Compassion for the Rich and Their Poverty of Affluence?
The rich ruler chose money over Jesus. The idea of losing his upscale identity felt like too much to bear. But as the rich ruler ran into the arms of wealth, Jesus looked at him and loved him.
In a world where blame is placed on the infamous “one percent” – and where income gaps between rich and poor bring out the best in some and the worst in others – are we able to see past greed, wherever greed truly exists, to the fears and insecurities that drive the greed? Are we, too, able to look at the rich ruler and love him? Are we able to look at Zacchaeus, the wealthy, crooked, unjust and friendless tax collector and say, “We’re coming to your house today…” We want to eat with you, to be your friend?
Did you know that anxiety and depression are most prominent not among the poor but the rich? As Thoreau has said, most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. This is a biographical statement about many of the world’s rich, who, in the poverty of affluence, have been pierced with many griefs.
America’s newly identified at-risk group is preteens and teens from affluent, well-educated families. In spite of their economic and social advantages, ‘children of affluence’ experience among the highest rates of depression, substance abuse, anxiety disorders, somatic complaints, and unhappiness of any group of children in this country…twenty-two percent of adolescent girls from financially comfortable families suffer from clinical depression. This is three times the national rate of depression for adolescent girls. (Madeleine Levine, The Price of Privilege)
Things are not always as they seem. Affluence? or the poverty of affluence?
Jesus looked at the rich man as the rich man walked away. And he loved him.
Will we?
We Are All the Top Percent – Now What?
As I think about my own position, I really don’t have any basis for indignation about the extravagance of others. As with every other thing, I need to examine my own situation and heart with thoughtfulness, care, and big doses of reality.
Over half of the world’s population lives on less than $2.50 per day. This means that I spend more on coffee than most living image-bearers spend on their entire livelihoods. My family’s little 850 square foot New York apartment has a name to these image-bearers, to the over-50-percenters: Its name is Mansion.
This isn’t a cause for guilt. But it is a cause for perspective. In our standard of living, most of us are much closer to the 1% than we are to the over-50%. What does this mean for us?
The first thing that comes to mind is that God wants his people in every place, not just some places. It is right and good – a calling from God – for some to live their lives in the wealthiest neighborhoods, work at the wealthiest firms, have memberships at the wealthiest clubs, and run in the wealthiest circles. Why? Because the three-times-the-national-average depressed and suicidal preteens and teens from affluent, well-educated families, along with their moms and dads who are haunted in quiet desperation, as well as the executives, the celebrities, and the rich rulers – these also need proximity to and community with those who have found lasting riches in Jesus. How cruel would it be for the world’s wealthy to be denied access to the embodied light of Jesus, who alone is the answer to the anxiety, depression, isolation, impossible expectations, never knowing who the true friends are, and fools gold at the end of the rainbow that so many of the world’s rich experience every single day?
Maybe the answer lies in the lyric from Si Kahn that was popularized by David Wilcox, that It’s not just what you’re given; It’s what you do with what you’ve got.
Jesus said something similar in a parable. A manager entrusted a certain number of “talents” to three of his workers: one got five, another got two, and another got one. The one with five doubled what had been given to him, leaving him with ten. The one with two also doubled his share, leaving him with four. (Matthew 25:14-30)
Both workers got the same reward at the end of the day. Their “net worth” was different, but their true worth was the same. As Patti likes to say whenever we find ourselves in the company of a “person of note…” Everyone is a person of note, and everyone puts his/her pants on one leg at a time.
Said the richest (and wisest?) man in the world:
Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD. (Job 1:21)
So maybe, in the ultimate sense, it’s not what we do with what we’ve got that matters most. Maybe doing something with what we’ve got – whether it’s the poor widow giving her small coin in the temple, or the man with five talents turning it to ten – what it’s really about is what Jesus has done with the talent entrusted to him, yes?
Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing. Jesus, who, though he was rich, became poor, so that through his poverty we might become rich. (Philippians 2:6-7; 2 Corinthians 8:9)
Maybe if we all started there, the “have’s” and the “have-not’s” could see how much we all need each other? Maybe we could see how, apart from Jesus, we are all poor in the truest sense? Maybe we could meet at his cross and, in his name and because of the love with which he has loved us all, bear each other’s burdens – the unique burdens of having little, and the unique burdens of having much?
Because, rich or poor or somewhere in between, everything minus Jesus equals nothing.
And Jesus plus nothing equals everything.
This article about the poverty of affluence originally appeared here.
