Cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/34117495
[OC]
Original still created by @gedogfx (IG). Title source: “Inkl”
Edit: I’m not on any other social media platforms, so feel free to share this elsewhere if you want
I like to contextualize this in a modern form. I like to say, “there are no billionaires in Heaven. In the end, every last one of them burns.” When I see Musk, Bezos, or Trump, I see men who are literally and inevitably headed for the very literal fires of Hell. Let them have their vanity here. In the end, they’re all gonna fry.
I don’t know what qualifies as “rich.” But I don’t think a modest 401k to support yourself in retirement is going to damn anyone. I don’t know where the line is, but by the time you get the obscene level of a billionaire, you have been consumed by greed.
I like to imagine wealth and as an anchor. Would you die, your soul tries to ascend upward. But those with great wealth find themselves chained to a great golden weight, a spiritual manifestation of their wealth and greed on Earth. And as they try to fly upward, they instead are pulled down, down, and down. They see the surface of the Earth rise up above them like a diver descending beneath the ocean’s surface. And they do not stop falling until they reach the Pit.
The context for the original quote is Jesus speaking to a “young ruler”. The young ruler asks if he will be judged as a good person. He follows all the religious laws and is very pious. Jesus tells him to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor. Jesus promises the man that his reward will be great in heaven, but the young ruler cannot bring himself to do it.
I don’t see this as Jesus telling everyone to live in poverty. This is Jesus testing the man’s faith. Even though Jesus himself promises the man a reward for giving up his possessions, he doesn’t trust Jesus. He doesn’t have faith that his actions will be rewarded in heaven. The warning isn’t that having possessions is inherently evil, but that one can be so tied to their Earthly possessions they can refuse a direct request by Jesus himself.
I like to view it in the context of the passage about the three people donating money. One wealthy man donates a large sum of money, while a man who makes an average living donates a smaller amount, and the last is an old lady who donates something akin to $1.50. In the end, Jesus declares that the old lady gave the most because she donated all that she feasibly could while the wealthy man gave what was a mere pittance of his money and the other man gave a noticeable portion of his salary, but not enough that he would miss it.
The effort and generosity behind a donation (whether of time or money) is more important than the donation itself, and that’s what the rich can’t understand. By the time you get to that level of wealth, you’ve spent so much energy in accruing wealth that you no longer have the empathy to see those around you who truly need aid, and to lose that empathy is to lose an essential part of what makes us human - a part of the divinity that exists within us.
