Million-Dollar Bill“Make money your god and it will plague you like the devil.” — Henry Fielding

This weekend as I stood outside Starbucks (waiting for Jeanine to buy an afternoon cup of Joe that would get us through the rest of our errands), I saw a man stoop down and pick up what looked to be a dollar bill. He looked at both sides and then tossed it back on the ground. Thirty seconds later a young woman was about to do the same thing. Before she could fully lean over, she made a realization and with a quiet giggle continued on her path to Starbucks.

It was a million-dollar bill… obviously not a real one, but one that was supposed to look like a million-dollar bill. I picked it up, knowing that it would lead to a blog post. Jeanine laughed and said, “What is it?” I replied, “It’s a tract.” I was amazed that Christians were still handing these out. I thought they were all too busy having Purpose Driven Life bible studies.

In teeny, tiny print on the back it read: The million-dollar question: Will you go to Heaven? And then it continued with a hell fire and brimstone message. That’s the purpose of a tract: It has to quickly make a point. I spent countless days in my youth handing out the 1981 version on street corners and other church-organized evangelism outings.

The million-dollar bill is gimmicky but effective on some level. Allie Martin at Agape Press reports, “The ‘million-dollar’ tract, published by Living Waters Ministry in Southern California, has been a successful evangelical tool for thousands of Christians and scores of ministries. But the Secret Service thought the gospel tracts being handed out by a Denton, Texas, ministry looked too much like real money, and recently seized 8,300 of the tracts. The federal agency took that step after someone in North Carolina reportedly tried to deposit one of the ‘bills’ in a bank account.”

“Darrel Rundus, the GNN president, takes exception to the Secret Service’s premise. He points out that there is no such thing as a million-dollar bill, and something that does not exist cannot be counterfeited. And he has a theory about the supposed bank deposit. ‘Now all too often, Christians will make a deposit at a bank and will include a million-dollar bill [tract] — not as a line item on their deposit, but just as a way to get the gospel tract in someone’s hands,’ he explains to Associated Press.”

David Van Biema and Jeff Chu of Time magazine recently asked the question, Does God Want You To Be Rich? They write, “In three of the Gospels, Jesus warns that each of his disciples may have to ‘deny himself’ and even ‘take up his Cross.’ In support of this alarming prediction, he forcefully contrasts the fleeting pleasures of today with the promise of eternity: ‘For what profit is it to a man,’ he asks, ‘if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?’ It is one of the New Testament’s hardest teachings, yet generations of churchgoers have understood that being Christian, on some level, means being ready to sacrifice–money, autonomy or even their lives.”

I don’t love money but I respect it and work hard for it. It’s peculiar that a certain sect of Christians opt to camouflage God on a fake bill as a way to deliver their message of everlasting life. However, last Sunday, instead of pondering my entry into heaven, I wondered whether the person that originally left the million-dollar bill could get fined for littering. Which begs the question: What Would Jesus Do? I assume he wouldn’t litter since this could take a very real $500 bite (fine in California for littering) out of his fake million dollars.