“We Westerners preached Christ with our lips, with our actions we brought the slavery of Mammon. We are more guilty than the infidels: for to those that know the will of God and do it not, the greater the punishment.”
C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) in 7 January 1953 letter to Don Giovanni Calabria as recounted in The Quotable Lewis ed. Wayne Martindale and Jerry Root (Carol Stream: Tyndale, 1990) 91.
I found this gem reading Lewis online while I was exploring the importance of “sharing” in his thinking while sitting here in my hotel in Manila. Westerners often criticize the ideologies in the East, and in snippet of personal correspondence, Lewis rightly exposes the sin of the West: slavery to Mammon.
Do me a favor, Westerners. Should this describe you: eager to preach the gospel of Christ but not willing to live out His teachings with regard to money. Shape up, or please, abandon the faith and serve Mammon, for in the words of Jesus, you can’t serve both! Should you find this too harsh, remember Lewis said it first.
Wes Willmer and I were asked to deliver two more seminars today on faithful administration/governance and fruitful/sustainable ministry. In the end, the only fruitful model for doing God’s work is not Eastern/Western, but abandoning the world’s way and choosing to follow faithfully what the Word says. On that path, God sustains it.