Show me the money…
1 Tim. 6:17a – ´As for the rich in this present age, charge them…’
When Bill Gates and his wife visited India, they met with a poor single mom who practically lived in a hut. After Gates left, a journalist asked her, ‘Do you know that the guy who was here is the richest man in the world…?’ She just calmly answered, ‘Everyone from the west is rich…’
For the poor Indian single mom there is no such category of rich, richer, and richest. To her there are only 2 categories; either you are rich or you are poor. But that’s not the case with people who live in the west, where there are tons of categories of wealth and possessions that are used to define how and where they are standing on the scale of richness. For the 30k salary people, the rich are those who have 70k salary and above. As for the 70k salary people, the rich are those who have 120k salary and above and so on. The fact of the matter is ‘richness’ is a moving target because it’s always shooting for the next category.
This is important to realize because the Bible has a lot to say, not only about money, but also about rich people. The problem comes when people read these kinds of passages and deemed them irrelevant simply because they don’t feel rich. Truth is being ‘rich’ is not at all about feeling, but is all about having more – more than we need. It seems staggering because if you have more than what you need, do you ever consider yourself to be rich or are you still aiming at the next category? If you have more, then you are rich, and this passage is for you.
When Bill Gates and his wife visited India, they met with a poor single mom who practically lived in a hut. After Gates left, a journalist asked her, ‘Do you know that the guy who was here is the richest man in the world…?’ She just calmly answered, ‘Everyone from the west is rich…’
For the poor Indian single mom there is no such category of rich, richer, and richest. To her there are only 2 categories; either you are rich or you are poor. But that’s not the case with people who live in the west, where there are tons of categories of wealth and possessions that are used to define how and where they are standing on the scale of richness. For the 30k salary people, the rich are those who have 70k salary and above. As for the 70k salary people, the rich are those who have 120k salary and above and so on. The fact of the matter is ‘richness’ is a moving target because it’s always shooting for the next category.
This is important to realize because the Bible has a lot to say, not only about money, but also about rich people. The problem comes when people read these kinds of passages and deemed them irrelevant simply because they don’t feel rich. Truth is being ‘rich’ is not at all about feeling, but is all about having more – more than we need. It seems staggering because if you have more than what you need, do you ever consider yourself to be rich or are you still aiming at the next category? If you have more, then you are rich, and this passage is for you.
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