2023-01-14 A Meditation on Rich and Poor

“Let the evildoer still do evil, and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy.”” (Re 22:11 ESV)

If you ask any rich person, there is something to long for besides money. Some get this, others are still hoarding and hoping that they can buy happiness. But social mobility, economic evenhandedness, fluid society, is a direct fruit of belief: we are happy, not because of our funds, but because we’ve hastened to the Gospel. The gospel forgives us any residual sins. Nightmares, recollections of feeling guilty about some dependency long past by now, but still recalled, the moment of clarity, and it’s forgiven flipside, genuine belonging, wealthy spiritual homestead, rich in absolution, these things challenge the wealthy person because they prescribe social upheaval.

That is, a wealthy person doesn’t always know what is best for them: they have all the wealth, yet still get offended when a lesser monied person declares themselves healed and absolved. There is stickiness and refusal to allow the social climb. There is gaping and mock horror. They gape and say, “These things should not be done!”

The Christian longs for the opposite vision, opposite of guilt: to walk into a peace and prospectus others are unthinkingly jealous of. It is a gift that rightly belongs to all of us, so there should be no jealousy nor frustration. There should be no gaping. Yet mankind’s natural reaction to attainment is to kill and destroy. Mankind struggles to enter into the scenario and to apply it to oneself. Mankind reacts before they think. It is not because the poorer believer is stealing from the rich person, it is just because of some sick inkling of gaping and of horror.

For there is no horror, if but for once this gospel be proclaimed: that Man was in sin, but today is in a New Kingdom. Man is blessed with hearty and heartfelt dreams. Man wakes up in the embrace of progressive and upbuilt scenes from real life. Man is raring to go. Man is recipient of a caress or whirlwind greater than his or her own imagined creations. These ideas have wings. These ideas minister to us throughout the day, as we find ourselves chained to our social status without any allowance for entering the wealthier congregation. These ideas have wings as we see the unfortunate ones gape at us and at our newfound faith. These ideas minister to us when with tear in our eye we protest that things are not fair.