FINANCIAL ADULTERY*

For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also (Matthew 6:21).

A person's bank statements are a record of one's true values. Do you suppose God has a direct line to the local bank's records? In any case, Jesus taught that where a person's money is spent is where the heart is. If one spends his money on heaven, his heart will be there too.

Financial problems are the leading factor involved in divorce. In most cases it isn't that there isn't sufficient money, but it is that there isn't sufficient money to satisfy competing values. Of course, there is never enough money to satisfy our wants, but there is enough to satisfy our needs.

When couples marry, they promise faithfulness to one another, but if one of the partners spends money in disregard of the other, thinking only of personal desires, that is what I call, Financial Adultery. The way the money is being spent indicates where the heart is--it is not in the marriage, if fact, it undercuts the stability of the marriage. Financial infidelity is just as serious a breach of trust as an affair.

I have said all this to introduce a quote from Dr. Val Farmer, a psychotherapist and columnist in a weekly area farm paper I used to receive, Complete trust about money is about as basic to a relationship as is sexual and emotional loyalty. Financial unfaithfulness in a marriage is just as destructive to a marriage as any other kind of unfaithfulness. Of course, just as an affair doesn't have to mean the end of a marriage, financial infidelity doesn't have to end it either, but the recovering of trust can be just as difficult.

Grace&Peace,
Tom

*Revised from an earlier post.
**I will be a dorm dad to about 35 boys for the next week, so be patient about receiving a new post.