"They only think about money" - but why profit is profitable

Money ruins everything.” “They only care about profit.” These are familiar laments in our culture. Sometimes they come from real pain—betrayed workers, greedy executives, price hikes that crush the poor. Those wounds are real. Yet if we turn that pain into a blanket condemnation of profit itself, we risk despising the very mechanism through which God sustains daily life.

Profit is not evil; it’s necessary. No family, congregation, or nation can live long by consuming more than it creates. In Scripture, the wise steward is not the one who buries his talent in fear, but the one who multiplies it in trust (Matthew 25). Creation itself runs on increase—seeds multiply, herds grow, skills improve. The drive to produce, to improve, to create value is not greed; it is part of the divine imprint of stewardship.

 

When We Forget How Wealth Is Made

Many who condemn “money-making” mistake the abuses of the system for the system itself. They see corruption and conclude production is evil; they see inequality and conclude enterprise is theft. But moral outrage at greed is not the same as understanding how wealth is created.

As Adam Smith observed, when individuals seek to meet their own needs through service and exchange, the outcome—when governed by justice—is mutual benefit. The baker earns his living by baking for others. The builder prospers by housing families. The profit motive, rightly ordered, becomes a network of neighborly service. When it turns predatory—when it manipulates, pollutes, or exploits—it ceases to be profit in the moral sense and becomes plunder.

That distinction is everything. The critic often sees only the symptom (someone gained), not the process (value was created). Envy mistakes fruitfulness for greed, as if abundance itself were a crime. But the real moral question is not who profited, but how.

Historical Witnesses

The past century proved that profit, when restrained by law and moral order, uplifts human life; when forbidden, it collapses it. Compare West and East Germany, North and South Korea, the Soviet Union and the United States. Where profit was outlawed, productivity died—and so did liberty, innovation, and often compassion. Where it was permitted under the rule of law, prosperity and generosity flourished.

These are not merely economic contrasts but moral ones. A system that rewards diligence and creativity affirms the dignity of work—a biblical principle from Genesis onward. A system that punishes enterprise cultivates dependence and resentment. As Lutheran ethicist Gilbert Meilaender notes, “Charity without productivity becomes condescension; productivity without charity becomes cruelty.” The Christian calling is to hold both together.

A Biblical Reality Check

Scripture speaks with balance, not bias. Proverbs commends diligence that produces gain (Prov. 10:4) and condemns dishonest scales (Prov. 11:1). Jesus warns against storing up treasures for self alone (Luke 12:15), yet praises servants who multiply their resources faithfully. The prophets thundered against the oppression of the poor—but never against the honest labor that fed them.

When Judas scolded Mary for pouring costly perfume on Jesus, claiming it could have been sold “for the poor,” his indignation disguised greed (John 12:5–6). It is a timeless warning: moral language often hides material envy. But the opposite temptation is just as deadly—using profit to excuse injustice. Scripture cuts both ways: it forbids both idolatry of gain and contempt for the fruit of labor.

Profit as Stewardship

To profit is to produce more value than one consumes—to turn God’s gifts into blessings for others. The farmer who grows grain, the teacher who imparts wisdom, the craftsman who builds—each “profits” by adding to creation. Profit becomes moral when it serves vocation: when it feeds families, funds mercy, and furthers life.

Profit becomes immoral when it extracts without giving, when it rewards speculation over service, when it values margin over neighbor. The question is never whether profit exists, but whether it reflects justice, truth, and love of neighbor.

Even the Church, which rightly warns against greed, breathes this same oxygen. Every mission, every charity, every congregation depends on the fruits of productivity. Offerings, after all, are not printed in heaven—they are generated by labor on earth.

The Real Divide

The divide is not between those who care about money and those who do not—it’s between those who see money as a tool of stewardship and those who treat it as a source of entitlement. Some build, others redistribute; some create, others consume. As Thomas Sowell observed, “There are no solutions—only trade-offs.” The wise heart learns to work within that truth rather than deny it.

Guarding the Heart

The apostle Paul did not say money is evil, but that the love of money is (1 Timothy 6:10). The cure for greed is not to romanticize poverty or demonize profit, but to reorder desire—to love God first and use wealth as a servant, not a master.

When someone claims, “I’m not motivated by money,” yet demands what others have earned, it often reveals not virtue but blindness. They think about money constantly—they simply expect someone else to produce it. The truly free person is not the one who despises profit, but the one who governs it wisely under Christ.

Conclusion

Profit is not compassion’s enemy. It is the engine that allows compassion to move, multiply, and sustain. When rightly ordered under the Creator, profit connects to praise and practical action—the multiplication of grace in material form.