"Do not say to yourself, 'My power and the might of my own hand have gained me this wealth.' But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth." (Deuteronomy 8:17-18)
This passage for today intrigues me because it doesn't speak just about wealth, stuff, money, possessions -- but it speaks of the power to get wealth. It is not just about the material objects, but about the activity that produces the material objects. The things we count as valuable don't just have their value in a vacuum: they have value because we assign meaning to them, or we put effort into them, or we recognize that they are useful for meeting needs and sustaining life. A dollar bill is just a slip of paper; but it is invested with a powerful instrumental symbolism for conducting transactions in our economic system, so we count it as wealth -- or a little bit of wealth, at least. We can get so caught up in the attaining, trading, keeping, and increasing of our objects of wealth that we forget these objects have value in the first place because of a psychosociospiritual act that creates their value. And that spiritual act is rooted in God: it is God the Creator who creates us as creative beings, who in our turn can create meaning and value in the things of our material culture. Creating value is something God does first, and then God does in us, so that we can do it with things. Deuteronomy warns us that we forget that at our peril. A Lenten discipline of simplicity and self-denial can help us refocus our attention less on the things themselves and more on the spiritual act of creativity, grounded in God, that is the source of value.
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