Matthew 19:24 – “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.”
Let’s break this verse down. When we think of being rich in today’s day an age, we think about material welfare. Being rich could come in the form of a lot of accumulated money, which people typically equate to wealth, or it could refer to the type of social capital that an influencer might have on a social platform like instagram or tik tok. Here, I think the bible is referring to both, using richness as a way to describe whatever is non-spiritual in God’s eyes. Note that I do not say material, because social capital, while not a material signal of richness, is still a signalling method. Like all signals, the purpose is to draw attention.
The question then becomes quite simple to interpret now right? Second step question: If richness describes non-spiritual abundance, and you are abundant in non-spiritual wealth, it is naturally hard for you to get into heaven. One question that is drawn out from my interpretation of richness here is what actually is the question, if richness refers to what is non-spiritually pleasing in God’s eyes, what actually is spiritually pleasing?
Secondly, why exactly is it that abundance in the non-spiritual makes it harder to get into heaven. There doesn’t look to be any problem to just accept this, but what if I substituted some material things inside the question:
Some common worldly desires that don’t seem bad:
Why should my desire to live in a more luxurious home make it harder to get into heaven?
Why should my desire to get a new car make it harder to get into heaven?
Why should my desire to grow my business and provide more resources for my family make it harder to get into heaven?
Now the second step question we arrived at is not so easy to answer. However, I think we can begin to answer it by noticing what most of these types of questions have in common: money. We can think of money as a form of value that functions like the lubricant flowing through each individual cog that is the business and hierarchies of governing bodies within our capitalistic society precisely because it is a unilaterally accepted form of value. Before the invention of currencies, people acquired and exchanged goods through a system of bartering. Think about what you are doing when you work for a company. You are putting your knowledge and effort into some task, upon which you are paid money, signifying that you have contributed some value to society. The amount of money you receive is correlated with the amount of value contributed, and you are then able to use it to buy goods you want.
This allows us to generalize the question. Though money certainly isn’t the only factor that leads to sin, why is it that money makes it harder to get into heaven? Considering money as a form of value that enables purchasing power, my initial thoughts would be that money increases the realm of possibility whereby you are able to commit sin. Note that I am not saying it increases sin, but rather it increases the domain of variety upon which you are able to sin. The line of thinking is: money is value, value determines ability to purchase in the modern economy, and with a greater ability to purchase comes a greater ability to sin.
Precisely because money is a way of exchanging value within the world, the more money you have, presumably the more “value” you signify to the world. It is certainly false that more money = more actual value(just think spoiled kids or lottery winner), but it is undeniable that the Western culture of today treats money as a value signal, upon which social status and material goods depend upon. Because of this dependance, financial and academic sectors of our economy alike place money at the forefront of desire, under all kinds of facades to hide this. This dependance comes in part due to the inherent nature of money, but is largely social in nature.
Consider the stereotypical Asian parent’s social expectations for their children: study hard and become a doctor/lawyer/engineer. While these worldly expectations are prima facia only present in Asian culture, the truth is the same stereotype could be just as easily mirrored in a variation for Western culture, most prominent in elites of the financial world: maintaining social class is emphasized above career importance. The fact is that stereotypes more often than not, are true. That’s why they exist! Stereotypes as a categorization mechanism have existed since hunter gatherer times, and served as a way to recognize threats and process the harsh physical world efficiently. We’d do well to pay close attention to the types of stereotypes on each culture. In each culture, non-spiritual “richness” is defined by material and social wealth, and although the exact object of desires shifts slightly based on age, I’ve noticed this to be largely true in my firsthand experience of the academic and professional world.
I notice this elitist competitive attitude being tied positively to non-spiritual “richness” in all its forms as a student in philosophy conferences. I observed that sadly, many students were all looking to “best” one another, whether it be in the grades achieved or activities outside of class. In my time in university, I took part in a variety of clubs. While I’d like to think to myself that my motivation for being an executive in philosophy and economic student unions, the schools UX design team, and taking part one too many case competitions with friends was purely out of enjoyment, it is undeniable that I enjoyed the feeling of entitlement those same leadership positions brought. On the one hand, it was a genuine excitement for the subjects that motivated me to pursue the clubs I took part in. However, at the same time, the “rich” feeling of being in an executive position was always there as a subtle motivation, and I noticed this was the case for my peers as well, perhaps owing in part due to the competitive nature of the departments the higher ranked they were. This “rich” feeling may just as well be pride and self-righteousness or any other name for kinds of sin, but in any case, had I not been in these positions, I would not have had the associated sins. The realm of possibility that I could sin increased as a function of non-spiritual richness increasing.
It boils down to this: being rich makes it harder to enter heaven because it increases the temptation and realm of possibility for sin. What my conclusion does not imply is that money is not to be pursued at all for the Christian. In fact, God commands us to be abundant and fruitful in our endeavours, and so to this I say, work as hard as you can to earn money. What my conclusion does mean is that we have to examine and be honest with our own intentions for earning such money, and to allow the Holy Spirit to transform them into good intentions. I find one simple test is to ask myself, do I value money at 0 compared to the riches of heaven? If so, I would be willing to give it all away without a second hesitation. The very wealthy young ruler heard Jesus’ direction to him: “Sell everything you have and give to the poor…. Then come, follow me” in Luke 18:22. Am I willing to do the same? Whenever I think about this story, I am reminded once more of how little money should mean to the Christian. As Christ says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:21)