How Is Money Evidence of Serving Others?

Dear Rabbi and Susan,

I’ve heard you say that money is one of God’s ways of rewarding us for serving other human beings. But what about people who become wealthy doing things that seem useless, frivolous, or even harmful? Doesn’t the success of people like that, disprove the idea that making money is evidence of serving others?

Sincerely,

Sarah P.

Dear Sarah,

Your question is a good one because it allows us to clarify exactly what it means to “serve another human being.” When we say that money is one of God’s mechanisms for rewarding us for serving other people, we’re not saying that everything people spend money on is admirable. Instead, we are saying that in a free economic exchange, money generally flows toward someone who has provided something that another person values.

We stress the crucial word ‘values.’ We don’t say ‘needs.’ Neither do we say, ‘ought to value’. We don’t even say something that is good for him.

If John manufactures an excellent refrigerator, you may pay him because you value keeping your food cold. If Sam makes you laugh, you may pay him for entertainment. If Janet designs a ridiculous smartphone game that allows you to spend six hours pretending to catapult chickens over castles, millions of people may pay her for that too.

In each case we describe something that some human beings desire while others supply it.

That is service in the economic sense, though we must realize that it is not necessarily service in the Biblical sense.

God created human beings with free will. Consequently, human beings frequently desire things that aren’t good for them. People can value pornography, gambling, narcotics, gossip, unhealthy foods, degrading entertainment, and countless other things that diminish rather than elevate them.

The reality is that there is money in supplying those things. This does not disprove the connection between money and service any more than an overweight man buying his fourth doughnut disproves the nutritional value of broccoli.

It demonstrates something about human beings: We don’t always want what is good for us.

We often speak of two opposite mistakes people tend to make about money. The first mistake says, “If somebody is rich, he must be greedy or corrupt.” This is simply not true because wealth can be evidence that somebody has served enormous numbers of people well or a smaller number of people extraordinarily well.

The other mistake says: “If somebody is rich, God must approve of everything he did to acquire his wealth.” This is also not true. As we said in a recent podcast discussing a single woman looking at a man’s finances, money definitely tells us something, but it doesn’t tell us everything. It can tell us that other people valued what you provided. It cannot, by itself, tell us whether what they valued was good.

Consider these three questions:

1. Did people voluntarily give me money because I provided something they wanted?
2. Did I deal with them honestly and honorably?
3. Was what I provided genuinely good for them?

Those are three separate moral measurements, and a Happy Warrior business professional should want to say ‘yes’ to all three.

All this helps explain why ancient Jewish wisdom never treats wealth as inherently dirty. Abraham was wealthy. Isaac was wealthy. Jacob was wealthy. Yet neither does the Bible teach us to worship wealth. Wealth is often a measurement of successful human cooperation.

But it is not necessarily a cooperation you admire. Suppose somebody becomes wealthy making silly videos on the Internet. You might well ask, “What possible service has he performed?”

The answer is that maybe millions of exhausted people came home after a difficult day and he made them laugh for ten minutes. Don’t dismiss that too quickly.

Entertainment is a service. Beauty is a service. Convenience is a service. Recreation is a service. Saving somebody twenty minutes is a service. Making somebody smile can be a service. The fact that you would never pay for something doesn’t mean nobody else should.

The more difficult cases are those in which the product actually harms the customer. There we have to say plainly: economic success is not identical to moral success. A person can become skilled at discovering and satisfying unhealthy human appetites.

That is why a Happy Warrior should aspire to a higher life than one measured merely by making money.

The best business goal is to discover ways of serving ever more people, ever more effectively, while helping rather than harming them. Then wealth becomes more than evidence that you have understood what people want.

It becomes evidence that you have found a way to prosper by improving other people’s lives. And that is an achievement worth pursuing.

Feeling confident in what you’re promoting and knowing how to do so effectively is the focus of our exciting new resource, Sell – Influence – Persuade. This video course provides concrete guidance to be successful in your approach as well as ethical guidelines to ensure that your activity matches your morals.

Onwards and upwards in your Finances,

Rabbi Daniel & Susan Lapin

Already own Persuade with Purpose? There’s no need to purchase again. Sell – Influence – Persuade is the newly reworked and rerecorded version, and it will be added to your library at no additional charge.

Appreciated this article? Feel free to share it using this link: https://rabbidaniellapin.com/how-is-money-evidence-of-serving-others/

---

---