Earn all you can, Save all you can, Give all you can

This is the text of a talk I was due to give on BBC Wiltshire on 17th November 2013. As the presenter and I got talking about other things I had to abridge it somewhat.

Last week some people clearly decided to start their Christmas shopping early.

Firstly someone somewhere will find a painting by Francis Bacon of his friend and fellow artist Lucian Freud under their Christmas tree. The painting was sold at auction in New York for $142m (£89m, 106m euros) in New York. The most expensive artwork ever sold

The price eclipsed the $119.9m (£74m) paid for Edvard Munch's The Scream last year.

Secondly A diamond known as the Pink Star has sold for $83m (£52m) at auction in Geneva - a record price for a gemstone. The diamond measures 2.69cm by 2.06cm (1.06 inches by 0.81 inches) and is set on a ring.

The Pink Star was sold to Isaac Wolf, a well-known New York diamond cutter who has renamed it the Pink Dream.

The winning bid surpassed the $46.2m paid for the Graff Pink diamond three years ago, which was half the size of the Pink Star.

In the space of 24 hours almost £150 million was spent – just like that.

While auction records were being set in New York and Geneva, on the other side of the world the people of the Philippines were coming to terms with the deaths of loved ones, with lack of shelter, food and clean water. The news about the purchase of a picture and a pink diamond probably passed them by to be honest. They’ve got other things on their minds. Probably just as well, as I dare say they’d be wondering what they could do with £150 million. It would go a long way to helping those people I imagine.

Meanwhile, those of us who are more likely to have china ducks on our walls as opposed to Francis Bacon paintings, were responding to the disaster in the Philippines and to the BBC Children in Need fund raiser. So far £31 million – a record – has been raised for Children in Need and so far over £30 million has been given to the Disasters Emergency Committee’s Philippines appeal.

One of the verses of the Bible that is frequently misquoted is found in Pauls’ first letter to Timothy. The misquotation is

money is the root of all evil..

In fact what St Paul said was

10 For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

It is a verse from a much longer passage in which Paul warns about the temptations of wealth.

9 But people who are trying to get rich fall into temptation. They are trapped by many stupid and harmful passions that plunge people into ruin and destruction. 10 The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. Some have wandered away from the faith and have impaled themselves with a lot of pain because they made money their goal.

I suppose what this means is that people who get swept up with wealth, and the trappings of wealth, are in danger of becoming detached from what it means to be a caring compassionate person. And instead become more interested in having the expensive paintings on the wall and the biggest diamond on the finger.

Of course not all wealthy people are like this. Some enjoy what their wealth brings but at the same time look at ways of helping the under privileged. Bill Gates is a good example as he gives away millions of dollars through his Bill & Melinda Gates foundation. And it may be that the buyers of the painting and the diamond give generously to good causes.

The founder of the Methodist Church John Wesley once said that our approach to money could be summed up like this

Earn all you can, Save all you can, Give all you can

Not a bad template for life.