GRACE & PEACE
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
Growing Dominion, Part 25
Those who are wealthy are in a position to afford various luxuries. They are also vulnerable to the temptation to not notice that they have access to these luxuries. As we have noted already, we are the wealthiest group of people (taken as a whole) ever to have lived on this planet — at least in recorded history. It should therefore not be a stretch for us to point out that the warnings given throughout Scripture on the subject of wealth are warnings we should be more familiar with than we are. But instead of heeding these warnings, we have a tendency to try to “disguise our status.”
In his delightful (and insightful) book, Bobos in Paradise, David Brooks points out that in this new realm of “kidding ourselves” it is gauche to spend $4,000 on an entertainment system, but to spend twice that amount on a slate shower stall shows that you are really in touch with the rhythms of life. In other words, as long as wealth feels poor and peasant-friendly, we can ignore what Jesus said about our souls being imperiled. The same sort of thing goes for luxury food items. We feel like we are being “down to earth” when we eat a loaf of bread that costs four times the amount of bread that real down-to-earth types eat. It is not wrong to eat expensive bread; what is troubling are the delusions about it.