Without the spirit of mammon there would be no war. In the grip of this spirit, love can be purchased and bodies thrown into the gutter and corrupted. You cannot serve God and mammon. Making life dependent on financial circumstances, mammon gains control and overrides all other relationships. However, where property and money are the deciding factors, the personal relationships are broken up in diabolical ways.
Money materializes men's relationships to one another.
It has grown from a means of barter to a commodity, a possession in itself. It has gained in importance because people need to interact but do not want to come too close to one another because they are afraid of a genuine relationship. The spirit of mammon controls people by things instead of by the spirit of love, and depends on circumstances and conditions instead of on God. It hardens the heart in egoism, the product of self-love, which is the opposite of the spirit that lives for others and gives itself for others. We realize, then, that it is impossible to serve God and mammon at the same time.