Nothing Inherently Wrong With Wealth

19 August 2025  Matthew 19:23-30  

“With God, all things are possible.” Matthew 19:26

All the natural goods of this world get better when they are turned toward God, and they are perfected in heaven.

All natural goods become demons when they are turned away from God, and the higher and mightier the natural good, the darker the demon it becomes.

There is nothing inherently wrong with wealth, and wealth has created fantastic benefits that have literally saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people. Wealth created trade, and trade created even more wealth. Trade eventually created modern science and medicine. It created soil science;electricity; cheaper, faster and safer travel; schools to teach all that. All these things together have lifted hundreds of millions of people out of starvation, poverty, and ignorance. So, the protests today that say, “Eat the Rich” are preposterously stupid and depend for their very existence on the very things trade and wealth make possible, from the technology used to organize them, to the universities where many of the protests take place.

It is just as true to say that wealth can become demonic if it is turned away from God, and there are thousands of instances to prove it – price gouging of every kind, the drug trade, the slave trade, the list is very, very long. In every case, however, the problem is not wealth per se, but turning that wealth away from God. Jesus didn’t condemn the Rich Young Man for being wealthy, but for walking away. Wealth becomes demonic in direct proportion to the distance it travels from Jesus.

Family relationships are perhaps the most precious natural goods in this world. They are even mentioned in the Ten Commandments – “Honor your father and your mother,” You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife.” But who hasn’t heard about “helicopter parents” whose protection is so extravagant that it sucks all the oxygen out of ordinary play and socialization? It is one of the primary features of the anxiety reported all the time by more and more teens and young adults. Jesus talks about leaving “houses, or brothers, or sisters, or mother or children” (Matthew 19:29) not in the sense of abandoning them, but more in the sense of subordinating them to God, making homes into Domestic Churches, and parents into the first and most effective evangelists. Family ties become more precious when all are looking together at Jesus: they “will receive a hundred-fold, and inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:29).

Every natural good becomes better when it is turned toward God, and it is perfected in heaven. Every natural good becomes a devil when it is not, and the greater the natural good, the worse the devil. As C.S. Lewis said, “It is not out of bad mice or bad fleas you make demons, but out of bad archangels” (The Great Divorce, p. 106).

It has been this way from the very start. Lucifer didn’t think his departure from God was a rebellion. His job was to be the “accuser” (the literal meaning of “Satan” in Hebrew). He was a prosecutor, his job was to make the case against the righteousness of humans, and so he thought God’s plan to include humans in heaven would make heaven less. He despised humans more than he trusted the grace of God, but he thought he was acting in the best interest of heaven. He didn’t understand (and still doesn’t) that every step away from God is in the same direction – down.

It is a supernatural good to be clear about the nature and depth of human sin. Turn that supernatural good away from the love and grace of God, and you get Lucifer.

The very first step away from God is impossibly long, and heaven’s gate retreats to the point of vanishing smallness, like a needle’s eye. Best to take every step in the other direction, because everything gets better that way.