Your Money or Your Life?

The scriptures referred to are Luke 6:17-26.

In the documentary series Secrets of Playboy, the fantasy that Hugh Hefner was a benign rich guy who did nothing wrong except have lots of sex with lots of women has been given a severe reality check—by those very women. Yes, the bunnies at the Playboy Club were not to be touched or dated by club keyholders at the risk of those men being expelled and their membership being revoked—unless they were VIPs. Then anything goes. And by “anything” that includes illegal drug use by those at the mansion: the guests, the bunnies and Hefner himself. A woman who was one of his girlfriends from 1976 to 1981 confessed to buying drugs for him: not just pot but cocaine and amphetamines. He put them into his locked bedside table. Hefner and his top associates also had standing prescriptions for Quaaludes, which Hefner called “leg spreaders.” One former bunny said they were given to the women to make them more amenable to whatever Hefner and his guests wanted to do with them. She said 2 Quaaludes, however, would render a person unconscious. And in another documentary series, We Need to Talk About Cosby, a number of his rape victims said he plied them with 2 Quaaludes or dissolved them in drinks. The comedian was a frequent guest at the Playboy mansion.

Gee, who would have guessed that Hefner, a man who built an empire marketing a very hedonistic lifestyle, would be willing to use drugs to give himself pleasure, and to render women more pliable! He also took pictures to blackmail the women into silence.

A few weeks ago, we talked about whether power corrupts people or whether it's simply that bad people are attracted to getting power. For his book Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us, political scientist Brian Klaas interviewed 500 people, most of them corrupt. According to his research on the problem, he says it's both/and. Power can corrupt people and corruptible people seek power. Marc Ravalomanana, who worked his way up from poverty to become president of Madagascar, did a lot of good at first. But increasingly he did bad things to stay in power, like allow the presidential guard to fire upon protesters, killing 31 people and wounding more than 200.

Not only does power attract people who have no qualms about abusing it but, Klaas found, some systems are so corrupt that it can seem that the only way to get things done is by working within an evil system. Thus in both helping the Afghans fight the Russians in the 1970s and later in our war there against the Taliban the United States turned a blind eye to the heroin trade of our Afghan partners.

In today's gospel we get a passage that sounds a lot like the Beatitudes in Matthew's account of the Sermon on the Mount. But it has some startling differences. Bible scholars call this the Sermon on the Plain. The resemblance of the two is probably because Jesus, like most itinerant speakers, had a standard speech which he altered to address local issues and changing circumstances.

Anyway you have only to listen to the first of these beatitudes to know that Jesus has made a big alteration. “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God,” he begins. The words in Greek are identical to Matthew 5:3 except for the missing phrase “in spirit.” Many Bible students try to conflate the two versions but if we respect the Son of God's word choice here, we have to conclude that he is talking of those who are poor in the usual sense: lacking sufficient money, property and resources. And this continues with him saying, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.” He is not talking about spiritual hunger as in the Sermon on the Mount; he is talking about those so poor they cannot get enough food. Jesus fed thousands. (Mark 6:35-44; 8:1-9) After all it's hard to concentrate on spiritual matters when your stomach is aching to be filled.

This concern for the poor is in line with what the rest of the Bible says. Proverbs 14:31 says, “The one who oppresses the poor insults his maker but whoever shows favor to the needy honors him.” And “The one who is gracious to the poor lends to the Lord, and the Lord will repay him for his good deed.” (Proverbs 19:17) These only make sense if God so identifies with the poor that what we do to them, we do to God. And indeed Jesus tells us that whatever we do to the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the prisoner and the resident alien we do to him. (Matthew 25:31-46)

And the vast majority of Jesus' audience was likely poor. Nearly 90 years earlier, the Roman general Pompey ended the independence of the kingdom of Judea. He took land from the Jews and gave it to Hellenized landowners. Many peasants were made landless. Herod's taxes drove more small farmers out of business and they became day laborers or else had to work as tenants on land they once owned. If they objected, the landowners could just replace them with slaves. There wasn't any middle class, just the rich and the poor. And if you were rich, it was usually because you exploited the poor.

Which is why Jesus balances his pronouncements of blessings on the poor with announcements of judgment on their oppressors. “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry.” William Barclay summarizes what Jesus is saying this way: “If you set your heart and bend your whole energies to obtain the things which the world values, you will get them—but that is all you will ever get!”

And yet many people felt that prosperity must be a sign of God's favor. Today they call it the “Prosperity Gospel.” Unfortunately by that logic if you aren't prosperous it's your own fault. You must not have enough faith or be obedient enough to God. And some people believe this in spite of all the evidence that there are wealthy people who are not godly but corrupt. Even the Bible says, “Better is a poor man who walks in his integrity than a rich man who is crooked in his ways.” (Proverbs 28:6) and “A fortune made by a lying tongue is a fleeting vapor and a deadly snare.” (Proverbs 21:6) Material wealth and prosperity is neither a sufficient nor a necessary sign that someone is good.

Wealth is powerful, like fire: it can do great good or great harm. It is spiritually and morally dangerous if you do not handle it properly. Barclay points out 3 dangers of wealth. First, riches give one a false sense of independence. You think you don't need anyone else's help. “I'm a self-made man. I did it all by myself.” That's never true. Money always comes from others, by inheritance or bank loans or investments or customers or theft or deception. And let's not forget the workers who do the labor. Jeff Bezos would not be one of the richest men in the world if he personally had to find, box and ship every item people bought on Amazon. If all those workers who can't get time to eat or use the bathroom quit, his company would be in trouble. Every CEO is dependent on the people to whom they pay the least money. Yet some wealthy people resent the idea that they owe anyone for anything. And that often includes God. They forget how precarious wealth can be. Proverbs 11:28 says, “He who trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will flourish like a green leaf.”

Secondly, Barclay says, riches can shackle a person to this world. “Where your treasure is, there will be your heart also,” Jesus said. (Matthew 6:21) Wealth can distort your sense of priorities, especially if you put it above all other things in life. Or life itself. Rose O'Neal Greenhow was a famous spy. If that sounds like a contradiction in terms, let me clarify. She was a very successful spy at first, using her position as a Washington D.C. socialite to get information from Northern senators and high-ranking military officers and pass it on to the Confederacy. Jefferson Davis credited her with ensuring the victory of the South at the first Battle of Bull's Run. But she was discovered, and because neither side would execute a female spy, she was deported to the South. She wrote a memoir and toured Europe. On her return, she was in a shipwreck. Though she made it to a rowboat, it capsized and she drowned, dragged down by her book royalties, the $2000 in gold which she had sewn into her undergarments and hung around her neck. As Jesus says, “What good will it be for a person if they gain the whole world yet forfeit their life?” (Matthew 16:26)

Finally Barclay points out that riches can make you selfish. And greedy for more. As Ecclesiastes 5:10 says, “The one who loves money will never be satisfied with money, he who loves wealth will never be satisfied with his income. This is also futile.” There are millionaires and billionaires whose primary goal in life is simply “More.” They own many mansions, cars, yachts, planes and now space ships. How big is the hole in their soul that they keep trying to fill it with more and more and more stuff?

Just as there are ways to handle fire so that it does good rather than harm, so it is with wealth. In Deuteronomy 15:11 God says, “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in the land.” And Proverbs 22:9 says, “Whoever is generous will be blessed, for he shares his food with the poor.” Paul writes to Timothy, “Command those who are rich in this world's goods not to be haughty or to set their hopes on riches, which are uncertain, but on God who richly provides us with all things for our enjoyment. Tell them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, to be generous givers, sharing with others. In this way they will save up a treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the future and so lay hold of what is truly life.” (1 Timothy 6:17-19)

Another thing that troubles people is not so much the first part of this first beatitude—“Blessed are you who are poor”—as the second part: “for yours is the kingdom of God.” Does poverty bestow virtue? No, not any more than wealth does. The Bible recognizes that some are poor because they are lazy or foolish. But that only applies to a few. The majority of poor who can work do—62.6%, in fact, 44.3% full time. And that doesn't include those who are seeking a job. Most of the poor who don't work are the retired, those going to school and those disabled by disease, physical or mental.

And while those who are poor are not necessarily more virtuous than the rich they are more likely to rely on God. A Gallup survey found that rich countries tend to be less religious than poor ones. According to the Pew Research Center people in rich countries are much less likely to say that religion is very important or even somewhat important in their lives. Why? Because people in rich countries tend to succumb to the 3 temptations Barclay listed: they think they don't need or owe God, they are more tied to material things than spiritual values, and they have so much stuff they become selfish and greedy.

The poor can be materialistic but that is because they lack necessities. In the minds of the rich, luxuries become necessities. Which is why Proverbs 21:17 says, “The one who loves pleasure will be a poor person...” And sure enough, Henry VIII nearly bankrupted the government of England with his excesses. Among other things, he had 55 palaces to maintain. And Hugh Hefner's lavish lifestyle nearly bankrupted his company. To keep it going, he sold out. At the end he didn't own the famous Playboy mansion in which he lived; he didn't own the rights to the Playboy brand, nor even the rights to his own name and likeness. His family no longer has any connection with the company he founded, and that company fully supports the allegations the women make in the documentary series. The poster boy for consequence-free sex is taking his place among Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and all the editors, CEOs, actors, pastors, professors, politicians and other sexual predators who were exposed in the “Me, Too” movement that began just 10 days after Hefner's death. Jesus is speaking to such people when he says “Woe to you who are laughing now...Woe to you when all speak well of you...” Because such people are often charming and popular. And to make sure nobody said anything bad about him Hefner used his connections in media to kill interviews with former playmates, girlfriends and employees and publicity for any tell-all books.

For the Bible what is essential is not how much money you've got but how you got it and what you do with it. Do you acquire it ethically and do you share with those who are less fortunate? When Jesus meets Zacchaeus, the rich tax collector, the man says, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” And Jesus says to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.” (Luke 19:8-9) That last phrase could also be translated “heal the destroyed.” In other words, Jesus came to heal those who are being destroyed spiritually, even if it is by succumbing to the temptations of wealth.

Unfortunately obsession with wealth can destroy the poor as well. In the documentary program Trafficked with Mariana Van Zeller, the journalist talks to people in criminal enterprises from the street level all the way up to the top. Many of them were poor, including the people at the top. But I noticed that the people running these illegal schemes are now rich and the people under them—the ones who make the drugs, the ones who transport them, and the dealers—are not. They are always working and always in danger. These rackets have reproduced the basic structure of a legitimate business, where the people at the bottom are exploited and the big money flows upwards only.

And then when you realize the tremendous damage done to our world by legal drugs—alcohol, tobacco and opioids—it makes you wonder about our true values as a society. No matter what we make and sell, legal or illegal, it is ultimately about money, isn't it? Do we, rich and poor, actually worship and serve money? (Luke 16:13) Do we really think that he who dies with the most toys wins? Because Proverbs 11:4 says, “Wealth is worthless in the day of wrath, but righteousness delivers from death.” In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich guy suffers in the afterlife not because he had wealth but because he didn't use it to take care of the poor sick guy lying at the gate of his no doubt beautiful home. (Luke 16:19-31) His top priority, like Rose O'Neal Greenhow, like those who sell harmful products, was money—not life, not people, and certainly not God.

In college my mom made me a pillow which cushions my back as I write. It says, “What you are is God's gift to you. What you become is your gift to God.” I really like it but it's not quite correct theologically. We cannot become the person God wants us to be without his help and grace. It would be more accurate to say, “What you have—talents, abilities, and, yes, material assets—are God's gifts to you. What you do with them can be your gift to God.” When at last we face God, he isn't going to be impressed by how much money or gold or other non-living things we have accumulated, however cool or shiny they are. He will be looking for the people that we have brought back to him, people he created and loves and wants to bring into his kingdom to live with him forever.