BLOG 5/17/15. THE FRIGHTENING PERIL OF BEING WEALTHY

There is one of Jesus’ parables that doesn’t get much attention, and with good reason: It challenges the popular myth that to be wealthy creates satisfaction, security, happiness—all of which is a huge fiction. The parable is about a very, very wealthy guy whose name was Dives. Everything about him exuded wealth. He dressed in the finest clothes and “fared sumptuously every day.” And what, or who, he ignored was a penniless and helpless invalid person named Lazarus, who was covered with sores and was laid at the gate of Dives’ home with the hope that he might find some food among the garbage scraps that were thrown out for the guard dogs. The irony is that it was those ordinarily vicious guard dogs who were Lazarus’ best friends, and who came and licked his wounds and kept him company. Now, given, that Jesus’ parables are frequently given to hyperbole, the message is still clear. Both Dives and Lazarus ultimately died, and while poor Lazarus was taken by the angels to Abraham’s side, Dives wound up in Hades (the place of suffering). When Dives protested and asked for mercy, the answer he received was that he had been blessed in his lifetime, but that he had totally neglected this wretched beggar at his gate … well, you get the message. But this is consistent with Jesus’ other teachings: “Blessed are you poor, for yours is the Kingdom of God. … But woe to you rich, for you have received your consolation.”

I thought about this reading an article in today’s Sunday paper about the salaries of America’s corporate leaders—mostly in the range of between ten to one hundred million dollars a year. Somehow the news conveys the impression that such is a really, really desirable situation to be in. I think it’s frightening. One of the ironies is that, while no one aspires to be poor, it is also a reality that poor people find happiness, music, and meaning in their economic subsistence. Rich people seem always to want more, and can be hugely indifferent to the needs of those struggling to survive. I grew up with this reality on my doorstep during the depression days of the 1930s. I lived in West Palm Beach, which was right across a lake from the island of Palm Beach, which was (and may still be) the wealthiest colony of the super-rich in the world (according to the New York Times). We had a lot of commerce with Palm Beach, West Palm Beach being the mainland community that supplied a whole lot of the logistics that the Palm Beach folk depended on. From my youth I realized how vain and superficial that culture of wealth could be, and how indifferent to human need. They dressed elegantly, entertained lavishly, dined sumptuously like Dives.

We live in a nation and a world of a super-wealthy tiny minority, and a vast population of those who struggle to even exist, to provide for daily needs, and are totally vulnerable to so many factors of health, unemployment, economy, and unexpected calamity. I looked at this many years ago while spending time in the Congo, where hunger took its toll on children when mothers could no longer breast-feed them. They learned survival from health workers on how to grind up dried fish, or dried rats into a paste, which would provide protein for these small children. It opened my eyes. I realized how enormously blessed and truly ‘rich’ I was in my comfortable life.

Question: who is rich? The answer is that most of us of even modest middle class are the rich of the world. I am rich. I live on a modest pension and Social Security, but I have a comfortable home, I have food on the table, I have medical insurance, I could not ask for more. And when the bills are paid, what is my obligation to those globally who have none of these—to that vast company of Lazaruses? Or what is the obligation of our national leaders, our legislators, to seek the common welfare, to provide necessities, and to seek to eliminate the blight of poverty? Being rich can be hazardous to one’s health. Being indifferent to the poor even more so. But we avoid the parable of Dives and Lazarus. It’s too threatening.