Jesus looked at him and said, “How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God! Luke 18:24
“If you have sound nerves and intelligence and health and popularity and a good upbringing, you are likely to be quite satisfied with your character as it is. “Why drag God into it?” you may ask. A certain level of good conduct comes fairly easy to you. You are not one of those wretched creatures who are always being tripped up by sex, or dipsomania, or nervousness, or bad temper. Everyone says you are a nice chap and (between ourselves) you agree with them.
You are quite likely to believe that all this niceness is your own doing: and you may easily not feel the need for any better kind of goodness. Often people who have all these natural kinds of goodness cannot be brought out to recognize their need for Christ at all until, one day, the natural goodness lets them down and their self-satisfaction is shattered. In other words, it is hard for those who are “rich” in this sense to enter the Kingdom.”
C.S. Lewis in “Nice People or New Men” in C.S. Lewis: Readings for Meditation and Reflection, edited by Walter Hooper (New York: Harper One, 1992) 138. Shot the new header photo yesterday afternoon. It’s the moon rising over the aspens in fall colors in Vail.
We don’t often think of people who have privileges like health or wealth to be at a disadvantage. Lewis shines the light on the reality that the rich often live like they have everything sorted and don’t need a “better kind of goodness.”
And we don’t help the cause if we call such people “nice chaps.” In reality, we should present ourselves as broken and remind them that all of us are and that natural goodness won’t get us anywhere. This is how Jesus spoke to rich people. We should do likewise.
How should we treat those who are rich in intelligence and popularity, who have status and creature comforts? We must treat them like everyone else and urge them to recognize the need for the better kind of goodness that only comes from Christ.
Quoting Jesus does not hurt too, but it only sticks if our words match the lifestyle we are living. Remind them that letting go of these things is hard, really hard. But what wins the day is testifying to the matchless gain that is only found in Christ.