For those who are willing to think about the Bible from time to time (and this is Sunday, after all), the picture above is meant to illustrate Matthew 19:16-22:
A young man approached Jesus and said, “Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?” Jesus answered him, “Why do you ask me about the good? There is only One who is good. If you wish to enter into life, keep the commandments.” The young man asked him, “Which ones?” And Jesus replied, “You shall not kill; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness; honor your father and your mother; and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” The young man said to him, “All of these I have observed. What do I still lack?” Jesus said to him, “If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.” When the young man heard this statement, he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
Reflecting on this passage in the Bible, Bishop Robert Barron said this: "The spiritual life, at the highest pitch, is about giving your life away, and this is why the many possessions are a problem."
I think that this story, and the Bishop's commentary, has some relationship to what I call my "Two Worlds Hypothesis," although from a different perspective from the one in which I normally present it.
My idea is that while we all live, most immediately, in a world that we construct for ourselves, we ultimately live in "The World of Nature," or what I sometimes call, "The World God Made."
While we can do "anything" in our world, we do not have freedom to do anything we might think about, or want, in that "World That God Made," or in "The World of Nature."
In the "World of Nature," we are not sovereign, but are subservient. The laws that govern the "World of Nature" cannot be broken. You just don't "break" the law of gravity! While we can do almost anything we want to do in "our" world, ignoring or violating the rules that apply in the "World of Nature" will bring us to certain destruction. The consequences that have come upon us because of human-created Global Warming is my normal, go-to example.
In the case of the rich young man, he was of the opinion that the riches that he had amassed for himself should, really, belong to him. And within that "Human World," no one could gainsay that. He kept all the commandments, but he was committed to retaining the benefits of what he had made. Jesus pretty much told him that holding on to our own creations was not going to work, at least not in the "World That God Made."
Could we live with "Less"? Today's Sunday sermon suggests that this is exactly what we are being called upon to do!
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