The Downside of Wealth

Luke 12:21 - “But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

By the early 1970s there was widespread fear in America that our booming economy, which had grown through its great dependency on oil, was in permanent trouble. Experts coined the Energy Crisis and warned that we would run out of fossil fuels in America before the end of the twentieth century and in the rest of the world shortly thereafter. However, new discoveries of oil and natural gas fields and new drilling technology changed that dire prediction. Now, instead of being out of oil and gas, America is more self-dependent for energy than since World War II. Many people have spurred and benefited from this boom.

Frackers: The Outrageous Inside Story of the New Billionaire Wildcatters, by Gregory Zuckerman, tells the story of several of the men who pursued and obtained outrageous wealth in the recent energy boom. With net worths in the billions and launching successful oil companies, it would seem they had it all. What could their money not buy? Yet each of them has faced huge personal challenges – relational, physical, and reputational. Several founders of the most successful oil and natural gas companies have been fired by their boards in spite of their pioneering leadership. Wealth does not always equal real success.

 

America’s capitalistic pursuit of wealth has inspired the rest of the world to follow a similar course. Certainly, many have benefited indirectly from entrepreneurs like these through employment, technological advances, and higher standards of living, but when wealth becomes an end in itself it becomes a problem. In Luke 12, Jesus tells a variety of stories and gives several words of warning to those who would pursue their identity and purpose from building wealth. Verses 16-21 describe a man whose life is taken before he can fill the new barns he has built. Wealth does not last past the grave, and an all-out pursuit of wealth does not supply the joy it seems to promise.

Note that Jesus is not saying that wealth itself is evil. In verse 21 he says the problem is not being rich toward God. He is not calling everyone to live in poverty. He is warning us of the limitations of earthly wealth and, more importantly, where real wealth lies: in a life that is fully committed to God. Greed kills. Generosity brings life.