Here I will describe three people in my circle who changed after they became rich to point out why God said money challenges your loyalties.
When my cousin first came to America, her parents were poor, my uncle was working without an office space in his Chinese medicine practice so had very few customers and he had an expensive mortgage to pay off and his wife was a full time mom so they only had one income.
At that point when my cousin was a teenager who was recently rich from my uncle’s medical practice, he was a testament to good character. She would exercise for 4 hours a day to get a boyfriend, studied 4 hours a day on her SATs and worked like crazy in school. Even though she was productive for 18 hours a day, she still felt extremely guilty for having food and money when people in Africa starved. She would risk her life on a regular basis to buy food for homeless people in the dirtiest and smelliest and most violent neighbourhood in Philadelphia.
When she became rich, her personality changed, she never did a single good thing for anybody even if it was a simple smile without mentioning it to somebody because she wanted credit for it. She would lie to everybody about everything all the time and she would complain and fume when homeless people got access to things like donated food saying they deserved to starve. She also hated Obama for wanting to give health care to homeless people and she slandered everybody she could because she was worried they would say bad things about her and ruin her reputation.
My aunt, when she was poor and loved in an apartment bought me a $5.00 microwave meal for me to try around 30 years ago and $4.00 in 1991 is probably equal to around $20.00 now, yet they were never stingy about giving me gifts, now that they are rich, they will force people with 1/10th their income to pay for their meals by waiting until they have finished their food to tell them they don’t have money to pay.
I had another friend who when she was poor was compassionate and patient and kind, never rude or disrespectful, extremely gracious and generous with her time and her energy and her reputation and her income but now that she is a millionaire, through marriage she is one of the most awful people I know. She knows I had difficulty getting accepted into university having two life threatening conditions affect our family the year I applied and she laughed at me and told me my university degree was worthless because she was jealous I had a degree and she did not. She also got made at me for suggesting men who dated 14 year old girls were evil - she said a lot of 14 year olds were intelligent gold diggers and were not actually being exploited by their 37 year old boyfriends. This is how disgusting she became after becoming rich.
Wealth changes people and this is why my goal is to serve God and not to buy whatever I want.
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