The Foolish Rich Man

By Engr. Carlos V. Cornejo

In the Parable of the Foolish Rich Man we read the story of how God treats people who are attached to their wealth.  “And he told them this parable: The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest.  He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain.  And I’ll say to myself, ‘You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:16-21)

The first lesson the parable teaches us is the reality of death and especially instantaneous death.  We might be famous, we might be rich, we might be powerful in this world, but in a blink of an eye, we could die any time.  In fact, death or the fleetingness of our life here on earth is one of the most powerful reasons that could convert people to change their lives and go back to God.  Psalm 90:12 tells us to “Teach us to number our days that we may gain a heart of wisdom.”  The passage is teaching us that our days here on earth are limited or brief even if we get to live at the age of 100. Compared to eternity a hundred is just a split second.  Eternity is not just a thousand years, a million years or a billion years but forever.  We can outlive the stars in the sky even if they have existed for millions of years.  As the famous evangelical preacher Billy Graham would say, “In heaven, I would have lived a billion years, and I barely would have just begun.”  It teaches us to value our soul more than our body.  To value the spiritual life more than the physical life because as St. Paul says, “For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which is to come.” (Hebrews 13:14) Earth is not our home but our road.

A second lesson from the parable would be from its last sentence which says, “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”  God could cut off our lives if we have become too stubborn with our sinful ways.  The manner of how we conduct ourselves with the short stay we have in this life will decide how we will live for eternity.  We are given many chances to decide whether we will live our lives being with God forever or to be without Him (which is Hell) based on accepting or rejecting God’s invitation to live a godly life here on earth.  God courts us to be in a relationship with Him by sending us many love letters, cards and chocolates through our conscience and events in our lives.  But in the end, if we decide not to have God as our lover, then God will respect our freedom, and end up being without Him forever which is what basically Hell is.

And lastly the parable teaches us that whether we are rich or poor, we should strive to be rich in the eyes of God.  Money in itself is not bad or evil.  It’s how we use it.   Do we use our riches in helping others or to help spread God’s kingdom, or do we use it for our own selfish interests much like the attitude of the foolish rich man in the parable?  Riches could give us an opportunity to do a lot of good.  Money like power can be channelled to good works for God and neighbor.  In the Gospels, Christ did not criticize the rich for being rich but for being attached to their riches and making it their only source of security and happiness instead of seeking it in God.