Rich Man Dilemma
Essay 2
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.”
Luke 16:13-15
It wasn’t only my phone that alerted me to my jealous, self-serving ways. It was how easily it slid in and out of my pocket at a moment’s notice. It was how everyone else had the same lust for theirs. How we all could carry a conversation without meeting one another’s eye. How we could all holler at our children when they threatened to touch it, yet cradle it for hours in our own greedy paws. It isn’t an addiction, we told ourselves. I need it for work. What if my husband tries to call me?
The rich young ruler was, in every sense, addicted to his lifestyle. He was far too content to leave it behind, even when the master of the universe beckoned. It was the ease he didn’t care to abandon; he actually didn’t have an inkling there was anything wrong with it. Jesus and tacos, Jesus and coffee, Jesus, a king sized bed, air-conditioning, puppies and pedicures. Jesus plus the world! The rich man was astonished that Jesus might ask him to leave it behind.
A year and a half ago, my husband and I were raising four beautiful wild children in southwest Colorado, the crown of the mountains. After nine years our souls suddenly felt burdened and we didn’t know why. We finally were making enough money to pay our mortgage and then some. I homeschooled the kids (this adventure in another book) and felt fairly righteous about performing this “ultimate sacrifice” of love for their well-being. We lived among weekend warriors who valued the thrill of adventure–hiking, ultrarunning, mountain biking, skiing, snowboarding. The people around us were beautiful, healthy, successful.
But the have-it-all lifestyle told another story. An obvious disdain for the disadvantaged and underperforming hung thick in the mountain air. A rich man doesn’t want to look around and see his world out of order. He doesn’t want to see anyone struggling, so he will pretend no one is struggling. Most casual conversations barely scraped the surface because no one was admitting to themselves or anyone else that life could be more what pleasures afforded us.
For several years this didn’t bother us. It’s the culture, we reasoned. We became weekend warriors like the rest, paying homage to our youthful bodies by covering miles of mountain trails. But as time went on, it felt like a hamster wheel. Nothing varied. Everyone was always fine, even happy! Not one person needed us, not really, and we felt a little pressure to reciprocate this attitude. Maybe, we thought, maybe we shouldn’t need anybody, either.
Thankfully, this little inkling didn’t grow too big before we shook it off for the lie it was.
We couldn’t ignore the suicide statistics in our county, somewhere triple the national average. We could no longer turn a blind eye to the acquaintances whose marriages were crumbling despite their allegiance to whole foods, recycling, sunrise hikes.
We were affected; we were distraught. We sat on our sofa at night and puzzled what it could mean. What would the future look like if we stayed in our mountain paradise and gave our young family all the benefits of a successful, money-fueled lifestyle? What of homeschool, a season pass to the ski resort, local breweries filled with IPA beers and flat brimmed hats spelled disaster? We could still curb the outside influences, shield our kids from bad news. We could teach AWANA on Wednesday nights after we came home from ski school. It made for a good Instagram account, but the account we were worried about was the one we’d have to give to the Lord some day.
That’s when we realized Jesus was nowhere to be found on our mountain. He wasn’t hanging around behind the curtains, waiting for a spotlight. He wasn’t even the spotlight, shining down his blessing on our stylish Colorado adventure-life. If we wanted Jesus to be a part of it, to reign as king, we’d have to let our lifestyle die. We had to stop caring about fitting it, independence, about what other people thought of us; we’d even have to drop the homeschool facade. Our hippy, privileged laissez-faire, you-do-you attitude actually reeked of superiority and we were beginning to smell of it. Jesus said to the rich man: give it all up and follow me.
He wanted our radical dependence on him, not some fake self-glorified version of piety. God or Money, the good Teacher said. “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts.”
This is hard to let past our stubborn ears. I’ve often comforted myself with the old sermon on how it isn’t money that is the root of all evil, but the love of it. It’s actually pretty easy to convince myself I don’t love money, and then I can go right on spending it. I can go on worshipping the lifestyle it can buy me. My kids can still be outstanding musicians as long as I can afford private lessons. I can live on the mountain, have a manicured yard, hire babysitters and housekeepers, go on dream vacations, buy all my groceries from Whole Foods. It all has God’s stamp of approval, because I’ve convinced myself I don’t love money. I just kind of love what it affords.
See, money can become a snare. It looks so pretty. So attainable. So worth getting caught up in. But it is still a trap. It becomes the master of me, and Jesus said there can only be one master, God or Money.
Jesus asked the rich young ruler to do less, to be less. To take up less space on this green earth biding time on his own terms. Jesus asked the guy to risk it all, to ditch his rich-man lifestyle. He was asking him to take a chance that there was more, bigger, better, holier in store for him.
This is precisely why the man went away sad–the Savior told him to pick a Master. Yet the man spoke with Jesus in the flesh! How could he have not followed! Every good little girl or boy in Sunday school has wondered. We root for him, pick Jesus! As if the matter is as simple as honey or jelly on toast. But it is no tidy matter, this I can tell you. It turns out money can buy happiness, at least for a while. You just have to keep acquiring it and spending it to keep up the momentum. The rich man–he “became very sad, because he was very wealthy.” (Lk. 18:23) He could see his whole, promising future with a little price sticker at the bottom, and he could afford it, the lakehouse, the boat, the whole shebang. He was heartsick because he already had a master, and it wasn’t God.
Every day I face the rich man’s dilemma.
I admit, It is a heck of a lot harder to look Jesus in the eye when I have two cars parked in my garage and nice clothes on my back.
But I’m changing. In the last year alone, I’ve learned more about who Jesus is, and it’s made me aware of my former fickleness. It’s made me despise my old Master and how easily I used to agree with the world. The scratched-up, thirteen-year-old, paid-for car no longer beckons me to trade it in for a slick minivan. My kids are public schoolers, and I don’t even try to justify this fact in the eyes of others. We have left some things to follow Jesus, even recently. Everytime we say no to the world, to the expectations of culture and even well-meaning friends, we say another yes to Jesus. We tilt our heads to listen to what the world is saying, then we crack open the Bible to see what His Word is saying.
And we choose Jesus–only Jesus–to be our Master.
