Plodding In A World of Hacks
“Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.”
Because I manage my family’s finances and work in the world of sales revenue and profit margins, I try to stay up to speed with current market trends to ensure my investments are allocated wisely. I’m usually about a week too late to benefit from the viral, get-rich-quick schemes that seem to arise every few months in the worlds of short-selling, crypto, and the memeification of finance. Most of us remember when Roaring Kitty (Keith Gill) turned $50,000 into over $40 million during the Gamestop and AMC short squeeze in January of 2021.
One finance newsletter I read occasionally told me yesterday that a “generational crypto pump” is coming next week, and that I’d be a fool not to put the majority of my capital into a number of altcoins that are sure to go 600x. Don’t miss it; your grandchildren will thank you!
And while I’m not against reasonable speculative investing or cryptocurrency at all, I think it’s undeniable that there is a moral component to all of this that we would be foolish to ignore. Consider the Bible’s warnings about money:
Proverbs 13:11: “Wealth gained hastily will dwindle, but whoever gathers little by little will increase it.”
Proverbs 28:20: “A faithful man will abound with blessings, but whoever hastens to be rich will not go unpunished.”
Proverbs 28:22: “A stingy man hastens after wealth and does not know that poverty will come upon him.”
1 Timothy 6:9-10: “But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils. It is through this craving that some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pangs.”
Ecclesiastes 5:10: “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves wealth with his income; this also is vanity.”
A number of themes run throughout the Bible’s various commandments concerning the quick accumulation of riches:
Having money is not sinful, but loving it is
Wealth gained hastily will not last
Wealth gained slowly will endure
Our modern society sees wealth more as a hack than as the result of a long life of hard work and faithful stewardship. Every day, we’re bombarded with get-rich-quick-schemes that promise to change our lives overnight, if only we’ll put our undying faith in them, along with a sizable portion of our already existing wealth. I sometimes listen to Dave Ramsey in the car for this very reason, not because I’m going to get some life-changing financial advice, but because I’m always curious which new schemes are making the rounds and threatening to entice vulnerable, desperate people.
And what’s even crazier, is that sometimes it works. People make millions on speculative investments like crypto, guys start and sell companies and become billionaires within a few years, and others inherit a fortune from a long-lost uncle or aunt, and everything changes in an instant.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with getting rich quick, but the Scriptures make two things very clear: the normative way to accumulate wealth is through hard work, wise management, and slow gathering; and that he who longs, and hastens, to be rich, is headed for trouble.
It’s a faith thing. Is your faith in the red or green numbers on your Robinhood account home screen, or do you trust that God will bless your ordinary efforts where He has placed you?
I’m sure most of us have gone through a season of financial obsession. In 2021, I was working for the federal government in a SCIF, meaning all mobile devices stayed outside. This was right around the time of the GME (GameStop) and AMC short squeeze, where a bunch of people made insane amounts of money investing in companies with relatively little value. It was seen largely as a middle finger to corporate investors who had attempted to benefit financially from the companies’ declining stock values, and quickly became a global phenomenon; more like a movement about sticking it to the man than any semblance of a real investment strategy.
If you had walked into my office building during this time, you would’ve seen 5-8 young men outside the SCIF, necks strained, eyes glued to their phones, as the little green (or red) line tracked up (or down), indicating profits or losses on our measly investments. It became obsessive. New, cutting-edge apps had gamified investing to the point that even a 50-cent profit triggered a drug-like dopamine hit. Guys would come back in the office either floating on air or deflated, depending on the results of the hourly update.
An old high school counselor of mine, a man in his mid-30s who had previously worked as a stock trader in New York City, often spoke of the high levels of drug use and suicide in the high-pressure, high-stakes finance world of Wall Street. I found this hard to understand as a young man; after all, it’s just money. You have good days and bad days. But as I’ve grown older, I get it now, and I deal with only a fraction of what corporate level finance guys deal with on a daily basis. It’s easy to tie your faith, your entire value, and optimism or pessimism for life, to a graph. If you’re in the green, you’re the man. You’re worth something. In the red, though? It’s like having a dark cloud over your entire life.
One of the first questions Ramsey asks on his show is, “what’s your net worth?” He’s built entire, multi-year programs around creating “baby step millionaires.” These are inherently good things; throughout Scripture, God promises to bless the faithful; not that He will make them filthy rich in exchange for their obedience, but that those who heed His wise commandments for getting, maintaining, and using money, will have no lack of gain. He’s not saying that if you put your faith in the magic genie He’ll grant your every wish, but that He’s given us a road map for the way things work, and those who follow it will be blessed.
But it’s possible we’ve lost focus of the purpose and meaning of work. Listen to the way modern pundits and influencers discuss the idea of early retirement. “What’s your number?” they often ask, referring to that net worth number at which you’d finally be comfortable retiring. “And what can you do to reach it age 60, 50, or even 40?” Chasing that one magic number, tying up our whole identity in our net worth, and constantly trying to game the system to stay ahead of the next big financial breakthrough largely ignores the way God works when it comes to money.
We’ve discussed the reality that “God math” often doesn’t add up as it ought to. A young family making $50K/year with no flexibility in their budget finds out they’re pregnant again, and Dad stays up all night at the kitchen counter crunching and re-crunching the numbers, knowing nothing’s going to change, but hoping he can find a few extra dollars somewhere, or that the next raise might come sooner than expected. We all do it.
And yet by and large, catastrophe does not strike. Adjustments and sacrifices are made. Everybody eats, everybody has a place to lay their head at night, and even if Dad has a couple late, stressful nights in Microsoft Excel, everybody is clothed, fed, educated, and nurtured. This is the way God works. He feeds thousands upon thousands of people with five loaves and two fish. Even when it doesn’t make sense to us, He provides.
And the way He has promised to provide for us financially is through the routine, slow, faithful accumulation of resources that comes from doing hard and excellent work.
Countless men have been ruined by the get-rich-quick-schemes, from casino and sports gambling, to the once-in-a-lifetime investment opportunity promising 100%+ returns. We are called to be wise and cunning managers of the resources God has entrusted to us, but nowhere are we called to be frantic opportunists, chasing every trend with no long-term plan or wisdom.
You are not going to starve or be evicted because you chose the path of slow, meticulous plodding over some financial fad which will surely be forgotten in a matter of days. Many will spend a large portion of their lives in search of the next big thing, only to look up to find that their time has suddenly run short. But there is a better way.
In a world of schemers, grifters, hustlers, and gold-diggers, be a steadfast man, trusting that God will bless your faith. He has not promised us great earthly riches, but that He will always provide for our every need.
And remember that, like guardrails on a high mountain pass, His warnings against getting rich quick are for our own good. The evidence doesn’t lie; countless people who win the lottery, stumble into a massive inheritance, or make billions overnight through some lucky stock play, lose it all. Go to Vegas and look at the casino floor at 5 A.M., and tell me the allure of hasty wealth is still there when you see a married father of four desperately trying to win back his kid’s college tuition at the blackjack table. It’s simply not the way of wisdom.
Though it may not feel like you’re making much progress and you’re struggling to make ends meet, know that the Lord promises to bless you, and that He is at work in the long, slow struggle. This is part of how He builds us, teaches us to rely fully on Him, keeps our heart from trusting in riches, and cultivates contentment for what He has given us.
Ignore the distractions, no matter how shiny; stay the course.
A slack hand causes poverty, but the hand of the diligent makes rich.
There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way to death.
May God bless you,
T