The Parable of the Rich Fool

In Luke 12:16-21 we read the parable of the rich fool. Before Jesus shares the parable he responds to a petition about worldly wealth with;

Watch and beware of all types of greed, because a person’s life is more than the quantity of his possessions. -Luke 12:15 Wayment Translation¹-

He then shares the parable where the foolish rich man measures his life of possessions and thinks that it defines his soul.

The land of a rich man produced plentifully, and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’ And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’ -Luke 12:16-19 ESV-

I think the parable has a traditional interpretation of the riches of the world. However, I want to push the parable to imply that thinking of anything we do as a possession fits this parable. If we say to our soul, ‘Soul, you have converted many people to the church and attended your meetings regularly; relax, eat, drink be merry.’ I think God will respond just the same way that he does to the foolish rich man.

But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God."

Life as Essense not Possessions

Can I push a little farther and propose that how we think about sin and repentance can amount to the same condemnation that the rich fool received. If we see sin as a bunch of things that we own even if they come with the possession of a few repentances here and there, then we will end up with a bigger barn and lesser heaven. Our life is not about possessions whether those possessions be obediences, sins, repentances, or riches.

Steven Peck shared a concept similar to this in his book Gilda of Trillim. He is explicitly calling out the false notion that our life and eternity is just a big plan of possessions.

You’ll remember how crazy I used to get at my father’s ridiculous view that God and the eternities were just an accumulation of more stuff; more family, more children, more and more acquisitions of worlds, an eternal game of Monopoly with more and more squares on the board, and more and more houses and hotels piling up on the spaces. Agh! How boring that seemed, an eternity of the same game forever? You’d have to have some sort of heavenly opium to keep you happy. Gilda Trillim by Steven Peck

Paul conveys this concept of obedience to the law as possessions as well.

Many insiders, though, want to make everything about the law and, even with all that effort, still never manage to fulfill it. They failed to see that the law was about grace. They treated the law as a list of works rather than as an occasion of faith. What was meant to be a stepping stone became a stumbling block. And then, stumbling over the law, sin seized them. -Romans 9:31-32 Miller Translation²-

On the topic of repentance Dorothy Sayers shared an insightful way to see repentance as more than possessions.

Repentance is no more than a passionate intention to know all things after the mode of heaven, and it is impossible to know evil as good if you insist on knowing it as evil. For man’s evil knowledge, there could be but one perfect remedy - to know the evil of the past itself as good, and to be free from the necessity of evil in the future - to find right knowledge and perfect freedom together; to know all things as occasions of love. -Dorothy Sayers³-

The business of souls is not built on possessions. When we stop to think about our own soul, we will not talk to it about our possessions as the rich fool. We will see its essence. We will realize that through the grace of Christ we have become something new. As A.D Lindsay said,

“Gracious” conduct is like the work of an artist. It needs imagination and spontaneity. It is not the choice between presented alternatives but the creation of something new. -A.D. Lindsay: The Two Moralities-

So when we look at our lives, we need to realize that yesterdays experiments don’t have to define today’s joys. They don’t have to weigh down our backpack on our journey to heaven. We should know that ‘it is useless to try to escape either from the bad past or into the good past. The only way to deal with the past is to accept the whole past, and by accepting it to change its meaning.’⁴

Our soul’s matter and God wants us to create something of them with his gracious help. He is inviting us to see life as a whole and to see what we can become. He wants us to be like him and to find meaning and purpose in our creative experience that requires our passionate intent.

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