The Rich Young Ruler was Right

Rethinking the encounter between Jesus and the rich young ruler

Jesus, a Jewish quasi-rabbi of the first century, spoke against materialism. He often would speak against "the rich," who stored up their possessions where moth and rust could destroy. Being wealthy, therefore, was seen as a bad thing, or if not outright bad, then it was seen as being highly risky for being in a proper relationship to God.

For example, in one story from the Bible,[1] a young man came to Jesus and, after some initial quibbling about who gets the standard of 'good' correctly attributed to whom, the young man attests that he was not a liar, nor defrauder; and, that he was generally a moral person all around. No protests arose from Jesus or others when he said this. But Jesus then tells him take up with him, and to sell off all his belongings, give the proceeds to the poor, and there would, as a consequence, be a heavenly reward. The young guy was wealthy, and therefore saddened, apparently thinking the risk of investment was not worth the odds of payoff. Was he rational to decline Jesus offer? I think so.

There's a couple of items to this story from antiquity which I find worth considering. First, compare this case to a hypothetical one where the rich young guy was found dying of a disease. His doctor tells him a cure is available, but it would cost him his net worth. Would he have sold it all? Well, if he checked it out, saw that it worked on others, and talked with people who had the same problem, got the same advice, and realized the benefit; then, almost certainly he would have--at least If modern indications of bankruptcy as tied to dire medical bills is any indication.[2] So, the young guy would seemingly make the most rational decision on a risk calculation.

Now, consider his decline of Jesus' offer. One might counter-argue that the young guy secretly knew it was the wrong decision. But that goes against the medical argument above. If it was known that the investment, or risk of investment, was worth the payoff, it's not a wrong decision. It appears that Jesus was asking the young guy to turn his brain off. (Not an unusual tactic for preachers.) But there is another angle here too: one can image the young guy dying after many years, and subsequently going to heaven. God says, "You'd have had a much more impacting life it you'd taken up Jesus' offer. That would have been a pure exercise of freewill, a virtue. Still, you did the rational thing by following the evidence available to you. And that was an exercise of reason, also a virtue. Enter in, then, my good and faithful servant."

Second, it seems a trivially easy argument to make that one should not be caught up in worldly wealth in the first century. There is no upward mobility, only the most rudimentary understanding of commerce and money management, and very unpredictable circumstances for commodity control (weather, war, etc.). It makes no sense to worry about material goods when there is so little chance that one's worry or circumstances could increase the opportunity for such goods. By analogy, it would be like telling a modern North American not to worry about being in a plane crash, but instead to plan one's trip using a plane as is convenient. Well, of course! After all, it would be patently irrational to worry about crash insurance when there's so little chance that one's circumstances would produce such a catastrophe (1 in 25 million). Likewise for a first century Palestinian to worry about materialistic advance, seeing how little chance there is for it.

Third, maybe this is why Jesus thinks it so difficult for a rich person to get into heaven: Unfortunately, the rational evidence indicates that the risk of investment of resources is NOT a rational one given the expected return. Even if it's TRUE that selling all one has to the poor and following a religious life of poverty is best, one cannot make such a decision unless there's some evidence to that effect. What's worse, anyone who is reading this is virtually assured of being counted "rich" by standards of comparison with the rest of the world:

"At the point at which people have their own home, enough food to eat, clothing to wear, running water, a sanitary sewage system, and a television, a computer, and the ability to ride in an airplane, they are in the top 20 percent of the world's inhabitants."[3]

But in a country like mine (United States) there is upward mobility by means of education, wealth management, and stable environments for business enterprise. Also, as an empirical matter, rich people tend to do far better, as do their children. Poorer children live under stress, and this has been shown to affect them and their offspring:

Children with stressed lives, then, find it harder to learn. Put pejoratively, they are stupider. It is not surprising that they do less well at school, end up poor as adults and often visit the same circumstances on their own children. [....] It is now well established that poor adults live stressful lives, and not just for the obvious reason that poverty brings uncertainty about the future. The main reason poor people are stressed is that they are at the bottom of the social heap as well as the financial one. [...It has been ] shown repeatedly that people at the bottom of social hierarchies experience much more stress in their daily lives than those at the top—and suffer the consequences in their health. Even quite young children are socially sensitive beings and aware of such things.[4]

In the end, the young guy was wealthy, and saddened, apparently thinking the risk of investment was not worth the odds of payoff. Not to him, and not to his children, or his children's children. Was he rational to decline Jesus offer? As far as evidence goes, it would seem so.


REFERENCES

[image] "Rich Young Ruler" Stained Glass Window in First Reformed United Church of Christ. (Accessed 4/12/2009)

[1] Mark 10:17-31 New Testament

[2] "For the years 2003 and 2004, just over 50 percent of all personal bankruptcies were the result of medical debt by those with health insurance. A significant percentage of those listing medical debt as the reason for their bankruptcy are 65 and older. Other groups disproportionately bankrupted by medical debt include single women raising children on low wages or who have been abandoned by their husbands who refuse to pay child support." From "Bankruptcy and Medical Debt" BCS Alliance (Accessed 4/12/2009) The stats for 2008 were no different, with half of those filing having experience a serious health problem. See "Bankruptcy Statistics 1980-2008" BankruptcyAction.com (Accessed 4/12/2009)

[3] J. Matthew Sleeth, Serve God Save the Planet Zondervan 2007. -- A bad book in most respects, with terrible logic, no documentation, and a literalistic appeal to the values of a pre-scientific, pre-techological people as a way of setting the ideals of 21st century global environmental management. See also this graph, which shows a similar distribution of income

[4] "I am just a poor boy though my story's seldom told." The Economist April 2, 2009.

O.

The (odd) faith of a paleontologist

{Podcast this essay} In matters of piety, how do scientists separate wishful thinking from careful thinking? I was recently in a seminar with a Christian scientist who was especially informed about paleontology. He was there to defend the proposition that Christian belief is not threatened by paleontology (as regarding what it tells us about evolution).

Thus guy was a real scientist with no detectibly "crazy views" about biology or the fossil record, as will sometimes be encountered in such people with conservative viewpoints on life and religion.

In one of his religiously reflective pieces (following his long book chapter discussing transition fossils), he claimed that the biological creation by God, along with its awe-inspiring past, evoked worshipful feelings in him. I asked him how how such wonderful creations like fish pox, small pox, ebola, aids, malaria, and tuberculoses managed to evoked such worshipful feelings towards God, especially seeing how these pre-date human beings.

His response was telling. He claimed that these where "natural evils" (i.e. not implemented by any moral agent, since there were none on the planet at that time) and that it is indeed mysterious just why such things are around. In his opinion, he believed that they might contribute moral lessons in our learning more about helping one another through suffering; moreover, they might also contribute to some unforeseen good known only to God, their creator.

I found this position problematic, and pointed out two issues to him. First, I noted that when someone dies suddenly of one of these microbiological diseases, there is no ability to learn any moral lesson for later life (since it was snuffed out), and perhaps there is no lesson to anyone else, seeing how they couldn't' prevent it, and since they probably didn't even understand it (as do we, though only very recently, as human history goes.) In fact, people often die alone by naturally destructive mechanisms, and nobody, much less the dead person, learns any moral lesson by such an event. I added that I could not see how, for example, a three-year-old being swallowed by a quickly exiting Anaconda (while the child was temporarily out of sight of the parents) was ultimately good or morally instructive for anyone. Second, I noted that even if such bio-nasties do contribute to some unforeseen good, it is just that -- "unforeseen". Therefore, if not outright counter-evidence, at the very least one should reserve judgment on whether their presence makes any sense, given certain other Judeo-Christian, theological commitments to God's creation being "good."

So what was his scientifically informed, carefully articulated position to this conundrum? "We just have faith and trust God."

While this pious response did strike me as wishful thinking, it certainly did not strike me as careful thinking.

Perhaps I can offer a more careful response, if not one so pious. It would seem that generic Christian dogmatists have confused an attribute of moral relationships between self-aware creatures -- namely, "good" -- with attributes of their aesthetic encounters with nature -- "beautiful". How fine for us that nature no longer threatens technologically advanced citizens in their day-to-day lives. (But it will get us all in the end.) How fine for us that we can study complexities of a small pox virus or an AIDS virus and discourse passionately on their "beauty" as efficient organisms. (They would think we are beautiful as well, much the way we might sit down and adore a fine holiday meal.)

And I have documentary suspicion too. I suspect that the writer in the Old Testament dubbed creation as "good" because s/he was sitting in healthy circumstances, fairly young; a person well-educated and otherwise highly placed among thousands of illiterates who had to scrape by in their meager, short suffering lives. He or she was probably at the time comfortable, not threatened by nature, and therefore fell into confusion about just how nasty common human existence could be. I'm sure the author was cured of all that quickly enough. But, at the time, it was pretty talk and easy to re-tell around campfires, so it stuck around, and became classical literature, as these things do.

Fortunately for the tradition, it has two, even better witnesses testifying against it: Job and Ecclesiastes.

O.

The Problem of Evil God Butchery

{ Podcast this essay } This kind of puts a new spin on the classic problem of evil. Occasionally, the Bible advocates some good old fashion God butchery:

According to the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Old Testament), when God called forth his people out of slavery in Egypt and back to the land of their forefathers, he directed them to kill all the Canaanite clans who were living in the land (Deut. 7.1-2; Deut. 20.16-18). The destruction was to be complete: every man, woman, and child was to be killed. The book of Joshua tells the story of Israel’s carrying out God’s command in city after city throughout Canaan.[1]

Tough call by God, unless you happened to hate the people you're killing, even if not also the individuals in particular. This kind of tribe vs. tribe mentality seems to be the default mode of operating in ancient history, though the fragmentation of postmodern culture into self-selected sects of interest might simply re-define the tribe for contemporary humans. Bad things could happen once again. (Maybe geeks will decide to kill off athletes, or Windows owners vs. Apple owners, etc.) It's been argued that genocide has a biological basis, but this is a very controversial claim:

Geneticists now have produced not only fat mice, who lack a protein that tells them when to stop eating, but also hyperaggressive mice who kill and rape without inhibition. These mice lack a neurotransmitter that normally turns off attack behavior in response to signals of surrender. What are these deranged mice, other than a demonstration of raw gene power? We cannot ignore human aggression -- or what animal research can tell us about it. Despite all efforts to control it, aggression is unlikely to go away. In recent years, we have seen that atrocities can still arise in almost any corner of the world, from the Khmer Rouge in Southeast Asia, to the Hutus and the Tutsis in Africa, to the "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia. Could it be that genocide -- rather than being a German aberration, as Lorenz's opponents were wont to imply -- is a universal human potential? The realization that this may be the case is eroding confidence in purely cultural perspectives on violence and warfare.[2]

Oddly, it would appear that advance genetic therapy might have cured those wandering Hebrews of their inclination to kill. Suppose a mad (?) scientist dropped a gene-altering virus into strategic freshwater supplies the world over. Furthermore, suppose that a gene modification is made which takes away the genocide disposition. Maybe there would still be murder -- i.e., hating and then killing of someone whom you thinks deserves it. But maybe there would no longer be racial bias -- i.e., prejudice, and hatred along skin-color/morphology lines. Perhaps as a result of the mad scientist's actions we would look at people of other "races" with as much notice as we give to people with varying hair-color within our own "race."


REFERENCES

[image] no title. Swimming Downstream blog (Accessed 12/09/2007)

[1] "Subject: Slaughter of the Canaanites" www.reasonablefaith.org (Accessed 12/09/2007)

[2] Frans B.M. de Waal "The Biological Basis of Behavior" The Chronicle of Higher Education June 14, 1996. (Accessed 12/09/07)



O.