Money Problems: What Monkeys, Parrots, and Ecclesiastes Teach Us About Wealth
Everyone loves hearing a sermon about money, right? Hopefully this one will be different. This isn't a "you need to give more" message. If you're part of a generous church family like mine, that's not the problem. This is about something deeper: what money does to us, and how we find freedom from it.
What Capuchin Monkeys Taught Us About Money
Back in 2005, researchers at Yale taught seven capuchin monkeys to use money. They gave the monkeys small metal discs that could be traded for treats, then let them decide what to "buy."
The monkeys learned the system fast. But what happened next is the real story. When researchers introduced inflation, doubling the price of a snack, the monkeys got upset, and most switched to cheaper options, just like we downgrade from name brand to store brand when our budgets tighten.
When coins scattered on the ground, the monkeys raced to grab as many as they could. In other words, they invented stealing.
In one experiment, two monkeys who could see each other were each asked to trade a coin for food. One got a grape. The other got a cucumber. The cucumber monkey didn't take it well. After a few rounds of watching his neighbor get the better deal, he started hurling the cucumber back at the researcher. The monkeys had discovered inequality, and they hated it.
Introduce money into a system, even a monkey enclosure, and what was once calm turns chaotic. Money is a tool, but it's a dangerous one. Like a chainsaw or a blowtorch, it's useful and it can hurt you if you don't know what you're doing with it. As it turns out, we're not much better at handling it than the monkeys were.
Four Money Problems from Ecclesiastes
The Teacher in Ecclesiastes 5 and 6 names several problems that money creates, and honestly, some of these verses could have been written last week.
1. Corruption runs up and down the hierarchy. "If you see oppression of the poor and perversion of justice... don't be astonished," the Teacher writes (5:8). Officials protect officials. The powerful build systems that benefit the powerful. This has been true since Ecclesiastes was written, and it's still true now. Everyone, it seems, has a hand in the cookie jar: hidden fees, convenience charges, an insurance company that won't cover what you paid for. Even kings, the Teacher says, profit from fields they never plowed.
Jesus stepped into this reality and flipped it. In Luke 4, he read from Isaiah in the Nazareth synagogue: he had come to preach good news to the poor, release the captives, and proclaim the year of the Lord's favor, the year of jubilee, when debts are canceled and everything is set right. "Today," he said, "this scripture is fulfilled." In his kingdom, the corrupt hierarchy has no place.
2. Enough is never enough. "The one who loves silver is never satisfied with silver" (5:10). This isn't a wealth problem, it's an attitude problem. I've known wealthy people stuck in this trap and poor people stuck in it too. As income grows, so does the appetite that consumes it. We feel like we're making more than ever and somehow still feel broke, because the moment our paycheck grows, so does our spending.
Jesus addressed this directly: don't store up treasures on earth, where moths and rust destroy and thieves break in, but store up treasures in heaven. Where your treasure is, that's where your heart will be. If your heart is chasing silver, that's all you'll ever find. Satisfaction and contentment come from somewhere else entirely.
3. Hoarding and losing are both tragedies. The Teacher calls this a "sickening tragedy": wealth hoarded to its owner's own harm, or wealth lost in a bad venture, leaving a person as empty-handed as the day he was born (5:13-17). We've all seen both extremes. Someone accumulates so much they can't even enjoy it. Someone else loses everything to a bad investment, a market crash, or an illness their insurance wouldn't cover.
Jesus put it this way in Matthew 16: what does it profit someone to gain the whole world and lose their own soul? Wealth itself isn't the sin. Our attitude toward it is what matters. Some of the most generous people I know are also some of the wealthiest, and they've never flaunted a dime of it.
4. Getting everything still leaves you empty. Ecclesiastes 6 describes a man given riches, wealth, and honor, who lacks nothing he desires, and still can't enjoy any of it. The Teacher says a stillborn child has more rest than this man. It's a hard passage, but the point is clear: winning at life doesn't fill the hole we're trying to fill with it. Even billionaires keep chasing validation long after they've "won." Getting everything you want doesn't answer the question. It just changes what you're asking for next.
The Way Out: Parrots, Joy, and Letting Go
So what's the solution? Ecclesiastes points us toward joy. "It is appropriate to eat, drink, and experience good in all the labor one does... this is a gift from God" (5:18-20). Notice how many times joy, rejoicing, and enjoyment show up in those few verses. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit, and it can only be experienced by people willing to loosen their grip on the things of this world. You cannot hold tightly to material possessions and experience true freedom in Christ at the same time.
Here's where another animal study comes in, this time with African gray parrots. Researchers taught them to trade coins for walnuts, then set up an experiment where only one parrot had access to the researcher. The parrot without access had coins but no way to spend them. The parrot with access had none. So the coin-rich parrot passed a coin through to the other, who used it to get a walnut, then passed the walnut back. They worked out a system where everyone ate.
Parrots figured out how to share. Maybe we should be a little more like parrots and a little less like monkeys.
The Teacher closes this section by pointing us toward God's sovereignty. Who can contend with the one who is stronger? You might be wealthy, but God is richer. You might be strong, but God is stronger. Relinquishing control to him, rather than gripping tightly to our own plans and portfolios, is where real rest begins.
Paul says it plainly in 1 Timothy 6: "Godliness with contentment is great gain." We brought nothing into this world and we'll carry nothing out of it. Those who chase after riches fall into temptation and grief, because the love of money, not money itself, is the root of many evils.
So here's the question worth sitting with: what are you pursuing? Proverbs 21:21 says whoever pursues righteousness and love will find life, prosperity, and honor. It doesn't work the other way around. Chase wealth and you're not guaranteed to find love or righteousness. But chase righteousness and love, and everything else you actually need will follow.
What is it that shapes your life right now? The things of God, or the things of this world? Ecclesiastes says one of those paths leads to tragedy. The other leads to joy.
THINK ABOUT IT
The Teacher says "if you see oppression of the poor... don't be astonished at the situation" (Eccl. 5:8). Why do you think he tells us not to be surprised by corruption rather than to fight against it? Where do you see the tension between accepting that corruption exists and still working toward justice, especially in light of what Jesus proclaims in Luke 4?
"Enough is never enough" was described as an attitude problem, not a material goods problem. Can you think of a time when getting more of something (money, possessions, a bigger paycheck) didn't actually satisfy you the way you expected? What did you do with that dissatisfaction?
The sermon points out two opposite tragedies: hoarding everything and losing everything. Which extreme do you find yourself more tempted toward, and why? What would it look like practically to hold your possessions more loosely?
Jesus tells the rich young ruler to sell everything and follow him, and the man walks away grieving. Do you think Jesus's instruction was meant literally for everyone, or was he diagnosing something specific in that man's heart? How do you tell the difference in your own life between owning things and being owned by them?
The passage ends by pointing to God's sovereignty ("who can contend with the one stronger than he?") as a source of freedom. What's something financial or material in your life that's hard to relinquish control over? What would it look like this week to actually hand that over to God rather than just talk about it?
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