Christ warns rich people that they should grieve, because they have received their consolation.* The clear implication is that being rich is so immoral that it leads to being condemned to hellfire. The explanation is provided many times elsewhere in the New Testament: God demands that people prioritise the basic wellbeing of others.**
Christ's warning can imply, further, that a rich person receives literally no other consolation other than what earthly wealth can provide. That is consistent with what we see in experience, where so many wealthy people struggle against depression, terrible relationships, and bad health. They are tormented.
Also our entire national societies are afflicted, when we glorify the rich lifestyle, against God's condemnations of it. When people are encouraged rather than discouraged to be rich, the door is opened in their lives and our shared national life for
- corruption: people making immoral, even illegal choices for money
- division and even collapse of society
- self-destructive short-sightedness: short-term money gains blind people to the long-term environmental, social, economic and institutional destruction they are sowing.
Notes
*Luke 6:24
**Matthew 25:31-46, Luke 3:11, James 5:1-5
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