Does the Bible Say Money Is Evil? What the Church Got Wrong About Women and Money

Let me tell you about the verse that shaped my entire relationship with money, and not in a good way.

"For the love of money is the root of all evil." 1 Timothy 6:10.

I heard that verse growing up and I took it the way most of us do. Money is bad. Wanting money is dangerous. Having a lot of it is morally suspect.

So I did what good Christian girls do. I made myself small. I undercharged. I felt guilty every time I wanted more. I called it humility. I called it contentment. I called it faith.

What I was actually doing was running a scarcity program I inherited from the church and calling it obedience.

I've sat with hundreds of Christian women who are brilliant, capable, deeply in love with God, and completely blocked around money. Almost every one of them has been shaped by a misread of this one verse.

So let's talk about what the text actually says, because I promise you it is different from what most of us were taught.

What 1 Timothy 6:10 actually says

Here's the verse in full: "For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."

Two things most people miss.

It says "a root," not "the root." The Greek reads "a root of all kinds of evil." One root among many. Greed is dangerous. Putting money above God is dangerous. Money itself sits there completely neutral.

The word "love" is doing all the work. The Greek word is philarguria, love of silver. This verse describes obsession and hoarding and putting wealth on a throne. It has nothing to say about earning well, building a business, or wanting your family to be stable.

The verse was misquoted to you. A "the" replaced an "a." And that single word built a money ceiling in millions of women.

The verses they didn't read you

If the church had been equally enthusiastic about these, we'd be having a very different conversation.

John 10:10. "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly." The Greek word is perissos, meaning exceeding, over and above, beyond measure. Jesus was describing a quality of life that runs past what's necessary.

Deuteronomy 8:18. God gives you the ability to create wealth. Present tense, active, in your hands, through your gifts, right now.

Proverbs 10:22. The blessing of the Lord makes rich and He adds no sorrow with it. No sorrow. No hidden cost. No guilt tax waiting on the other side of the deposit. That heavy feeling when you raise your rates came from somewhere else.

Galatians 3:29. If you belong to Christ, you are Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. Heir is a legal word. It describes someone who already owns something and simply hasn't collected it yet. I wrote a whole piece on what "heirs according to the promise" actually means for your money if you want to go further into that one.

Why this matters more than you think

Theology shapes behavior. What you believe about money determines how you earn it, charge for it, receive it, and build with it.

When you believe money is inherently suspicious, you underprice because asking for full value feels greedy. You over-deliver to make up for the guilt of being paid. You hit an income ceiling that strategy alone can't explain. You feel vaguely dirty every time the business grows.

I see this every single week. Women with real gifts, real income potential, and real calling, running a scarcity program so deep they can't see it anymore.

Strategy will not fix that. Marketing will not fix that. It's a belief, sitting underneath your logic, that abundance is somehow at odds with faith.

If the pricing piece is where you feel it most, that's its own conversation, and I wrote about it here: why you feel guilty charging what you're worth.

What loving money actually looks like

Since we're being precise, here's what the Bible is warning against.

The rich young ruler in Matthew 19 walked away from Jesus because he couldn't release his grip on his wealth. Faced with a choice between his assets and his God, he chose the assets. That's what loving money looks like.

It doesn't look like a woman building a business so she can put her kids through school, tithe generously, fund the ministry she believes in, and stop asking permission to buy something. That's stewardship.

The question is never the size of the pile. It's your grip on it. A woman with forty thousand dollars can white-knuckle every one of them. A woman with four hundred thousand can hold it loose and give a third away.

The program running underneath

Here's what I've learned working with Christian women at the belief level. The theology is only the top layer.

Underneath "money is evil" you usually find something like this:

• I don't deserve to have more than my parents had
• If I make too much, people will say I've changed
• God keeps people humble by keeping them struggling
• Wanting more means I'm not content with what God gave me

None of those are scripture. But they carry the same weight, the same authority, and the same ability to shut down a desire and call it spirituality.

That last one runs deeper than the rest, and it usually didn't start with you. If every woman in your family struggled with money, there's a reason for that, and it isn't character.

This is what I call scarcity programming. It does not respond to positive thinking. It lives in the nervous system, it runs across generations, and it charges you every time you send an invoice, raise a rate, or dream past what your grandmother did.

Abundance was already assigned to you

Here's what I want you to hold.

You are, according to Galatians 3:29, an heir. Heirs walk in and collect what's already theirs. They don't audition for it and they don't earn it by staying small.

Poverty is not a spiritual gift. It's just broke with better branding.

And programming can be cleared.

If you read this and felt something move, or felt resistance come up, that's information. That's the belief doing its job.

The Inheritance is the membership where women do this work with me every month. The full Miracle Method curriculum, a live call where you bring whatever is actually stuck and we take it out at the root, and a room of women of God walking it out together.

Come see The Inheritance

Want the whole teaching first? I taught a free class on exactly this. About thirty-five minutes.

Watch the class

Shannon Rose McVey is a faith-based wealth and identity coach, ThetaHealing® practitioner, and host of Dichotomy with Shannon. She spent seventeen years on air in mainstream media before walking away to do this work. She helps Christian women clear the religious conditioning behind their money blocks using biblical truth, nervous system work, and real wealth strategy. Learn more at ShannonRoseMcVey.com.