Recently a client (and good friend) posed a question to me after hearing a sermon preached on the gospel story of the rich, young man, where Christ tells this man to “go, sell what you have and come follow me.” One of my friend’s questions was this: Am I not supposed to save, but instead give everything away? To put it more generally, what is the nature of wealth and what should be our relation to it? Is wealth a blessing, a curse or a sin?
Now just to pose the question presupposes a religious answer. And knowing that I am NOT a pastor, preacher or spiritual director, gives me great pause in attempting an answer. So perhaps my first advice to you is to seek your answer from those sources. Still, because I have been in the financial services industry for years and because I have pondered that same issue and what it means in regards to the work that I do, I will offer my musings on the topic.
First, contrary to the purveyors of the “prosperity gospel”, wealth is not a blessing in the sense that those who are wealthy are favored of God and those who are poor are not. While it is certainly true that all that we have is a blessing (or gift) from God, this is not the same as to say that those who have more indicates a special relationship with God. In fact, a better argument can be made for the exact opposite! “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:3.
No, the entire book of Job teaches us the fallacy of that idea and shows us that the Hebrews made that same fundamental error. Job, who was wealthy, then poverty stricken (amongst other things) then wealthy again, remained faithful to God, bearing patiently the trials and tribulations of life, knowing that this life is simply a trial and pilgrimage to the next. But it was his friends and fellow church-goers who showed up to indict Job, when his fortunes turned South. “You must have done something wrong, sinned and offended God in some way for all this misfortune to have come to you,” they said. The Hebrews of old believed in what today we call the “prosperity gospel,” but the book of Job should be our corrective to that. It also, on the very first line of the first chapter, offers us the key to having a “special relationship with God”: “Job…was simple and upright, fearing God, and avoiding evil.” Job 1:1.
Second, wealth can not be considered a curse either. Job was a man of wealth and praised by God. Joseph of Arimathea, clearly a friend of Christ, is said to have been wealthy. History is replete with wealthy individuals making incredible, charitable gifts, establishing hospitals, schools and other works of mercy. How could they even do this if not from their abundance, from their wealth? This is not to say that someone of less means can not be charitable, but it is to establish that wealth, in and of itself, is not a curse or an evil and that great things can develop from it.
Which brings us to our final query: So if wealth is not bad, why did Christ admonish the rich, young man to sell all that he had? And the answer is quite simple really: Wealth can be bad, can be a temptation and the cause of our damnation IF we are more attached to it (a creature) than to our Creator and thereby refuse the inspirations of God.
In the story, the young man claims to have kept the commandments all his life, but still searched for more in the quest for salvation (“All these I have kept from my youth, what is yet wanting to me?” Matthew 19:20). Christ understood this to mean that God was calling the young man to greater sanctity, in a word, that he had a vocation. So Christ responded: “If thou wilt be perfect, go sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come follow me.” Matthew 19:21. [Emphasis added].
Christ gave the young man one of the evangelical counsels, poverty, because those are the requirements of “perfection” (as best as we can obtain it on this earth). When “he went away sad: for he had great possessions,” Christ knew that God did not have the first place in the young man’s heart and said, “Amen, I say to you, that a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
So wealth is not a measure of God’s blessing, a curse or a sin (necessarily), but it can be, and often is, the most challenging of temptations to overcome. “You can not serve God and mammon.” Matthew 6:24. So let’s make the virtues of detachment, liberality and charity regular parts of our financial plan.