Rich and Young

And who wouldn't want to be rich and young? Sure, we all would, what a wonderful confluence of, well, the top two things people would like to be. Works out pretty well for the rich young man who approaches Christ and asks him what he must do to inherit eternal life. And this seems like a great setup – rich young man goes up to Jesus, asks him what he has to do to inherit eternal life, rich young man does it, and then everyone's happy. But unbelievably enough, that's not how this story ends, as though you didn't know. The fact that this story didn't end in the predictable way shouldn't surprise us, after all, when the rich young man approaches Christ, he was likely doing that same trick from the Gospel according to Luke that brought about the parable of the Good Samaritan: when the man is asking about who he should love, the answer was that he should love his neighbor, and he, seeking to justify himself, asked "Who is my neighbor?"

The problem, if you'll bear with me, starts from the first word, the very first word that the rich young man says: "Good." Jesus pegs on this as a problem right away, and in fact, is gently setting the rich young man up for the inevitable fall. The framing of the question starts with the idea that Jesus is good (good start so far), but then collapses when the ruler fingers Jesus as a good teacher. A good Rabbi, but just a man nonetheless. The rich young man doesn't start with the idea that this is God himself that he is talking to, he figures that Jesus is a good, ethical teacher. And so the rich young man approaches him with that perspective, and the perspective that if Jesus is a good teacher, then he can teach the young ruler to be good too.

And that's where it gets dangerous. Hopefully, you can see the cracks forming already. If not, then I invite your attention to the Old Testament reading we had for Sunday from the prophet Amos, in which we are enjoined to: "seek good, and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, as you have said. Hate evil, and love good, and establish justice in the gates." And here's where the problem starts. I want you to have a look at these two people here, nice and closely, and then I'm going to tell you something absolutely unbelievable about both of them. Ready?

Here's the funny thing about both of these individuals: They represent different political positions, they represent different worldviews, they stand for completely opposite things, and both of them believe absolutely sincerely that they're the good guys. This isn't a grade school pantomime play, in which the villain is some moustache twirling stereotype of a bad guy, this is real life, and in real life, the motivations that people have are a bit more complicated than that. This is why readings like the one from Amos that enjoin you to hate evil and love good aren't really useful if you just leave them there, without the singularly vital additional piece of info that Jesus gives in addition to that – "Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone." That bit of information is vital to getting through the dichotomy between not just these two groups, but any oppositional groups of your choosing. You can't just tell everyone to be nice already, without understanding that to the vast vast vast majority of individuals, they're already being as nice as they can be. They're the brave freedom fighters, bravely standing up to opposition, bravely engaging in street warfare against the forces of darkness. And this works whether they're tankies or nazis.

We do this because we lack perspective. The way I discussed it on Sunday was to essentially steal a joke. When you're driving along, you tend to feel like your speed is the right speed. People who drive slower than you are too slow, people who drive faster than you are too fast. It's all a matter of perspective. And this is true with morality as well. Because we lack perspective, we tend to think that what we are doing is the right thing to do, because we are the moral centre of our own universe. We are the centre, everything else tends to get judged by whether we agree with it or not, or whether we profit from it or not. In other words, things are good or bad only in relation to us – they aren't good and bad on their own, or able to be measured against an external yardstick. But wait. Wait wait wait. They actually are.

As Christians, we believe in an external standard for holiness, for righteousness, that doesn't depend on us and our activity. The basis for it can be found in Exodus chapter 20, in a list of commandments that are so simple that we teach them to children. The ten commandments that are outside of our input, and more importantly, outside of our control. The immediate space around the Ten Commandments in the scriptures should really make you think a bit more about how this works. Consider the case of the Israelites who bowed down around a golden calf while Moses was up on Mount Sinai. When he returned, a subjective morality would have just told them that this was their new god now, and it was right to worship him because he was the object of their worship now. But what actually happened was a bit more extreme, and they were pulled back into the fold, perhaps even violently. In other words, the commandment to worship one god was tied to the worship of the One True God, and didn't change based on who they happened to be worshiping at the time.

Once you get this, then you will understand why both of those people pictured above are able to think of themselves as the good guys, even while they're beating each other up. They can't both be good guys ,can they? Of course not, which is why the truth is that neither of them are. They're both the bad guys, given that they're both falling short of the glory of God due to their sins. Neither one of them keep up with the law that has been handed to them by God, but as long as they both frame themselves as good guys, and adjust their morality accordingly, then neither of them will really change. So when Jesus discusses morality and eternity with the rich young man, he does so by reminding him that no one is good but God alone. When the rich young man insists that he has kept all the commandments from the time of his youth, Jesus look at him, and loves him, and tells him that he only has one thing left, which is to be perfected. And as a sinful human, that's the one thing he can't do. He can be a nice guy, he can think of himself as being a nice guy, but he can't be God, even though admission to eternity depends on him being perfect ,as his heavenly father is perfect. So what to do? Leave sad because you have many possessions, or confess and be forgiven? That's the ultimate problem that we are dealing with in this issue, which is where does your perfection come from? If you're the standard person who adjusts their morality to fit their behavior, then your perfection is already there, according to you. But if you're realistic, if you can see where you sit next to the objective morality that exists outside you, well then, you will understand that your perfection, your salvation, your mercy, your forgiveness comes from outside you as well. Alien righteousness, and it's given to you by Christ, because he chose to.