One of the most astonishing texts in the Bible is found in Matthew 19:22 and reads: “When the young man heard this, he went away sad, because he had great wealth.” The story is of a young man, whose name we are not told. The only thing we know about him is enough to make most of us envious, for he was young, rich and a ruler, adjectives that are not commonly used to describe the same person. For some of us are rulers, but they are not young anymore; and others, still, are young, but are not rich, and certainly not rulers, but this would-be disciple seems to have had it all, or did he?
He presents himself to Jesus as someone who not only would like to inherit eternal life, but one who was ready for it. And after a tit-for-tat conversation between these two young men, it all comes down to decision time, one that would be the major line of demarcation between the two of them, for One had left Heaven’s riches, and the other was enslaved by his riches, as we shall later see in the story.
The above-mentioned text of Scripture describes what would happen when Jesus provides this young man with an opportunity to demonstrate the claims he was making for himself, that he had kept God’s commandments since he was young. So Jesus challenges the young man to sell all he had and follow Jesus, and the Bible says he walked away from that conversation, sorrowful, sad and pained. But wait, the Bible goes on to record the reason for his sadness, and that is, because he had a lot of wealth.
How can it be? We live in a society that constantly tells us that wealth and sadness are, not only mutually exclusive, but that the presence of the former naturally ensures the absence of the latter. Wealth yields happiness. Yet, here we find the young man sad, though he still possessed his wealth. Could it be, just maybe, that we have been fed a lie by our materialistic society?
Could it be that people who hoard wealth for themselves are not doing that from a position of power and strength? Could it be that the hoarding of wealth is from a position of internal poverty of spirit, and from a position of weakness and insecurity? Could it be that many of the people who hoard wealth are so poor the only thing they have is money? Could it be that we need to stop looking at those who are rich, and those who want to be rich, for its sake, with eyes of envy, but with those of pity?
I want to be part of a new generation that realises that life is more than material riches; that there is something deeper to live for than the bottom-line; and that people are more important than profits. I want to be part of a new breed of young people who realise that money and material things should never be an end in and of themselves, but means to an end, the end being to serve others. I want to be part of a new crop of generation that refuses to find identity in what they own, lest they be possessed by their very possessions. For this, I believe, is true wealth.
