What happiness do these things give? Since we cannot take them with us, can we in any real sense call them our own? Are they able to comfort us when we face the great trials of life? What consolation is it to the millionaire that he is rich when he has lost his only child? Can his money bring that child back from the grave? Is it a substitute for that child’s life? No, it just leaves his heart empty by reminding him of what it cannot do for him. Even when things go well, can riches give real happiness? No, the earthly security they give is a delusion, for it is unable to redeem the soul from death, which is the real threat to security. Happiness is something that we can receive only from God. It must have to do with eternal unchanging value. So much of the pleasure of materialism has to do with the boost that men seek from it to their own self-worth. ‘I deserve to have more than others because I am more important, more special than other people’.
Ominously, at the end of this list is something that we do not normally associate with items of trade. The bodies and souls of men also appear in this list. We can perhaps understand how the bodies of men might be here, for shameful as it is, the human race has even fallen to the slave trade and treated men and women just like any other commodity to be bought and sold. Yet the text says that in Babylon, the souls of men are also traded. How can that be? How can immaterial souls that they cannot see or handle be bought and sold? But yes, Babylon also trades in human souls. It does so in this sense: it causes men and women to lose even their own souls in order to participate in its pleasures. It trades in human souls when it tempts a man to give up his own soul for the passing things of this world. To the world, the human soul is just another expendable item. How callous is this world! How it undervalues the soul, that eternal spirit which far exceeds anything of a material nature. For his soul a man ought to be willing to give up everything, y et he is persuaded to exchange it for some passing trifle.
Does all this mean that there is something intrinsically sinful in trade which a Christian must avoid? No, that cannot be the case, for there were those that God loved who traded in this world’s goods, like David, Solomon, Lydia and probably Philemon. By trade, peoples are fed and clothed, nations are encouraged to work industriously. But the Christian must be careful to be scrupulously honest in all that he does. He must avoid the short cuts and cover ups that amount to theft. He must also think about the moral nature of the goods which he chooses to trade in. He cannot trade in things harmful or men, or overtly sinful: cigarettes, alcohol, or pornography. Neither should he make himself the servant of the world, sacrificing all his time and energy to his trading and leaving nothing for the Lord. He must not come to so love his trade that he becomes its slave, and gives only token appreciation to the worship of God, and his service.