The Rich Fool [Parable Thoughts]
13 Now someone from the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me!” 14 But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or an arbitrator over you?” 15 And he said to them, “Watch out and guard yourselves from all greediness, because not even when someone has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.” 16 And he told a parable to them, saying, “The land of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 And he reasoned to himself, saying, ‘What should I do? For I do not have anywhere I can gather in my crops.’ 18 And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and I will gather in there all my grain and possessions. 19 And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many possessions stored up for many years. Relax, eat, drink, celebrate!”’ 20 But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your life is demanded from you, and the things which you have prepared—whose will they be?’ 21 So is the one who stores up treasure for himself, and who is not rich toward God!”
The first interesting thing of note here is that someone, seemingly random, saw Christ as not just a good teacher, but rather an authority on matters. He wasn’t just a crowd stirring Rabbi who taught something that was questionably new. Jesus was seen as judge, if not only to some. Why does Jesus respond as if He is not the eternal judge? isn’t Jesus proclaiming later that He is the Alpha and the Omega? The One who will return to judge us? All questions that I thought until I was reminded of Luke 18:19 where Jesus asks “Why do you say I am good?” — only God is these things.
Christ goes onto say that a man’s possessions do not equate to life, they don’t define his life, nor do they give life to such a person. It’s this idea that really has jolted me lately, not that I own many possessions. In fact, I don’t even own a house anymore, I do have some clothes, a nice computer, some shoes, a big truck and various affections but as a whole, I have less than I have ever had in my life. Why do I feel stricken with the feeling of being overwhelmed by what I own?
I prayed about this, sought counsel on this and began to string this out before I landed at something simple, but life changing: “What you do with your time, your job, does it benefit His kingdom?” This question, among a few others, rattled my brain for weeks because I realized that I was so concerned with my bills and what I had to do day to day in order to make more money.
Don’t mistake me, I know that providing for a family, providing food, shelter and what not is important, even biblical for the man. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t use my skillset to further His kingdom. What if I had the mindset for my work and my day job to work for Him? For my brain, it needs to be literal. I needed to find a way to work for a non-profit, ministry or some organization doing good. And I don’t mean like clean the ocean good, I mean like sharing the Scriptures good.
But back to the initial Scripture for a moment. Christ does something that slips by most readers today. He says “greediness” amidst a request that is justified. Christ says that even in our justified requests, our perfectly reasonable qualms, there can be greediness lying in the roots. This does two initial things to my heart. The first being that we as a human race are far more fallen than we even can conceive. Second, it shows us that we cannot even be fully just in, all the time, in our request of justice.
This is a thought, the one above, that I want people to think about in our time. Most of the outcry we have today have little purpose in eternity. Though, I could provoke and pinpoint abortion, refugee status, or something like voting rights. None of these carry the same weight in any regard. Though, each contain within it a people who outcry for justice, but seemingly each has a just position. Is greed lingering in your life?
The next few sentences that come from Christ tell us that this man in the parable decided to build bigger storage for all his harvesting. Even though this parable is thousands of years old, we can still easily wrap our minds around “going bigger”. We often say things like, “we’ve outgrown this home” or “this home has a bigger master suite” or even “this home has a bigger play area for our kids”. The last one is so unselfish, with no greediness involved… /sarcasm.
The man stores up all that he has and has all the room in the world. He tells his soul, what a specific choice this was in Christ, that it can now “eat, drink, and be merry”. The soul must have responded with, “Well, what about our eternal status, did you check on that? have you asked God about that? cause all this stuff will evaporate in the end”. You may be able to dupe your soul into thinking that it can eat, drink, and be merry for a time period but the soul’s thoughts will prevail in the end. It knows, it aches, and cries out to the eternal [Ps 84:2].
Our souls are part of who we are but the soul has been seen to be the breath of God within us. When Adam is breathed into, his soul comes alive and he is no longer just bones. It’s natural for the soul of man to yearn for something eternal, it may not know that it is yearning for God, but the soul will eventually return to the mouth of God.
That’s exactly what we see happen next in this short parable. We see that God tells the man that his soul is demanded of him. God says, return to me, because it was never yours to begin with. Now what comes of your possessions in abundance?
There is this financial guru that you may have heard of named Grant Cardone. He often speaks about how he won’t be around to see his wealth and he’s storing it up for his kids, though he does fly in a private jet that he owns currently. Wealth for the next generation only matters if that wealth has been stamped with eternal purpose. It is good for us to store up for the next generation, to take care of our family, to provide for it, but useless does it become if we aren’t earmarking it for God.
“rich toward God” is a sentiment that I have often struggled with because it is so broad sweeping. However, I think after all these years of going back and forth on exactly what Christ could be saying here I have derived at an answer given to us in the Psalm 19: They are more desirable than gold, yes, than much fine gold; Sweeter also than honey and the drippings of the honeycomb.