Reflections on the Rich Young Man

The Rich Young Man and I have crossed paths a number of times over the last few weeks.[1]  It is not surprising, then, that I want to reconsider this account from scripture.  In the past, what always struck me about the man was that he sadly walked away from Jesus, who told him to sell everything he owned and give the income to the poor if he wanted to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  Most recently, however, what struck me most was how Jesus responded to his apostles’ questioning about who can be saved.  No one can be saved by her or his own power, Jesus responds.  By God’s power, though, anyone can be.  Jesus’ answer suggests a question: Who is your God?  Our answer to this question should affect how we respond to injustice.

When answering this question, I want to avoid two implications.  First, I do not want to imply that wealth is unimportant to this passage despite my not focusing exclusively on it.  Mark’s account most definitely has a lesson about an inherent danger that comes with wealth.  Jesus began his conversation with the apostles by saying that it will be difficult for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of God and Mark narrates that the man walked away sadly because of his possessions.  I appreciate Tony Campolo’s warning that we use all sorts of verbal tricks to speak around this point, but have a harder time getting around 1 John 3:16-17. 

Nor do I want to imply, second, that I think only Christians can fight against injustice.  Although I hope my posts generally have a wider appeal than just people who share my faith, this post is as much confession to fellow saved sinners as it is anything else.  Any response to injustice that I make comes directly from faith in YHWH.  (This means, I suppose, that when I do not respond it illustrates my selfishness and the immaturity of my faith.)  Those coming from a place of privilege that do not share my faith, but nonetheless advocate for the weak and discarded always amaze me. 

So then, I must answer Jesus’ suggested question decide who my god is.  The god I claim is I Am – YHWH, the Trinitarian Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  This god is a creator god who, upon seeing part of his creation bent on destroying itself and everything else created, entered creation as part of the created order.  He explains that his purpose in coming was not to condemn the destroyers, but instead was to fix the destruction – including the part of creation that was doing all of the damage.  This creator god is therefore also a saving god.  

The problem that comes with making this claim is that it requires me to say that I need saving.  This is why the answer to Who is my God? is so important.  On what (or whom in this case) do I rely to save me?  Given above, the obvious answer is that I trust that YHWH will save me.  

The question must be asked, though, what else may I be counting on?  

This goes beyond basic life saving measures.  I doubt that eating healthy or exercising implies that I look to a farmer or my bike for salvation.  It shows instead, I expect, that I am trying to respect my health as part of Creator God’s created order, while also trying to repent of past unhealthy habits.  Similar is true about visiting a doctor to address the sorts of minor or major health issues I will inevitably face.  Such actions certainly do “save” me, but not in any ultimate sense.  

Moving from the temporary to the ultimate though raises more opportunities for idolatry.  I expect that living for as long as possible can become an idol.  If it does, the same medical attention, good food, and exercise that I use to respect my God-given physical health will become the sacramental elements of worship to a different god.  

We can also look to ideas to provide salvation.  Absolutely I think we need to address complex problems withequally complex solutions but if I am going to argue that Jesus entered creation to save it, then I need to look to him rather than a brilliant political thinker or philosopher.[2]  Books, lectures, and films as media forms can be idols but the notions that people communicate through them are, I think, as likely to be gods.  

There is also a danger in imitating the rich young man.  Money is a tempting source of salvation.  It definitely has the ability to provide security.  It may also be inseparable from a philosophy that we look to for salvation (such as the free market or the redistribution of wealth).  

For people like me – people who believe that salvation comes from something external – idols parent injustice.  When I look to a saviour that cannot provide salvation in any ultimate sense, there is a problem not just for me but also for the people with whom I relate.  

Seeing long life as a saviour can allow for systems that makes medicine easily accessible for some while inaccessible for others.  It can also favour medical research that extends already relatively long lives of some over research to extend the relatively short lives of others.  The idol of long life implies that some people (whom YHWH created) are more valuable than other people (whom YHWH also created).  This is unjust.  

Seeing an idea as a saviour can result in obvious evils like totalitarian regimes that talk about saving their citizenry.  It can also result in the more subtle but still problematic stifling of debate through propaganda that paints all disagreement as coming from ignorance or disloyalty.  This is unjust.  

Seeing money as a saviour allows people to accumulate  enough stuff that the sheer volume makes most of it unusable,[3] to neglect the current needs of others because of the possible future needs of ourselves, or to uncritically buy without considering the humanityof the workers behind our commodities.  This is unjust.     

I believe YHWH is just and that looking to him for salvation will lead to choices that oppose injustice.  

This is not universally accepted.  I can empathize with such criticism.  The problem of evil raises legitimate questions.[4]  Even it didn’t, the church which purports to follow Jesus is not always the best representative of a just God. 

Nonetheless, I remember three things when I look at Jesus.  One, Timothy Keller tells us to consider whether Jesus’ claims to divinity are correct.  If they are, Jesus becomes the path to God.  If they are not correct, Jesus cannot possibly be a path to God.[5]  

I agree that Jesus’ claims are correct.  I therefore recall, two, a lecture from my time at seminary when one of my profs said that he cannot imagine Jesus seeing evil – including injustice – and being either indifferent or unaffected.[6]  

I can then look at the third thing.  Pockets of the church – which I know are bigger than I can expect – that do show that our saviour is just.  Such pockets resemble the God we see in the Gospels, the Exodus, and the Prophets.[7]  

Pockets of justice stand on the shoulders of a compassionate and divine Jesus.  They humble me and motivate me.  I believe they show Jesus to be a saviour that offers a worthwhile salvation.  Still, it is often (usually?) tempting to follow behind the Rich Young Man, sadly hanging my head.  I wish I had I solution that would make this temptation to look toanother saviour and its salvation go away.  Instead, I can only echo the prayer of another speaker in Mark: “I believe; help my unbelief!”

---

[1] Where I crossed paths with man is important because each encounter helped shape my thinking.  I met him when reading through Mark’s Gospel.  He came up at a conference I attended in Moncton.  He was part of a DVD I watched.  He was in a sermon I heard online.  Finally, I thought about him quite a bit while listening to this, although I do not recall him coming up specifically.

[2]I should explore this idea (Ha!) more in a later post.  For now, I think I am comfortable saying that we should use ideas as means to help our current situation better reflect the ultimately fulfilled Kingdom.  Ideas then become a means of worshipping YHWH and not their proponents or the ideas themselves.

[3]This is coming from a man whose record collection measures in the dozens, DVD collection measures in the hundreds, and book collection is approaching a millennium.  I will work on the log in my eye before condemning the speck in a reader’s eye.

[4] C. S. Lewis’ The Problem of Pain, John Stackhouse’s Can God Be Trusted?, and N. T. Wright’s Evil and the Justice of God have been helpful as I struggle to get my head around injustice.

[5] The Veritas Forum: Belief in an Age of Skepticism? http://youtu.be/C9fmKSwuoDE

[6] If I remember correctly, this was from John Stackhouse in an apologetics course at Regent College in 2010.

[7] I was glad to get to know some of these churches. 
http://ajdickinson.blogspot.ca/search/label/Churches%20that%20Respond%20to%20Poverty