Why love of money can drive you to the pit and enslave you

In a recent conversation, a friend wondered out loud - How much money is enough? The answer was as simple as it was obvious - no amount of money is ever enough! Indeed, money can never be enough. Once you fall in love with money, only death can do you, part.

Money is a great suitor and will - in your courtship period - promise you a lifetime of unmatched bliss. Pictures will be flashed in your mind of a luxurious comfortable home.

You will see in your mind's eye, happy children getting the best of education in distant Ivy League schools.

Money will paint on the canvas of your mind, a trouble-free life with lots of time spent circling the globe.

You will dream of high value investments that guarantee you a lifetime of hustle free income. You will envision jealous friends pouring into your home to admire your lavish opulence. You will envision life at its best - forever!

All that and more will be used to lure you into an intimate relationship with mammon. If you choose to tie the knot, money will ensure you enjoy its promises but for a while. Your newfound partner will soon begin to swallow you up like a mermaid. Because money tends to require undivided attention, the first thing to go will be your time - you will be kept busy chasing after mammon. Family and friends will see less of you.

The interesting thing is that, for those with heart purity problems, working for clean money is often a tall order. That is why shortcuts - often mislabelled as corruption - will become attractive.

Your flirt with evil will start small, but this insatiable desire for more will ensure you are addicted. Your appetite for filthy lucre will grow by the day.

Henceforth, money - and how to get more - will be your daily preoccupation. You will steal from the poor. You will embezzle from your employer.

You will grab public property and demand kickbacks for services rendered.

You will graduate into a tenderpreneur. You will collude with others to rob your country. And you will kill anyone who stands on your way. In short, you will have fallen a slave to the mammon tyrant.

What is amazing is that, whereas money always promises to be a most loving and faithful partner, those who fall into its dirty embrace almost always never enjoy a happy ending.

Dirty money requires close monitoring. Like Mpango wa Kando, it must be kept from prying eyes and shielded from inquisitive minds. This alone demands much energy and wit craft. It keeps you awake at night and busy in the day.

That is when you begin to realise what Jesus meant when He said that serving Mammon is a fulltime job - a slavery that cannot be shared even with serving God.

The reality is that these demands often become too much for the body. Opportunistic diseases move in to claim their share. What is worse is that should you die, dirty money will abandon your children and ignore your relatives.

It will befriend big lawyers and elope with unscrupulous estate administrators - they will drain it away into their coffers.

Sometimes court battles will run on for years while the beneficiaries languish in poverty.

The hidden accounts and undisclosed properties end up with the unclaimed assets agency. And as King Solomon would quip - vanity of vanities. A chasing after the wind.

Yet as I look at Kenya and Kenyans, nothing seems to occupy the minds of the privileged like accumulating loads of money. Whether it is a police officer by the roadside demanding one hundred, or the CEO of a big government parastatal eyeing one billion, the preoccupation seems to be how to stash their pockets with our resources.

Few of us realise the joy and peace that comes with having little but gained legitimately.

The Apostle Paul advised: Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and work with your hands, so that your daily life may win the respect of others and so that you will not be dependent on anybody. This is the secret to living a happy and fulfilled life. Not stealing.