The Folly of Riches

Sometimes when I make an offhand comment about the way God is working in my life, I can get really blank looks that seem to say, “You really believe that God cares how you live?”  If you believe the pollsters, many in this world believe in God, but rather obviously, they aren’t all living like they do.  I’m all about striving to apply to my life what I’m studying and reading, and the older I get, the more I find myself making spiritual appraisals about everything I encounter in the Scriptures (and often seeing where I fall short); since I teach English literature, the novels that I teach often inspire reflection of a spiritual nature.

         My AP class just completed The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and they discovered a somewhat recurring theme in literature that money cannot buy happiness. My connection is this: I’ve been reading recently in Ecclesiastes, and Solomon has much to say about wealth. In chapter five, he addresses the folly of riches: “He who loves money will not be satisfied with money, nor he who loves abundance with its income. This too is vanity. When good things increase, those who consume them increase. So what is the advantage to their owners except to look on? The sleep of the working man is pleasant, whether he eats little or much; but the full stomach of the rich man does not allow him to sleep” (NASB, vs. 10-12). In the novel, Jay Gatsby has a gaudy amount of money earned in some nebulous, yet probably illegal, way, and all that money doesn’t make him happy because he’s yearning for what he doesn’t have, which is love—specifically for Daisy, who is married to another man. (If it sounds complicated—it is!) Even though Gatsby has all this money, he cannot rest, and he throws much of the money away in a decadent lifestyle wasted on people who attach themselves to him for their own greedy pleasures. If only Gatsby had recognized the giver of all, his life would not have been lived in such a futile way. (Strangely enough, although the book is fiction, the author wrote much of it from what he experienced during the Roaring Twenties, and it is a sad testimony of a life wasted on self-gratification and pleasure instead of a life blessed by God and offered as a return to Him.)

          At the end of his teaching on the folly of riches, Solomon says, “Furthermore, as for every man to whom God has given riches and wealth, He has also empowered him to eat from them and to receive his reward and rejoice in his labor; this is the gift of God. For he will not often consider the years of his life, because God keeps him occupied with the gladness of his heart” (vs. 19-20). If we look to God as the giver of all good things (including any wealth we might gain), it changes our perspective and our actions. If we are grateful, we will be occupied with the gladness of our hearts instead of just wanting something more that we don’t have—whatever that may be. The Great Gatsby is a sad novel about the hollowness of life when it is lived for wealth and pleasure instead of for the love of God. I see it as a warning from a man who experienced the futility of living in such a manner, and I see Solomon’s teaching on the folly of riches as a similar warning. It’s worth heeding.