Tony is also director of evangelism for the Christian Environmental Association and an associate pastor of Mt. Carmel Baptist Church in West Philadelphia. And the ardent subject of this interview about money. And, no, Tony never did tell us what year car he drives. You tell me how much money a person makes, and I can make a pretty accurate guess about how he voted in the last election, what his views on Clinton are, what denominational affiliation he has, what he believes about the Second Coming and about the Holy Spirit. Money influences all of those factors.
Few things control our behavior more than our economic status.
Not because the poor needed the money, but because the rich young ruler needed to be freed from the way in which money was conditioning his whole perspective on life. John Wesley, who was winning people to Christ out of the lower socioeconomic strata of English society, found that converts stopped boozing, gambling, wasting their money, and instead became diligent and hardworking. Little by little, Wesley observed, they crept up the socioeconomic ladder. The more successful these new converts became, the more they turned away from Jesus and the more they thought foolish the doctrines that Wesley preached. We should say it is the duty of every man to work as hard as he can, to make as much money as he can, to spend as little as he can, so as to give away all that he can.