The Poverty of Riches: Why I Would Rather Sleep Than Count Gold

There is a peculiar madness that has seized upon the modern world, and it is this: that we have come to believe that poverty is the worst thing that can befall a man, when in truth there are a thousand worse things, and most of them come accompanied by wealth. I would rather be a poor man who sleeps soundly on a straw mattress than a rich man who tosses and turns on silk sheets, haunted by the ghosts of how he acquired his fortune. For what profit is there in owning the world if one cannot own oneself? What good is a vault full of gold if it costs you the treasure of a clear conscience?

The modern world has developed a curious habit of declaring that money is the answer to all problems, while simultaneously insisting that the love of money is the root of all evil. We are, in effect, trying to solve our problems with the very thing we admit causes them. It is rather like trying to cure alcoholism with whiskey, or treating burns with fire. The logic would be laughable if it were not so desperately tragic.

The Mathematics of the Kingdom

Scripture has always been perfectly clear on this matter, though we persist in treating its clarity as if it were some sort of riddle that requires sophisticated interpretation. "Better is a little with the fear of the LORD than great treasure and trouble with it," says the Proverb. This is not poetry meant to comfort the poor while they starve; it is economics of the highest order. It is the mathematics of the Kingdom, where the equations work differently than they do on Wall Street, but work they do, with a precision that would make any accountant weep.

Consider the rich man who lies awake at night, calculating his profits, measuring his losses, scheming his next acquisition. His mind is a ledger that never balances, an account that always shows insufficient funds, no matter how many zeros appear after the first digit. He cannot sleep because his wealth has become his master, and it is a cruel master indeed, demanding constant attention, endless vigilance, perpetual worry. He has purchased his riches at the price of his rest, and it is a terrible bargain.

Now consider the poor man who has earned his pittance through honest labor. His hands are calloused, his back is sore, but his pillow is soft with the comfort of a clear conscience. He closes his eyes without fear of judgment, without the phantom whispers of those he has cheated or crushed or corrupted in his climb to success. His poverty is his protection, for no one envies what he has, no one schemes to take it from him, and he himself is not tempted to preserve it through wickedness.

The Terrible Weight of Ill-Gotten Gains

But perhaps you will say, "Surely not all wealth is evil? Surely it is only the ill-gotten gains that trouble the conscience?" And here you are quite right, which is precisely why we must speak plainly about what "ill-gotten" truly means in an age that has become expert at the art of moral camouflage.

There is the obvious wickedness, of course the thief who steals, the swindler who defrauds, the drug dealer who profits from addiction, the trafficker who trades in human misery. These we recognize as evil because their crimes are written in clear ink. But there is a subtler wickedness that has become so normalized in our time that we hardly recognize it as wickedness at all. It is the wealth that comes from exploiting the poor, from grinding down the wages of workers while shareholders celebrate record profits. It is the fortune built on cutting corners that kill, on products that harm, on practices that pollute, on systems that enslave.

Modern business has developed an extraordinary capacity for what might be called "ethical distance" the ability to perform evil acts while maintaining layers of bureaucracy and corporate structure between the perpetrator and the victim. A man can ruin a thousand families through predatory lending and still sleep soundly because he never saw their faces, never heard their children cry, never watched them lose their homes. The wickedness is real, but it has been sanitized, systematized, made respectable.

This is the evil of our age, and it produces wealth that cannot possibly bring peace. For though a man may convince himself that he bears no responsibility that he was merely following policy, executing strategy, maximizing shareholder value his soul knows better. The human conscience is a remarkably stubborn thing, and it has a way of presenting its bill in the darkness of the night when all defenses are down and all self-deceptions are stripped away.

God's Strange Economy of Riches

Yet we must be careful here, for Christianity is not a religion of poverty worship. God is not against wealth; He is against the worship of wealth. This is a crucial distinction that many miss in their eagerness to either justify their greed or demonstrate their piety through theatrical poverty.

The Scriptures are filled with wealthy men whom God blessed Abraham, Job, Joseph of Arimathea, to name but a few. Their wealth was not their downfall but their responsibility. They understood what our age has forgotten: that riches are not a reward to be hoarded but a resource to be stewarded. They were wealthy in their wallets but poor in spirit, which is to say they held their possessions lightly, knowing that they were temporary trustees of eternal goods.

This is the divine economy that confounds the wisdom of Wall Street. In God's ledger, the man who gives away his wealth is the one who truly possesses it. The man who clutches it tightly has already lost it, for he has become its prisoner rather than its master. The paradox is perfect: we must lose our wealth to gain it, surrender it to possess it, give it away to make it truly ours.

There is a freedom in this holy poverty that the wealthy can scarcely imagine. It is the freedom of a man who has learned to travel light through life, who is not weighed down by the terrible burden of things that must be protected, preserved, and perpetuated. He can move where God calls him because he is not chained to his possessions. He can risk everything because everything is not his to lose it belongs to God, and always has.

The Sleep of the Righteous

And this brings us back to our original proposition: that a poor man with a clear conscience is richer than a wealthy man who cannot sleep. For what is sleep but a small death, a temporary surrender of control, a trust that the world will continue without our constant supervision? The man who cannot sleep is the man who cannot trust, and the man who cannot trust is the man who has something to hide, either from others or from himself.

The righteous man sleeps because he knows that he has done no evil to require his night to be troubled. His hands are clean, even if they are empty. His heart is light, even if his purse is not. He has chosen the better portion, which cannot be taken from him. He has invested his treasure in heaven, where neither moth nor rust nor market crash can destroy it, and where thieves cannot break in and steal.

This is not to romanticize poverty or to suggest that there is virtue in deprivation for its own sake. A man who is poor because he is lazy or foolish has no claim to spiritual superiority over his wealthy neighbor. But a man who is poor because he has chosen integrity over wealth, who has refused to compromise his principles for profit, who has declined to climb the ladder of success when he saw that its rungs were made of other people's backs this man is rich indeed, though his bank account might suggest otherwise.

The Invitation to Holy Poverty

Our age has made wealth the measure of worth, success the standard of value. But the Gospel speaks another language entirely. It speaks of blessed poverty and dangerous riches. It tells of a rich young ruler who went away sorrowful and a poor widow whose two coins outweighed all the treasures of the temple. It presents a Savior who had nowhere to lay His head and apostles who left everything to follow Him. It promises treasure in heaven and warns against laying up treasure on earth.

This is the divine madness that the world calls foolishness, and it is precisely this foolishness that is the wisdom of God. For what the world counts as gain, heaven counts as loss. What earth treasures, heaven often despises. The values are inverted, the economics are reversed, the whole system is turned upside down or perhaps, more accurately, right side up for the first time.

So I say again: I would rather be a poor man who sleeps soundly than a rich man who cannot rest. I would rather have my poverty honestly earned than my wealth dishonestly acquired. I would rather face God with empty hands and a clear conscience than with full pockets and a corrupted soul. For in the end, we will all stand before the One who weighs not our wealth but our worthiness, who measures not our possessions but our character, who asks not what we gained but how we gained it.

And on that day, I suspect many who were first shall be last, and the last shall be first. The poverty of this world will be revealed as the riches of eternity, and the riches of this world will be shown for what they truly are a burden we are blessed to be free from, a distraction from what truly matters, a false treasure that kept us from finding the true one.

Let those who have ears to hear, hear. And let those who sleep well, sleep in peace.

-The Seeker's Quill