What’s foolish about a good retirement plan? In contemporary terms that’s the question we might ask of the parable Jesus tells in our text for this Sunday, Luke 12:13-21. Here’s a man who seems to be displaying keen business acumen, taking needed steps to prepare for his future and achieving a comfortable retirement. What could be a better achievement of the American dream?
As we move from the theological virtues to the cardinal virtues, the four key character traits Christianity inherited from the classical tradition, the man building bigger barns actually seems to be displaying the first of these virtues, prudence. He’s prudently managing his resources for a lasting return.
“Prudence” is of course not a word we use often and so Christians have been inclined to replace it with the more biblical and spiritual-sounding term “wisdom.” To do so, however, loses the original sense that this virtue is very practical. If it’s wisdom, it’s not grand, sage-like wisdom that plums the depths of the universe. The wisdom of prudence is an understanding of the right way to behave in a given situation. It’s practical wisdom, like that of farmer, a craftsman, or a good parent.
By that standard of prudence as practical wisdom, then, what makes the wealthy landowner storing his grain a “fool,” as God addresses him in verse 20? The answer is right in the text, bracketing the story. The man is foolish in his mistaken apprehension that the substance of life is to be found in possessions, and that, having an abundance of material provision, one may safely ignore God.
The larger question we might want to ask ourselves is the meaning of what Jesus said the rich man failed to do. As we are taking care of daily business, planning for the future, and all the other practical matters that face us, what does it mean, prudently, to be “rich toward God?”