Dear Gregor,
"...nor say, 'I have enough'." - it's nested quotation marks. Without them it reads, 'Don't set your heart on your wealth or say that you have enough.' The King James contains: "Set not thy heart upon thy goods; and say not, 'I have enough for my life'."
Why do people acquire wealth? Living well is the best form of revenge as the saying goes. Two days of retirement seems to kill everyone in my family. I am challenged to see any good in wealth. Certainly, there must be something good about it.
Solomon says, 'A sinner takes twice what he's offered.' Once we retire, we've got it all on the table. Wealth makes us philosophers of all we see and yet because we're all sinners, our needs are not fulfilled. By perfection, Christ showed us how to 'not retire' and in no way can that be interpretted as being nonproductive. Life should be a mystery but not an unknown.
Put it another way, with early retirement packages and IRAs, retirement seems to be a little like 'joining the heavenly chorus' but without the unpleasant task of dying. Indeed, a song is worth 10,000 words and until you die, singing is still like public speaking; it still creates a kind of stagefright. According to a well known Galop poll, people are more afraid of public speaking than death. In that way, ill-gotten wealth (or retiring before our time) actually makes death the lesser of two evils.
I'm not eloquent but the Bible teaches us that retiring 'before our time' is on par with robbing a bank. It is better to be a theologian of much than a philosopher of little.
Bill |
