I came across a saying a few days ago.

“Until you have money to finance your temptations, don’t brag about morals. Too much is hidden in poverty.”

I read it once, nodded, and carried on scrolling. Then I went back.

It is the last sentence that did it.

Too much is hidden in poverty.

There is something almost cruel about that sentence, perhaps because it takes the things we are proudest of and asks whether they are convictions or merely circumstances. You say you do not drink, but perhaps you cannot afford to. You say you would never cheat, but perhaps nobody has seriously tempted you. You say money could never change you, which is an easy thing to say when money has never had the opportunity.

I have heard people describe themselves as humble when, really, life has simply kept them in places where arrogance would look ridiculous. I have heard men praise their own faithfulness while living lives in which nobody has offered them an alternative. We often speak confidently about the sins we have never had the means to commit.

I have heard it said  that people’s morals are set by their limitations.

That one is harder.

I suppose because it suggests that some of the things we call morals are just fences. We remain within them and congratulate ourselves for never wandering, without admitting that the gate has always been locked.

But I am unsure whether this is entirely fair.

Poverty does not mean a person has never been tempted. In many cases, poverty is the temptation. Hunger presents choices. Desperation presents choices. Watching your children go without presents choices that comfort will never understand. There are people who have remained honest while honesty cost them food, opportunity and or dignity. Surely that counts for something.

Could it be that limitations hide some parts of us and expose others?

Well let me return to the question of options.

Character is revealed by the intentional choices we make when we have them. Not imagined choices, the kind we make while sitting safely outside the situation. Real ones. The ones where both doors are open and you know exactly what lies behind each of them.

Anyone can say, “I would never.”

We say it about corruption until someone places the envelope on the table.
We all have a price, we say we don’t because we just don’t know it yet. Or the more palatable version is we all have a breaking point. 

We say it about generosity until the money is finally ours.

We say it about power until people begin moving out of our way.

The frightening thing about temptation is that it rarely introduces itself as temptation. It arrives with reasons. It says you deserve this. It says nobody will know. It says you have sacrificed enough. It says everybody in your position does the same thing. By the time you cross the line, you have often renamed the crossing.

Maybe that is what money changes. It gives appetite a vocabulary and then pays for the consequences.

I know people who became wealthy and remained kind. I also know people who acquired a little authority and immediately began behaving as though the rest of us had been created to inconvenience them. Sometimes it is not even great wealth. A new job title or access to a room where important decisions are made is enough to reveal a person you had never met, although you had known them for years.

Or perhaps it creates that person.

That is the part I cannot settle.

Does money reveal who we have always been, or does it slowly teach us to become someone else? Does power uncover arrogance, or does being obeyed repeatedly produce it? Would the cruel rich man have been cruel while poor, or did comfort gradually make other people’s pain feel theoretical?

Anyway, I have been thinking about the morals I claim to have.

Which of them have actually been tested? Which ones have survived opportunity? Which ones exist only because life has spared me the relevant temptation?

It is an uncomfortable inventory.

Perhaps we earn the right to speak about our principles only after they have cost us something. After we had the option to betray them and chose otherwise. After the money was available, the door was open, the excuse was believable and nobody would have known.

Before that, maybe we are only describing ourselves under present conditions.

And conditions change.