A Life Of Luxury

Matthew 19's story of the rich man who insists he has kept some me of the commandments of the Torah, to which Jesus responds that he will be perfect if only he sells all of his possessions to the poor.  This man, the passage says, was saddened because he had a great amount of wealth that he was seemingly unwilling to part with.  This story does not stereotype the wealthy as being singularly greedy and unwilling to part with their possessions and status even for the sake of the most important kinds of things (matters of ultimate truth or moral significance), but it is not uncommon to find people who assume that someone who is rich must be so disconnected from understanding reality that they must be stupid and evil.  In truth, a rich person's metaphysical, moral, and soteriological standing are not dictated by their riches, as the first of these three is determined by truths they cannot control and the latter two are decided by what they choose to believe, do, and live for.

A life of luxury is not the key to rationality and self-awareness or the reason why some of the rich lean so heavily on their wealth that they do not even realize how irrational and incompetent they are.  For someone to reach the point of being philosophically idiotic and thinking that their money really can resolve all of their problems, they have to believe in assumptions, intentionally avoid rationalism or intentionally give it up, and choose to misunderstand or ignore the demonstrable nature of money as ultimately a mere social construct (a useful and philosophically charged tool in one sense, but something that is irrelevant to the things that form the core of reality).  People can become rich because of luck, but they cannot become irrational or rational for the same reason.

However, someone who has more than they could possibly need or use and yet is ideologically reluctant to ever expend resources, help others, or understand and focus on other things besides wealth is a great fool, too irrational to care about deeper matters of reality, caught up in the emotionalistic egoism of thinking they have a right to believe or do whatever they want.  Wealth does not make someone into this kind of person, but someone can allow their worldview, motivations, and behaviors to reach this point if they are wealthy and decide to focus on everything only with money in mind.  It is this kind of person that Jesus would have been talking about when he mentioned in Matthew 19 how difficult it is for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven.

It can indeed be harder for a rich person to commit to Christianity than it is for a camel to enter the eye of a needle--only if the rich man or woman chooses to make it so difficult.  Monetary riches do not and cannot force someone to make assumptions, to look down on the less wealthy because of their economic standing, or to be apathetic towards logical axioms, epistemology, moral obligation, or spirituality.  Everyone living in luxury, whether it was obtained in a morally legitimate or illegitimate way, has themselves to blame rather than their riches or pleasures, and just as a certain kind of ric person is irrational, so are those who would think their economic status is to blame.  It does not logically follow from enjoying or having luxury that one is irrational or evil.

Yes, neither poverty nor riches gives anyone an excuse to ignore or misunderstand the necessary truths of logical axioms, and both the rich and poor alike have epistemological access to the laws of logic that they, like all things, already rely on, whether or not they have ever tried to notice.  In the same way, neither poverty nor riches makes someone righteous, and not only do the foundational tenets of Christianity (like all people bearing God's image and salvation being offered to all willing people) already exclude discrimination against either kind of person, but Mosaic Law specifically addresses favoring the poor or the rich (see Exodus 23:3, 6).  Jesus could not have pretended like all of the rich must by necessity have the sins of other people who misuse wealth without being wrong and contradicting Mosaic Law.