St Stefanos Greek Orthodox Church - St Petersburg Florida

The Christian Orthodox believer in today’s culture gets different and contradicting messages, which might confuse his perception about wealth. On the one hand, he lives in a culture that magnifies the importance of money and wealth to the point that it is often used as the sole criteria for evaluating human success and achievement. On the other hand, his Orthodox heritage exhorts him to willingly and regularly give up a portion, or all, of his wealth to serve the poor and to contribute to the Church's charitable work. 

This is a kind of self-imposed poverty designed to help him subdue his greed, and, ultimately, to help him reach the perfection that leads to the heavenly kingdom. In the face of this seeming contradiction, Christian believers typically wonder whether their obedience to Christ will result in depriving them of the opportunity of worldly success and material wealth, or whether such success will deprive them of their obedience to Christianity, and even their salvation.

The Balanced Life of Christ

From the Scriptures, and from the example of the life of our Savior, there is a very concrete answer to this seeming dilemma. The holy gospel illustrates that the human life of the Lord Jesus Christ was both uniquely simple and always balanced between his partaking of worldly materials, and being Himself the actual presence of the kingdom of God.

For example, while He fasted frequently (Matthew 4:2), He never hesitated to accept invitations to banquets and weddings (John2: 2), or to go to people’s homes to dine and to drink with them (Matthew 8: 10). In fact, the events of the very last night before His arrest took place after the Lord concluded celebrating the Mystical Supper (Matthew 26: 20) with his disciples.

We need to remember that every time we hold our money for ourselves and avoid helping the needy with it, we do not only sabotage the work of God, but we also demonstrate our distrust in God, and our feeling of insecurity. Having wealth is not wrong, but worshipping it is wrong. Every time we prefer to hold on to our money instead of using it for God’s work to serve His people, is a type of idol worship. We need to be generous with our money, and to serve a good purpose with it other than ourselves, because it is the way that helps us to strengthen our faith and purify our souls. Ultimately we need to know that without gaining the virtue of generosity, it is impossible to enter into the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 6:24).