The Bible deals with these very questions. The apostle Paul wrote: “Those who are determined to be rich fall into temptation and a snare and many senseless and hurtful desires, which plunge men into destruction and ruin. For the love of money is a root of all sorts of injurious things, and by reaching out for this love some have been led astray from the faith and have stabbed themselves all over with many pains.”—1 Timothy 6:9, 10.

Rightly, then, Paul says that the all-consuming “love of money is a root of all sorts of injurious things.” As a result of it, many have been “led astray from the faith and have stabbed themselves all over with many pains.” Take, for example, a youth we’ll call Rory. At age 12 he began gambling. “It was a way to get money without doing anything,” he recalls. Before long, he was hundreds of dollars in debt and neglecting friends, family, and schoolwork. “I tried to quit,” he admits, but he repeatedly failed. He continued ‘stabbing himself all over with many pains’ until he sought help at age 19. Writer Douglas Kennedy is thus not exaggerating when, in his book Chasing Mammon, he calls the pursuit of money “a traumatizing experience.”