August 2, 2004
On this day when Wall Street and our financial industry stands on high terror alert, we find the story of “the rich fool” (Luke 12: 13-21) all the more difficult to understand. What did the rich man, an otherwise blameless entrepreneur, do wrong? When this man’s crops offered an abundant harvest, why did Jesus chastise him? Doesn’t God Himself offer us an abundant life?
The answer is revealed in how the rich man responded to God’s blessings. Notice the personal pronouns. “He thought to himself, 'What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.' "Then he said, 'This is what I'll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I'll say to myself, "I have plenty of good things laid up for many years. I will take life easy; eat, drink and be merry." That’s a lot of “me, myself, and I” in a very few words. His focus changed from God and neighbor to himself!
So it seems the blessing of an abundant harvest (prosperity) is not the problem; it is how one views and what one does with the blessing that makes the difference. One commentator said, the rich fool had “full barns and an empty heart”. Sure, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. That’s because whenever God sends a blessing, He does so for a reason which involves sharing, instead of hoarding. Wall Street is not programmed to operate like that. The old hymn says, “Make me a channel of blessings.”
This story is not an indictment against capitalism, nor is it a warning that we should not seek the abundant life. It is a lesson on what happens when anyone takes the blessings of God to store up things for oneself, but is not rich toward God and one’s neighbors in need.
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