freedom of heart.

A man of little means can be just as judgmental and mean as a cruel prince with endless wealth.

I myself once immediately judged the wealthy as out of touch, selfish, and shallow. I have sat through many conversations, particularly with the rural poor, listening as they have lambasted “the man” “the educated” “the rich”.

Humans will take pride in whatever position they find themselves in.

Of course, the stereotype of the rich snob looking down his nose at the hoi polloi exists for a reason.

Money can make a man think he is so much more than he actually is.

Jesus affirms neither position.

He received the generosity of wealthy patrons while praising poor widows and warning that wealth uniquely competes for allegiance.

The issue is never possession alone but attachment.

The middle road for most Christians, as it pertains to wealth, is a lifelong tightrope walk marked by honest questions:

• What do we attach our security to?

• What do we attach our identity to?

• If everything were taken from us, what would remain of our joy?

• Would the loss of wealth expose us, or simply reveal who we already are?

• Do our possessions expand our capacity to love, or quietly shrink it?

• Are we free to give, or anxious to keep?

• Would obedience to Christ feel like liberation or threat if it required real financial loss?

• Are we grateful stewards of what we have, or fearful managers trying to preserve ourselves?

The question beneath them all is simple.

If everything disappeared tomorrow, would Christ still be enough for us to know who we are and to remain whole?

Could you lose everything without losing yourself?

This is the terrifying, but liberating call of the cross throughout the Christian life as it pertains to money.

Between poverty and prosperity lies freedom.

The freedom of total dependance, generosity, and humility.

The early Christians practiced generosity not because poverty was holy but because freedom was. Wealth becomes spiritually safe only when it is received without entitlement, held without anxiety, shared without hesitation, and relinquished without despair.

Jesus established a posture of heart to be embodied by sacrificial generosity among his people. His command to “sell everything”, for most believers, functions as a sobering ongoing spiritual examination.

Jesus spoke absolutely because idols loosen only under absolute claims.

Some must sell everything to become free.

All must be willing to.

Turn Away

This week, take time to examine where your security and identity truly rest.

Be ruthlessly honest.

Strip away the answers you know you are supposed to give and pay attention to what your heart actually clings to.

Sit with Jesus’ command to sell everything.

Imagine, as concretely as you can, the loss of wealth, savings, comfort, reputation, and control.

Notice what rises in your body.

• Where does fear appear?

• What do you immediately try to protect?

• What feels unbearable to lose, and why?

Bring those reactions to Jesus without editing them. Name them plainly. Ask him to loosen your grip where fear rules you, to expose the quiet authority Mammon holds, and to strengthen your freedom to trust him alone.

Talk Back

When fear or uncertainty rises around money, employ these scriptures.

“And now, brothers and sisters, we want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability.,” (2 Corinthians 8:1–3, NIV)

The Macedonian Christians illustrate the ludicrous way we must expunge greed from the heart. Even in dire circumstances they overflowed with joy through rich generosity. It is one of the most egregious tragedies that statistically speaking the less money someone has the more generous they are and the more money one has the less they give.

This speaks volumes to us as we consider our own wrestling with wealth.

“Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” (2 Corinthians 9:7–8, NIV)

Determine to give and do so in such a way that it makes you uncomfortable. God will meet your heart there.

Note: I did not say, “God will meet you with all your material desires if you’ll just give them up.”

That’s not the way this works.

We’re not bartering, we are embodying what we say we believe–that God will bless abundantly and we will have what we need.

Enter the classroom of contentment with St. Paul.

“...for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:11–13, NIV)

Training (Askesis/Practice)

• Embody resistance to greed and practice generosity.

• Give something away that you would normally keep.

• Practice gratitude for what you already have rather than imagining what you lack.

• Resist one unnecessary purchase and sit with the discomfort it reveals.

• Confess financial anxiety honestly in prayer instead of managing it through accumulation.

• Invest time or resources in someone who cannot repay you.

Turning from greed is rarely dramatic. It happens through repeated acts of release. Each small surrender retrains the heart, teaching us that our life is not secured by what we possess but by the One who holds us.

Be sober dear friends about the dragon of avarice.

If you awake from an affluent sleep and find that your heart is scaled and your fingers are clawing for more and more—that you are the dragon—fear not, Aslan is coming.

His tearing is terrifying, and painful.

But, how sweet and delicious is the liberty granted to those who entrust him with everything. Security is restored and immovable. Identity is remade in the likeness of Christ. Hands no longer clutch, but open more and more.

Life is finally freed to receive, to give, and to rest in him, always and forever.