Christianity
E B Pusey: The Rich Man and Lazarus and Sin as Selfishness
Abstract
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Monday, 18 October 2010
When the two goats, on a narrow bridge, met over a deep stream, was not he the wiser that laid down for the other to pass over him, than he that would rather hazard both their lives by contending? He preserved himself from danger, and made the other become debtor to him for his safety. I will never think myself disparaged either by preserving peace, or doing good.Owen Feltham
Reverend E B Pusey
The Reverend E B Pusey DD (University Sermons) was not averse, as most vicars seem to be today, to calling a spade a shovel, even when his rich and noble friends were the object of his attentions in guarding the tenets of Christ. He pointed out, for example, that the world was ordained by God to be a mixture of good and evil in perpetuum. It meant all those Christians who spend their time fighting other people as wicked or as part of this or that “evil empire” are wasting their time, and doing themselves no good in God’s eyes. People have to concern themselves only with their own salvation because however many they choose to kill as evil, or convert, the world can become no less wicked. Indeed by committing such acts, they are adding to wickedness in the world, and that seems to be the point:
Remember all those descriptions of Christ’s kingdom, how to the end of the world the evil were to be mingled with the good, the tares with the wheat in the same field, the fish, good and bad, caught by the same net of the Gospel, but the bad remaining bad, and to be thrown away. Nay, so far from the world mending as time went on, it was to worsen towards the end, then “iniquity was to abound and love to wax cold”, then “perilous times should come”.
The Selfishness of the Human Heart
Pusey asked, “What is the character of those times?”. It was not any infection with a superhuman wickedness, but all that natural selfishness of the human heart which often holds men bound, and into which they are all too prone to relapse though they might profess to be Christians. He listed its characteristics:
Look at its characters—self love, love of money, boastfulness, haughtiness, evil speaking, ingratitude, calumniating, incontinence, precipitancy, self conceit, pleasure loving rather than God loving, a fair surface of a powerless religiousness. What is there different from Christian England at this day [or the US at this later day] save that the rich ascribe ingratitude to the poor only, forgetting our own hourly ingratitude for the never sleeping mercifulness of our God?
There is an awful resemblance between this picture of the world at the end, and that of the heathen world which St Paul describes as Roman. Yet:
Trait by trait is it, even in its most revolting lineaments, verified now in the so-called Christian world.
The terrible part to us are not those horrible things which one cannot name, but that there is so much of everyday, ruling, uncontradicted sin, and which is yet so common that proper Christians should be thought harsh, fanatics, “troublers of the city”, if they were to speak as Christ spoke, boldly, emphatically, against it. Pusey imagines the true follower of Christ in modern situations:
- standing up in the reception area of Goldman Sachs and boldly announcing, “The love of money is the root of all evil”, or…
- at a Republican fund raising dinner, fearlessly declared above a whisper to the wealthy donors gathered there, “Woe unto you that are rich, for ye have received your consolation” or…
- in some wealthy suburb or condominium call out, “Love not the world: for whoso loveth the world, the love of the Father is not in him” or…
- in the Oscar ceremony loudly proclaim, “The friendship of the World is enmity with God”, or…
- in the NYSE, or any other stock exchange in the world, “How hardly shall they that have riches shall enter into the kingdom of God”.
Yet universally these idolaters of wealth will count themselves not to have it, because their own golden idol was dwarfed by that of their neighbours and best friends.
The Rich Man and Lazarus
Naturally, Pusey gave examples appropriate to Victorian Britain, so here they have been made more appropriate, but Pusey’s implied question, “Where indeed are the true Christs who will do this today?” remains valid—more so! Most of them are too busy indulging in the very sins their supposed God incarnate declaimed about, the very sins they were not supposed to adopt. It was the poor whom Christ declared were blessed, not the mega rich. In Luke 16:19-31, the Christians’ God told a parable about a rich man, living in grandeur in a palace, and the poor man covered in sores begging at his gate:
There was a certain rich man, which was clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day, and there was a certain beggar named Lazarus, which was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs which fell from the rich man’s table, moreover the dogs came and licked his sores.
And it came to pass, that the beggar died and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom, the rich man also died, and was buried. And in hell he lift up his eyes, being in torments, and seeth Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue, for I am tormented in this flame.
But Abraham said, Son, remember that thou in thy lifetime receivedst thy good things, and likewise Lazarus evil things, but now he is comforted, and thou art tormented. And beside all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed so that they which would pass from hence to yon cannot, neither can they pass to us, that would come from thence.
Then he said, I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father’s house, for I have five brethren, that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets. Let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham, but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
For those who do not read or understand their bibles, the rich man represents rich men and the poor man represents the poor! The rich man was comforted by his wealth in life but would suffer hell, no less, in death. Rich people cannot be saved! Even by One who rose from the dead! Now who could that have been?
Incidentally, note that the God of the Jews in this parable is Abraham. He is the Father and refers to the rich human as Son!
