Easier for a camel

There is nothing like growing up in a super power to teach you what wealth is. The experience of unprecedented material comfort swiftly instructs man in the goodness of all the lower things. Unfortunately, such wealth and prosperity tend to be terrible teachers of the virtue of poverty. And without the virtue of poverty, we really lose all the wealth of the soul.

As modern day Americans, we face the daunting challenge of trying to get to heaven while living in an incredibly rich society. Indeed, this is a specific struggle Jesus warned us about when he said, "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God" (Mt. 19:24). Even if we believe that by "eye of a needle" Jesus meant a small gate in the walls of Jerusalem, His basic point remains the same: it is very hard for rich people to get to heaven.

However, in many sermons that I have heard about this passage, I seem to have always heard the same watered down theme: don't worry, you can still be rich and get to heaven; Jesus was just talking about "poverty of spirit." The current understanding of the virtue of poverty seems to be that you can have all the material goods you want as long as you aren't attached to them. Don't worry if you have a large number of cars, or if you have a massive house. As long as you aren't attached to these things, everything's fine.

But I wonder if that is totally true. For, it seems to me, that when we have a large number of things we necessarily tend to grow attached to them. We begin by saying of this or that thing, "wouldn't it be nice if we had this?" Wouldn't it be nice if we had a second car? Wouldn't it be nice if we had a third? Wouldn't it be nice if we had an espresso maker? Wouldn't it be nice if we had a bigger TV? When it comes to material goods, especially in America, the desire for them always begins in the desire for a luxury, but then it ends in a longing for a need. "How would we ever do without our second or third car? I don't know how I could get through the day without my morning espresso. If we go back to a smaller TV, how would we be able to see anything?" What started out as a luxury becomes a necessity, and we become attached.

This tendency to make luxuries into necessities, to value comfort often at the cost of sensibility, is what Our Lord was really talking about when He spoke of the eye of the needle. The possession of large amounts of material wealth makes it very difficult to be detached from material wealth. Whenever somebody possesses material wealth, which in America is almost everybody, myself included, we tend to become attached to it. We tend to think that this wealth, this luxury is something we really need.

The root cause of this tendency to become attached to wealth lies in the fact that man is incarnate and fallen. When I say he is incarnate, I mean that all of man's knowledge, all of his experience, begins with the senses. Sensible things are the first things that are available to us, and thus it is easier for us to know them. And, because we are fallen, we tend to stay in the realm of the senses. Our tendency away from God becomes a tendency towards lower things. For instance, we can see, hear, and smell all the things in nature around us, but we can't see, hear, and smell the virtues of charity or hope. It's so easy for us to enjoy the taste of a good cup of coffee, but it's so hard for us to enjoy the virtue of prudence. Thus, we tend towards pleasure, towards gratifying sensual desires at the expense of the higher, intellectual things.

Because of this, material wealth presents a temptation for us. Even though it is rightly said not to be evil in and of itself, wealth is a great temptation because it provides us with the means to satiate our earthly desires. It makes it possible to distract ourselves to death, literally. It makes it possible to never think about the higher things, because we are always made fat and content.

If we're to live a true union with God, then, one of the first places we might want to start is in embracing poverty. While true poverty, the poverty that denies the necessities of life to some, is an evil that needs to be eliminated, we can live out a type of "not having" that is good. We can embrace not having all the luxuries of our contemporaries. We can choose to live simpler, with less entertainment and some more suffering. We do this to teach ourselves what's most important in life, to reorder all of our desires so that we don't favor what is lower, but instead favor God above all else. If we're serious about the spiritual life, than I wonder how we can possibly choose to become rich when Jesus warns us that wealth makes it so much harder to come into His kingdom.