Articles

So how is your barn ? Parable of the Rich Fool

The second part of this scripture is the reframing of the man’s question and the parable -“Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.” Since there is stuff to be divided there could be “abundance of possessions” and the next step beyond that – greed 

The Greek word used here for greed means “yearning for more”. It is a form of idolatry. If greed is a desire to get more — then there is never a point where a greedy person has enough. Greed can never be satisfied. It is always looking to get more. In other places, there are writings against greed. 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 and Ephesians 5:3-5. The greedy will not inherit the kingdom of God. It brings god’s wrath. greed can take many forms: the greed for attention, the greed for control, the greed for security.

Luke, by situating the parable of the rich fool right in the middle of Jesus’ predictions of his own death and the plots to kill him, connects this universal human desire for more with universal human insecurity and fear of death.

The parable is about a farmer who does well – he has produced abundantly and has no place to store his crops so he will build larger barns. So what’s wrong with this ? David Lose causes us to assess the situation “He is not portrayed as wicked – that is, he has not gained his wealth illegally or by taking advantage of others. Further, he is not portrayed as particularly greedy. Indeed, he seems to be somewhat surprised by his good fortune as he makes what appears to be reasonable plans to reap the abundance of the harvest. What is wrong, we might therefore ask, about building larger barns to store away some of today’s bounty for a potentially leaner tomorrow?

Lose goes on. “Except for two things. First, notice the farmer’s consistent focus throughout the conversation he has with himself: “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul….”

The relentless use of the first person pronouns “I” and “my” betray a preoccupation with self. There is no thought to using the abundance to help others, no expression of gratitude for his good fortune, no recognition of God at all. The farmer has fallen prey to worshiping the most popular of gods: the Unholy Trinity of “me, myself, and I.” This leads to, and is most likely caused by, a second mistake. He is not foolish because he makes provision for the future; he is foolish because he believes that by his wealth he can secure his future: “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.”

Wealth is not the problem but how we use it – wealth for its own enjoyment or own end. It’s thinking that possessions lead to a satisfied life. Bigger barns do not necessarily bring happiness and contentment. They rob us of the person who builds the barns. People retire and set them up to separate themselves from a world they help to build. The man in this story does not have the vision and/or imagination to see beyond his own walls. He is his own prisoner.

The text says that the man decided to gather in these new barns not just the grain from the harvest but “my goods” (v. 18). He is thinking of barns not just for the grain but also for his “goods.” He can kill two birds with one stone, but in Jesus’ parable, it is as if he is killing his soul by the expansion project. Then he has thoughts that he has made it and can kick back. Idea of celebrate goes back to the parable of the prodigal son to describe the festive atmosphere at the return of the prodigal.” In the end the grim reaper may be coming for him.

The story ends:” So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.”

The parable tells us about two different kinds of riches–those toward oneself and those toward God

That is, the question to put to our hearers (and also ourselves) is not, “Is material abundance bad?” but rather, “Is our material abundance sufficient to meet the weight of meaning, significance, and joy that we seek?” Can our wealth secure a relative degree of comfort? Certainly. Can it grant to us confidence that we are worthy of love and honor and in right relationship with God and neighbor? Certainly not. Only as we recognize that the gifts of ultimate worth, dignity, meaning, and relationship are just that – gifts offered freely by God – can we hope to place our relative wealth in perspective and be generous with it toward others.

How does one become “rich towards God”? There is a parallel with the Good Samaritan. There the question “What must I do to inherit eternal life?

1. Faith in God. Worship is where we are reoriented toward a way of life that seeks the peace and justice of God’s kingdom. Worship is where we find the inner resources to follow the example of Christ in our daily lives. Worship is where we become “heavenly minded” in the words of St. Paul enough to be able to do some earthly good in this world. It’s our starting point.

2. Approaching God as hungry, needy, people — letting God give us what we need rather than trying to secure it on our own. The gift is not making money for its own sake but gifts of ultimate worth, dignity, meaning, and relationship are just that – gifts offered freely by God. We have people that done this is history and they are called saints.

3. Using our wealth to be generous with it toward others, sharing God’s life. Using wealth responsibility to see that it all comes from God and should be used to further God’s kingdom. Paul in Colossians has a concern with how you live your life here and now—including purity, respect, honesty, and compassio

On another level, this parable is about security. We try to build in our own security and control when we know life is insecure and uncertain. The farmer is called “fool” because of neither his wealth nor ambition but rather because he accords finite things infinite value. He doesn’t see his own life as on loan from God. He has tried to insulate himself from fate and fortune through productive farming and adequate finances, and he has come up empty. Since 9/11 we have inundated with super hero movies – over 30 movies within 6 years after the event. This is another way to promote security.

Lee Koontz in article on his passage quotes Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. Niebuhr “in an article of this passage. went so far as to say that human nature was paradoxical. On the one hand, we are immersed in nature and subject to all of its perils, including death. But on the other hand, human beings have the ability to transcend nature and ponder not only our finitude and the reality of death but also how we might respond to it. (Reinhold Niebuhr, The Nature and Destiny of Man (New York 1941), p. 182.) We are bound by our limited human nature, our finitude, but at the same time we are free to respond to the perils of life on earth in any way we choose. That, I believe, is what Jesus’ parable of the rich fool is really about. It’s about how to respond to insecurity, finitude, and death.”

Lord’s Prayer – Matthew vs. Luke

“Declaration of Independence” – John Trumbull (1817)

Unlike the United States Constitution, the Declaration makes reference to God. However, that’s about it. The Declaration never mentions Jesus Christ, does not quote the New Testament, and fails to move beyond vague descriptions of God. It is more indicative of a 18th century world view.  

There are four references to God either directly or indirectly. A close examination of these references tell us something about the religious world view of its writers. 

1. ” When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws and Nature and Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind required that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.”

So what is “Nature’s God? David Voelker wrote the following in 1993 before he became a history professor 

“Nature’s God” was clearly the God of deism in all important ways. That Jefferson included God in the “Declaration of Independence” is very significant because it helped lay the foundation for a civil religion in America. Paul Johnson addressed the civil religion begun by the founders in his article, “The Almost-Chosen People,” saying that the United States was unique because all religious beliefs were respected. People were more concerned with “moral conduct rather than dogma.” So Jefferson helped create a society in which different religions could coexist peacefully because of the emphasis on morality over specific belief.”  

The Deists saw God as a great geometer who created and set the world in motion. God was distant. Jefferson was a believer in God whose existence could be proved but his nature not known as well.  He remained a Deist in also rejecting the rituals and sacraments of modern religion 

Voelker further identifies the deists – “Deists were characterized by a belief in God as a creator and “believed only those Christian doctrines that could meet the test of reason.” Deists did not believe in miracles, revealed religion, the authority of the clergy, or the divinity of Jesus. Like Jefferson they “regarded ethics, not faith, as the essence of religion.” All in all religion was private for Jefferson. Religion was practical, a source of moral values derived from God.  

Deism was popular since oppressive European states were associated with faiths whether Catholicism in France or Anglicanism in England.  If you  question the government’s policies then you should question those of religion. They criticized organized religion for fostering divisive sectarianism, for encouraging persecution, and for stifling freedom of thought and speech throughout history.

It is probably safe to say, however, that the Founding Fathers did not hold all Deist thought as sacrosanct. Several Deists like Franklin believed that God could intervene in the affairs of human beings. Gregg Fraser in Religious Beliefs of America’s Founders, characterizes Jefferson as not a Deist but a “theistic rationalist”, because Jefferson believed in God’s continuing activity in human affairs. 

2. “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”  

Actually, the reference to the idea that self-evident truths are “endowed by their Creator” was not part of Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration. It was added later by Benjamin Franklin, a member of the writing committee. Jefferson’s original wording was: “that from that equal creation they derive rights inherent and inalienable.” Franklin’s change to the text makes it clear that he and the Continental Congress wanted to affirm the belief that the unalienable rights of “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” came from God.  

It recognizes that unalienable rights are defined by God, not by the civil government.  Jefferson believed that no government had the authority to mandate religious conformity, and his Act for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786) helped guarantee the right to freedom of conscience.  

By replacing derived with endowed by their Creator, the Declaration rested upon rights as God had given them, not as man understood them to be. Thus, America’s founders chose to establish the new nation upon the laws of nature and of nature’s God, not upon natural law or man or government 

Civil recognition of the idea that unalienable rights come from God is a fundamental element of the laws of nature. 

3. “We…appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name and Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States.”  

Once again, these words were not included in Jefferson’s original draft, but added during the discussion of the document on the floor of the Second Continental Congress. Unlike the references to “Nature’s God” and the “Creator,” the phrase “Supreme Judge of the World” is a bit more specific. Unlike the vague God of the first two paragraphs, the use of the words “Supreme Judge of the World” suggests that the God to whom the Congress appealed will one day judge humankind.  

One could reject some of the other central tenets of orthodox Christianity (such as the deity of Christ or his resurrection from the dead) and still believe that God would judge humans in the next life based upon their behavior in this one. Indeed, nearly all of the signers of the Declaration believed in a God who judges humankind, either in this world or the next. 

4. “And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

The God of the Declaration of Independence is not only the author of natural rights and the judge of the world, but He also governs the world by His “Providence.” The term “providence,” as it was used in the eighteenth-century, was usually used to describe an active God who sustains the world through His sovereign power. It refers to God’s hand in history, working His will through man’s interaction with God, his fellow man, and with nature in conjunction with man’s free will.  

He performs miracles and answers prayers. By referencing “Providence,” the members of Congress were affirming their belief that God would watch over them and protect them in this time of uncertainty, trial, and war. Whether they embraced all of the tenets of orthodox Christianity or not, most of the signers could affirm a belief in the providence of God.

Steven Waldman in his seminal work Founding Faith wrote this about the delegates view of Divine Providence

“John Hancock, the first to sign, had served as president of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress when it declared that “it becomes us, as Men and Christians,” to rely on “that GOD who rules in the Armies of Heaven.”‘ George Read, one of Delaware’s delegates, had written the Delaware constitution, which required legislators to take an oath to “God the Father, and in Jesus Christ his only Son, and in the Holy Ghost.” New Jersey’s delegate was the Reverend John Witherspoon, the president of Princeton, which trained young men to become evangelical ministers. It was Witherspoon who had authored a resolution the year before, on July 20,1775,calling for a continentwide day of fasting and prayer, and he was hardly a Deist: “I entreat you in the most earnest manner to believe in Jesus Christ, for there is no salvation in any other [Acts 4:12],” he had written. Richard Henry Lee of Virginia, who offered the resolution on independence, would a year later propose one creating a national day of prayer in which the people “may join the penitent confession of their manifold sins, whereby they had forfeited every favor, and their humble and earnest supplication that it may please God, through the merits of Jesus Christ, mercifully to forgive and blot them out of remembrance.”

Read the Declaration

The grievances annotated

The Declaration of Independence which we will hear, reflect and celebrate on July 4 in Port Royal has been reinterpreted in successive generations. It was first and foremost a document to indicate failure – the petition process of earlier years by the colonists had failed. The King dismissed the colonists well-reasoned arguments attributing them to a few troublemakers. He was convinced in 1775 that the the purpose of the “American rebellion” was  for independence right from the beginning. He raised forces, hired foreign troops and had burned American cities (Norfolk) in early 1776 to try to force them back by making them submit.

Garry Wills emphasizes in his book Inventing America that the purpose of the Declaration was not to make the colonies self-governing – they were already acting that way.  Congress’ action in 1776 was to acknowledge what had happened, particularly in the debating of independence in key towns of America and the creation of state and local declarations of independence. Many of these particularly in Virginia were stepping stones toward what became state constitutions. 

The events of early 1776 led people to see that England had already separated from them.   The real motive of Congress and the declaration was a necessary step to secure foreign aid. In that they had to provide a unified stand, difficult with 13 separate colonies.  They had to make their cause seem justifiable. In the end they needed that.  They wanted to move away from the concept of “rebellion”.  England would be dealing with a country not a group of rebellious colonies.

Much of the meaning we celebrate in the Declaration is close to Lincoln’s concept of the document – that the statements on equality and rights set a standard of the future – that it was a statement of ideals and goals to be established for the future. The values he emphasized were part of the Revolution generation – equality, human rights, government by consent. He needed to restate those values in a new way to broaden its appeal and to apply it to his time in the midst of the Civil War.

This was best stated in the Gettysburg Address. The Union triumph became the result of the idea that “all men are created equal” and what he called for was the Union complete the “unfinished work” and bring to “this nation, under God, a new birth of freedom.”