He may be right. Perhaps he is simply rephrasing the words of Christ who said: 'You can't serve God and mammon.'
It's always interested me that this is just about the only time in the New Testament records that money is given a personalised name. Perhaps that reflects another level within the statement: "If you rely on money as your primary source of security or meaning, it will take on a personality of its own.
When that happens, money does talk. It says things like: 'I can take care of you in your old age; I can feed you and clothe you.'
In actuality, money is an unreliable source of security, because it has no meaning or value in and of itself - its value is decided by the ever-changing whims of the marketplace.
Money is as valuable as everybody else agrees it is. This means that building a life around the worth of money means putting oneself at the mercy of others, and particularly the whims of marketeers.
In our times, money is even less solid than it may have seemed in the time of Christ. Today, it can be, and most often, is reduced to a series of ones and zeroes; the components of computer code.
Already, a number of women in society are taking a very different course under the media-generated banner of the 'Frugalistas'. These mainly middle class women have taken to growing most of their own food, cutting their own hair and making their own clothes.
A bit drastic? Not at all - it's a sensible response when disposable income is tight. But it's also a recognition of something more fundamental than responses to the credit crunch or ecological concerns.
In what has become an overtly consumerist society - 'I shop therefore I am' - there is for many people a growing sense that the things which supposedly make life easier don't necessarily make it more meaningful or enjoyable.
Contentment is so uncommon today - at least in terms of our financial status - that it might be called a dying art form. Contentment is not the same as a lack of ambition or aspiration. We all aspire to be more than we are. The problem is that we often confuse being more with having more.
Contentment involves a decision to be thankful for what we still have when times get tough - and to celebrate it - rather than bemoaning what we've lost, or wanting what someone else has.
More than 20 years ago, I was priviledged to visit the island of Sri Lanka. I visited a series of community organisations and churches, to encourage people in the work they were doing and to learn about their culture.
As I was the head of a large Australian youth network at the time, they looked to me for advice on how to build programmes for their young people. But I think I learned a great deal more from them than they did from me.
The biggest lesson was in the power of contentment. They were, at the time, in the middle of one of the worst periods of civil warfare in their history, yet these people were unfailingly generous with what little they possessed.
In my first public speech in Sri Lanka, I made a remark about how much I enjoyed their tea (best in the work, I think), and the saris they wore. I stepped off the stage later to find that some people had gone to the local market and bought me two huge bags of tea and one very colourful sari (which I think had to wear!).
These people, who had nothing to offer money-traders and mortgage-lenders, always seemed to live by the dictum that it's more blessed to give than receive - and they were extraordinarily happy in doing so.
I'm not belittling mortgages, ownership or sound investments of money. Present events simply remind me again that greed isn't a vice simply for the high-powered money men and women; it's something we must all face down at one level or another.
Speaking personally, I would do well to take this opportunity to ask the big question: is the worth of the life I'm leading built on something more solid than my earning power, or the size of my mortgage?
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Copyright Mal Fletcher 2008, Next Wave International London, Reproduced with permission from www.malfletcher.net
