Serving God or Serving Mammon? A Book, Revisited at Midlife

2007-09-28

Nineteen years ago I bought a book. The blurb inside called itself a publisher dedicated to undervalued, non-mainstream work, hoping to slowly shape the culture of capitalism from underneath. I remember being curious rather than convinced: how does a publisher know a book is undervalued? How does it know there’s a market for it, before anyone’s read it? I looked up the press online and found a handful of talk listings, a Resources page, and — under Publications — only this one book.

The book was Serving God? Serving Mammon? Christians and the Financial Markets, by Stephen Green who was, at the time, Group Chairman of HSBC. He wrote it in 1995, it was published in 1996, and the Chinese translation came out in 2007. Reading it, apart from the examples feeling a little dated, the book doesn’t feel out of step with today’s society at all. The questions he was asking about globalised markets and the appetite for higher returns read like a description of the world I’m already living in, not a record of his own time.

One thing I know now that I didn’t nineteen years ago is that a few years after Green left HSBC, the bank became caught up in a scandal. I mention it not to pass judgment on what happened but because it points to the real struggle mentioned by the book names “serving God or serving Mammon.” Living inside that tension is the real struggle. My own stage of life is different from back then too: people my age are talking about early retirement, about saving, about building enough of a cushion that work becomes optional rather than necessary. The society around me is moving into an AI era and an economic downturn and no one can point to an easy way out of the difficulties the coming generation will face. In this environment, the tension the book names is no longer theoretical. It’s a daily actual thing to face.

The book’s opening chapter asks two questions still worth asking: does the market actually contribute to human flourishing, does it serve God’s kingdom, or only itself? And what does working inside it do to the spiritual life of the person doing the work, not just their bank balance? The second chapter traces how Christian thinking about money changed — from a “fair price” that moral consensus could fix in advance, to a price that only the market, through free negotiation, could set. Green’s point is that theology has never really kept pace with how fast the world of money changes. Reading that now, a modern parallel writes itself: my own generation’s pursuit of early retirement (FIRE) is another such shift.

The chapter that has stayed with me longest is the one on traders. I’m not a trader but “investing” has become part of everyday life in today’s society. Believers used to discuss gifts and calling inside church; but in the daily reality of investing, what mindset should a believer bring to deciding how much to save, when to retire, how much to prepare for the next generation? Relying on God’s supply and doing financial planning were never actually in contradiction. The real question is which one is driving. Responsibility to family, wanting to give them stability, is not a lesser instinct that faith needs to override. It’s part of faithfulness. And you don’t need to force yourself into being a saint about it either. What’s actually being asked of you is smaller, and more honest: face who you really are, be faithful within what you can actually influence, admit your limits plainly, and keep walking toward the light.

That’s where I am right now: faith is a continuous practice, not something you finish and set down. What carries me forward isn’t my own effort: it’s God’s provision. God Provides.