If we justify valuing material possessions because "everyone does it" or "other people do it more," our self-justification will blind us to the truth of our disobedience and affect our whole relationship with God. Jesus' illustration about the "single" (NIV good) eye and the evil eye would immediately make sense to his hearers: a "good" eye was literally a healthy eye, but figuratively also an eye that looked on others generously (Sirach 32:8). In the Greek text of the Gospels, Jesus literally calls the eye a "single" eye, which is a wordplay: the Greek version of the Hebrew Bible also uses this word for "single" to translate the Hebrew term for "perfect"-thus "single-minded" devotion to God, with one's heart set on God alone. An "evil eye," conversely, was a stingy, jealous or greedy eye; yet it also signifies here a bad eye (Mt 6:23), one that cannot see properly. Jesus uses the "single" eye as a transition to his next point, for the "single" eye is literally undivided, having the whole picture: thus one is not divided between two masters, as the text goes on to explain (v. 24).

Many leaders in past revival movements have warned that Christians ought not to pray for revival if they want to hold on to their money, because we cannot have both. For John Wesley, defying material prosperity was part of holiness, separation to God away from the things the world valued (Jennings 1990:157-79). He warned that riches would increase believers' conformity to the world and attacked those who preached in favor of the accumulation of wealth (Jennings 1990:36, 98-102). He felt that Acts 2 was for today-including the part about sharing possessions (2:44-45; Jennings 1990:111-16). He chose to live as simply as possible so as to give all else to the poor, and called on his followers to do the same (Jennings 1990:119-23; Sider 1990:152). In contrast to most contemporary Western Christians, Wesley felt that "stewardship means giving to the poor. . . . We give to God not by giving to the church, but by giving to the poor" (Jennings 1990:105). If one did not give all one could, Wesley taught, one was in disobedience to Jesus' teaching and would end up in hell (Jennings 1990:133).

Noting that the church has adequate funds to evangelize the world if we would choose to do so, nineteenth-century evangelist Charles G. Finney warned that God requires us to surrender to him the ownership of everything, so that we never again consider it as our own; we must do with it only what he would do (Finney 1869:353-54). Finney further exhorted that "young converts should be taught that they have renounced the ownership of all their possessions, and of themselves, or if they have not done this they are not Christians" (ibid., p. 127).

Years ago I eagerly read Ron Sider's Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (rev. 1990) after I heard Gordon Fee state that every American Christian should read it. While I cannot evaluate Sider's macroeconomic proposals (for important proposals in this area see also National Conference of Catholic Bishops 1986), I appreciate his emphasis on the Bible's commitment to serving the poor. Yet some critics wrongly criticized Sider's motives as Marxist (he is not a Marxist). Some consider Wesley and Finney, who preached more strongly than Sider, legalists. When Jesus, John the Baptist or James (Lk 3:10-11; 14:33; Jas 2:14-16) preaches far more strongly than Sider, Wesley or Finney, we call it hyperbole. I fear that many of us hear what we want because we have vested interests to guard-interests many Christians value more than they value the agendas of God's kingdom. Our eyes are not "single."