A few years ago I was teaching a group of Christian adults, and every class for twenty-six weeks was great. I loved the class. The students loved the class. I talked about some fairly hard topics, and some pretty provocative topics. I talked about how we love to come to church with our smiles pasted on and pretend we have no problems, when in fact we have all the same problems as everybody else in the world. I talked about the idea that God doesn't have an intricate plan lined out to the most minute detail from now until the end of the world. One period I even claimed that Jesus didn't have a priori knowledge that Judas would betray him, and that furthermore—presuming the traditional view of "salvation" being about going to Heaven instead of Hell—Judas was saved in the end (the context within which this opinion was delivered is a bit large). And so it went, smoothly and thoughtfully and respectfully with good-willed reciprocity from both sides of the lectern, until one night after I had made the statement that the kingdom of heaven is a kingdom of the poor and not of the rich, and asked, "So who are the rich?"

There was a pregnant pause, and nobody said a word.

So I said that if I were to take a yard stick and hold it vertically, and if it represented the per-capita income of all the people in the world, then every one of us in the building that night would be in the upper half inch of the stick. "That makes you and me the rich," I said. And at this—I kid you not—a woman straightened right up in her seat and yelled at me, "Don't talk to me about my money!"

The odd thing is, the lady who said this was a bright, thoughtful, supportive member of the class and I had a good deal of respect for her (to this day I would say "have" instead of "had," but she has since passed away). Given that, it would be far too easy, and I think quite mistaken of me, to simply ask myself, "How could she have been so wrong, so selfish, so far off base?" I don't think that's the wise question. But what I still wonder, to this day, is why did she react the way she did? She was bright. Why didn't she say something else, and contribute to the discussion? Why did she just give this emotional interjection that effectively shut the conversation down?

I can only guess, but I tend to think that for those of us who are rich and who claim Christianity, somewhere deep down we know "our money" is a problem. By this I mean that I think we know, deep down, that there is an issue with our wealth and we have not resolved the issue to our own satisfaction. Further, I think that maybe we realize the resolution would be either: to come up with an effective defense of our wealth; or to give up our wealth. And finally, I think we don't want to play the gamble of honestly seeking this resolution because doing so would incur the risk of having to acknowledge the latter alternative. So, we avoid the issue whenever possible. But of course it can't be avoided entirely. Once in a while somebody will bring it up publicly, or in moments of repose we will raise the question within our own hearts and minds. In both of these cases, it seems that the best we can usually muster are lines of discussion which have become so predictable that they have become clichés.

As noted in my previous post, I'll present a few of these in upcoming posts.