Proverbs 14:20 ESV
The poor is disliked even by his neighbor, but the rich has many friends.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+14%3A20&version=ESV]
‘Unpleasant but true’ is a fittingly unpleasant commonality. Today’s proverb fits that category well, pointing out as it does the human tendency to align our affections to petty, selfish reasons. We like powerful people, the ones with lots of advantages and lots of stuff. Conversely, we have little time and oftentimes some distaste for the powerless. Humans are sinful, in their relationship to each other as in everything else.
We should be careful not to limit what we learn from this proverb to its direct application. To consider this proverb only as a statement on the power of a person’s financial situation over our perception of them would be to see the trees and forget the forest, forget the principle behind the statement. Humans aren’t drawn to wealth only because we like to be next to people who have a lot of stuff. Generally speaking, more overtly selfish motives underlie cozying up to the rich, at least in the world, whether a desire for a share of that wealth, a desire for some of the power that wealth represents, or out of an idolization of some aspect of being wealthy.
Wealth, too, is not the only stimulus that can produce this response. Power, exceptional beauty, anything which some have in abundance and others in deficit, all these can bring people flocking to their possessors. Even poverty, in the right social climate, can become a form of power, pulling people to associate with the poor (usually at a distance or only for so long as is necessary for a photo op. See: 99% of politicians talking about the southern border of the US). We humans want power, want wealth, want prestige. We want, in truth, to become gods to ourselves, in fact if not word, whether by exercising autonomous power over our surroundings or by arrogating to ourselves the adoration due only to the divine.
This response in man isn’t good. Some part of it, of course, is an economic necessity and morally neutral: men will have more economic reason to supplicate the rich and the powerful than the poor and the oppressed. Insofar as that is the cause, provided they act not from grief but out of a desire to steward that which God has given them, the supplicants do not sin. Unfortunately, man is sinful to the core, his every action tainted by sin and preserved only by the gracious hand of God in doing any good at all, at least in his unregenerate state (the regenerate man, meanwhile, is by God’s saving grace made able to do good from his own heart, though still by the power of His preservation).
Man sins in showing partiality, then, to the rich, in valuing their riches or their power or their beauty in ways that they should not be valued. Riches, power, beauty, these all are worldly things. In affairs of the world, therefore, they may matter. To seek out a man of beauty to fulfil a role in a screenplay is perfectly acceptable, as his beauty is relevant to the project. In his role as a Christian, however, a man’s riches, his power, and his beauty are irrelevant, except in how he uses them to serve God. The widow’s mite was more than the rich man’s largesse (Mark 12:41-43); the beautiful man’s charity is to be judged by its virtue, not by its aesthetic. James teaches thus when he instructs us not to show favor to a rich man for his riches or to the poor man for his poverty when according honor within the church; such matters are and should be treated as irrelevant in that context (James 2:1-13).
The effect of this on the one’s apparently favored isn’t good in the long run anyway. In the first place, it adds an extra step to their assessment of those around them, a necessary question of which of their friends are actually friends with their money, power, or beauty but don’t give two hoots about the man behind those traits. In the second, it tends to produce sycophants and yes-men, people who don’t say ‘no’ because they don’t want to lose their place in the inner circle, right up close to the wealth they adore. This sort of continual affirmation, regardless of wisdom, can easily foster self-destructive over-confidence, pride, and recklessness, to the man’s temporal harm; worse, it can foster in him a distaste for God, a pride which places himself above God. Third and finally, the rich man is at risk of observing all the pleasantness (superficial though it may be) that his wealth (or power or beauty) has brought him, and on the basis of that disdain any need for God. It was with justice that Christ warned of the camel’s difficulty in passing through the eye of the needle in __. On the other hand, that justice spoke true of the wicked wealthy as well in Psalm 73, saying, “How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors!” (19).
At its core, the sin this verse tells us the commonness of is the sin of partiality, the sin of valuing the valueless when dealing with or judging another. This is a sin we are all prone to, if with different qualities. We can sin by showing partiality to the wealthy or to the poor, to the beautiful or to the ugly, to the powerful or to the powerless. The only right path is to pay heed to God’s Word with humility, to consider in each situation not just the stuff that sounds good but the stuff that actually matters- wisdom and good character in church, honesty in business, etc. Further, we must remember that we are all prone to sin in this way, must not show partiality to our own cause by granting ourselves an illusory shield of impartiality. We all have biases, and we all act on those biases. In God’s grace, we may hunt them out, but they will be with us till our bodies rot. Yet, for those who will live again upon the final resurrection (1 Cor. 15:35-42), this is merely a reminder of God’s grace to us, for though the rich young ruler might easier have walked through the eye of a needle, we were no better, no less mired in sin, and yet He has saved us by His blood and grace, not of our own works or choice but of His.
God bless.
Written by Colson Potter
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
