Carnegie and Notorious B.I.G. meet Lazarus and the rich man

"The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced." -Andrew Carnegie, in "Wealth," 1889.

Andrew Carnegie

As I'm reading up for Confirmation today, I ran across this Carnegie quote, which the Here We Stand curriculum uses in its deep prep for the story of Lazarus and the rich man (Luke 16:19-31). Taken on its own, this is a remarkable call to the aid of the neighbor. Taken in terms of stories like the one from Luke's 16th chapter this is poignant advice for the eschaton.

Unfortunately, the HWS curriculum goes on to talk about how the ELCA lives into this kind of practice through its many umbrella programs and agencies. Fair enough, but let's try not to make this abhorrently self-aggrandizing now. I don't think Carnegie would pat us on the back for our menial efforts and, to that point, I doubt that Luke would say we have given away nearly enough. But even more infuriating is that the curriculum poses exactly the question that young people have, namely "Does this story mean that all rich and powerful people go to hell?" And then it doesn't even attempt to offer an answer... or better yet a promise. Instead, the apparent goal is to get youth to see that life is unfair but it evens out in the end.

Is that really what Jesus is all about?

In some sense I think you can get this idea from scripture, e.g. "Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain" (Isaiah 40:4), and "‘Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God'" (Matthew 19:23-24). However, both are rather piecemeal understandings of the promise. Yes, wealth is a detriment to faith; it's not hard to see the reasons why. The more stuff we have, the easier it is to set that stuff up on our altars before God. But God isn't exactly deterred by the stuff we throw in his way. The Matthew snippet above is often given without the oh-so-important exchange that follows:

"When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astounded and said, ‘Then who can be saved?’ But Jesus looked at them and said, ‘For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible'"(Matthew 19:25-26).

The problem with the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is that it pushes punishment and reward into the eschaton. This seems, at first, to be a rather fair way to deal with sin in the grand scheme of things. A life full of misdeed equals eternal punishment; a life full of poverty equals eternal life. Everything balances out in the end. And yet, Matthew 19 illustrates that we are all rich... and poor. Few, if any of us, are so easily categorized. This is, by the way, one of the problems with movements like Occupy that suggest we are the 99%. Sure, but you're also the 1% compared to children in Uganda or rice paddy workers in south China. Do you really want to play that game with Jesus?

Wealth as pathology

Perhaps the greatest lie we tell ourselves is that wealth is honorable, and that it is a symbol of security for those we love. In truth, it is a status symbol that speaks a constant word of self-importance that runs contrary to the heart of everything that Jesus is after. Money itself is neutral, but in its accumulation we ascribe meaning to the money itself. At a certain point it goes beyond dollars in your pocket and becomes "wealth."

If you watch the news it should be clear that wealth (and the fame that precedes or follows it) is more pathology than blessing. Whitney Houston is another in a long string of people who "had it all" only to realize that "it all" feels a lot like a crushing weight of depression and purposelessness soothed only by more of the very things that cause the disease. Wealth is a burden not only because it is deserving of far-off punishment, but primarily because it harms our relationships--the things that ultimately matter most to us--today.

So, instead of speaking in terms of ultimate justice, as if God is going to balance the scales in the end so that poor people experience material wealth and rich people experience material poverty, we should heed the words that Jesus gives us immediately before the rich man and Lazarus account:

"The law and the prophets were in effect until John came; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is proclaimed, and everyone is constrained to enter" (Luke 16:16, my translation).

The good news of the kingdom is that security blankets are unnecessary; in fact, they are things that must be shed before Christ. In this light, the parable is not so much about the rich man getting what he deserves, as it is a cautionary tale to strip away those things keeping us from fulfillment in both the future and the present.

As the wise prophet, Notorious B.I.G., once said, "Mo' money; mo' problems." In one area at least, he and Carnegie are strikingly alike.