Mortals Cannot Abide in Their Pomp

Truly, no ransom avails for one’s life;
    there is no price one can give to God for it.
For the ransom of life is costly
    and can never suffice,
that one should live on forever
    and never see the Pit.
When we look at the wise, they die;
    fool and dolt perish together
    and leave their wealth to others.
Their graves are their homes forever,
    their dwelling places to all generations,
    though they named lands their own.
Mortals cannot abide in their pomp;
    they are like the animals that perish.
(Psalm 49:7-12, New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition)

In many ways, the inequality between rich and poor defines this world.

We all recognize this inequality, and acknowledge it to some degree or another. If you’re reading this message, whether in your email or on a website, you likely fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum—less well-off than some, but wealthier than the vast majority of people in the world. And participation in our capital-driven society usually involves doing one’s best to get closer to the rich and leave the poor behind.

Sometimes even our religious institutions seem to have bought into this secular mindset. We’re often taught to treat the poor as “charity cases,” problems to mitigate (and keep at a distance) by throwing money at them, rather than neighbors to embrace and fully welcome into our community. But only if we have “extra” money to spare for them—and we all know how easily we can convince ourselves we need every last penny we have for our own comfort and security.

James Nayler, one of the most prominent voices among the first generation of Quakers, understood this situation well. “For as power hath come into the hands of men it hath been turned into violence, and the will of men is brought forth instead of equity,” he wrote in the pamphlet A Lamentation Over the Ruins of This Oppressed Nation:

“for all hearts are full of oppression, and all hands are full of violence, their houses are filled with oppression, their streets and markets abound with it, their courts, which should afford remedy against it, are wholly made up of iniquity and injustice, and the law of God is made altogether void, and truth is trodden under foot, and plainness is become odious to the proud, and deceit set on high, and the proud are counted happy, and the rich are exalted above the poor and look to be worshipped as God…”

Nayler often focused his prophetic ministry on this economic injustice.

“The lower God doth bring me, and the nearer to himself,” Nayler wrote while imprisoned by Parliament for blasphemy, “the more doth this love and tenderness spring and spread towards the poor simple and despised ones… and with those I choose to suffer and do suffer wherever they are found; and I bear my testimony against that spirit by which they suffer wherever it is found.”

Another pamphlet from 1653, the same year as the Lamentation, laid its accusations against the unjust economic oligarchy of seventeenth-century England out in the bluntest language Nayler could muster. “God is against you, you covetous cruel oppressors who grind the faces of the poor and needy, taking your advantage of the necessities of the poor…and hereby getting great estates in the world,” he charged.

“And when they are become poor through your deceits then you despise them and exalt yourselves above them, and forget that you are all made of one mould and one blood and must all appear before one judge, who is no respecter of persons, nor does he despise the poor; and what shall your riches avail you at that day when you must account how you have gotten them and whom you have oppressed?”

In passages like these, I have to admit, I see reflections of our twenty-first-century society. I can’t claim to have chosen to suffer as Nayler did—not even close—but I can take his ministry as a beacon, and strive each day to do better.

If nothing else, the pursuit of wealth leads to delusion.

Mortals cannot abide in their pomp—or, as the Common English Bible puts it, “people won’t live any longer because of wealth.” Though Lord knows they try. Perhaps you’ve seen the stories of billionaires who pour their money into health regimens and medications and technologies to extend their bodies’ lifespans beyond our current limitations… and, in some cases, are making preparations to make digital replicas of their consciousness so they can, in effect, live forever. 

Some people have convinced themselves that nothing exists beyond the material world of their experience. Perhaps such people find themselves compelled to hoard power and prestige because they have no hope in a blessed community to come. Perhaps they would pay anything to extend that lifetime because they “know” nothing awaits them but oblivion.

But no ransom avails for one’s life. Whatever awaits us after death, we cannot put it off forever—and, in the meantime, we have a responsibility to those around us. For whatever we believe about the afterlife, even if we embrace its most heavenly model, we have no surer guarantee of experiencing the blessed community than to commit ourselves to building it right here, right now.