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- Subscribe - Contact Us - Rate Card - Place an Ad Valley&State Backpage O&E Sports Archives Classifieds Faith&Beliefs Obituaries Revels October 2, 2004 Seductive 'mammon' is about more than stuff and riches "No servant can serve two masters, you cannot serve God and mammon." Luke 16: 13 Mammon - what a great biblical word. It's an Aramaic word, Aramaic being the language Jesus spoke every day. It means riches and is akin to a Hebrew word which literally means "that which can be trusted in." Revealing, eh? What then is mammon? It's money, but it's more than money. It's the mystique of money, the essence of wealth. It's Las Vegas - it's Club Med. It's the hubris of a company that names an automobile Infinity. It's Halliburton getting all the contracts in Iraq without having to bid on them, and nobody complaining. It's the smell of a magazine like Vanity Fair and the fact that you can't tell the articles from the ads, which is the whole point. It's what Osama bin Laden hates so much because having come from a rich Saudi family, he's had it, and now, deep in his cave he doesn't have it anymore, so he both wants it and despises it at the same time, and I bet it's killing him. Mammon is whatever shapes your dreams. It's whatever you expect to save you. A favorite English professor of mine in college, Phil, was brought up dripping with mammon. In college he grew a beard and discovered the writing of Henry David Thoreau and became a convert to the anti-mammon movement going around in the 1960s. In 1840 Henry David Thoreau had gone to live in a tiny cabin overlooking Walden Pond in Concord, Mass. He gave up comfortable digs and took up a poor man's life confounding his friends and family who could not understand; his defense was a book he simply called, "Walden" In it he says, "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately; to front only the essential facts of life and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived." Living deliberately is, of course, all about choosing God and not mammon (which is always busy choosing us). My friend went on, of course, to earn a graduate degree in English, writing his doctoral thesis on "Walden." The writing of it was the challenge of his life. To hear Phil talk about it, Thoreau camped out in his dreams. After college I'd talk to him once in a while. I remember speaking with him in 1980. He'd been a full professor by then for five years and his father was still asking him when he was going to get "a real job." By a real job he meant one that paid at least six figures. In fact, that year his dad asked him if he could put him up in the newest sure fire money-making enterprise. "What is that?" my professor friend asked his dad. "Storage units," he said. "Acres and acres of storage units." His father was way ahead of the curve when it came to investments, but Phil heard that and realized immediately it was the complete antithesis of all he had chosen for himself. See, the thing about mammon isn't just the "stuff" that it comprises. It's having to find someplace to put it. Mammon isn't just having a dozen vintage Ford Mustangs - it's also about storage. It's endless shelving, and gymnasium-sized walk in closets, and 12-car garages, and storing the video tapes that photograph and itemize all those things for insurance purposes and in triplicate in case of fire. I'm happy to say that my professor friend, Phil, is over his reactive obsession with his dad now. He quit living in dumps, lost the beard, became a college president and made peace with his own ambitious side. I just wonder if Henry David still haunts his dreams. Scott Dalgarno is pastor of Ashland's First Presbyterian Church DailyTidings.com Home Page Valley&State | Backpage | O&E | Sports | Archives | Weather | Classifieds Columnists | Faith&Beliefs | Obituaries | Revels | Subscribe | Contact Us Copyright 2004 Ashland Daily Tidings and Ottaway Newspapers All Rights Reserved Click Here Site Search: .:Advertisements:. RESOURCES - Mail Tribune News - ODOT Road Cams