Valson Thampu

Ours is fast becoming a world of billionaires. For a few billionaires to be born, a billion people may have to be impoverished. But, the welfare of a billion people is not news. The birth of a few billionaires is. During COVID times, when 97% Indians became poorer, a handful entered the privileged club of billionaires. Mukesh Ambani became the richest man in Asia. Ask him and Adani, if achha din (good days) has come or not!

It is curious to recall, in this context, the words of Jesus, ‘Do not gather up for yourself treasures on earth’. ‘Sour-grapes-psychology’ most people would say. There is nothing else, after all, you can do when what you covet is beyond your reach. But, do, or do not, the words of Jesus have a relevance that goes beyond the scope of Aesop’s fox? What did he mean? How does it apply to our context?

The crucial part of Jesus’ teaching here pertains to the impermanence of what people covet and chase. This, in turn, modifies the idea of ‘treasure’, or what is valued from the worldly point of view. That, in turn, bears on the quality of life and of human personality. You are, after all, what you live for and live by. As Jesus said, ‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’.

This takes us back, all the way, to Pharaoh’s hard-heartedness in the book of Exodus. The simple principle is that your heart becomes like what you covet. To covet lifeless things, like the objects of the world, is to become lifeless in the heart. In the language of the heart, hardness is deadness. To be dead in the heart is to lose all inner freedom. As a result, we have the ‘appearance of being alive,’ but are dead, like the Church at Sardis. Pharaoh, like all ungodly rulers of the world, became hard-hearted, because he was a heartlessly efficient custodian of the wealth of the nation; or, of ‘national interests’, as we say today. Heartless priorities are justified by invoking the bogey of national interests. So, from Pharaoh’s point of view, it was foolish and irresponsible to let the Jews go, forfeiting a massive amount of cheap, skilled labour.

People wonder why the Modi government does not rush to the help of the common man and the famished masses of India. The Bible has an answer for it, embedded in the example of Pharaoh. It is ‘unproductive’ to provide relief to the poor. So, it is economically smart, during COVID times, to thrust tens and thousands of crores into the hands of the corporate giants, and leave the common man in the lurch. It is not only that the common man is not helped. It is also that he is daily bled with the scalpel of petrol and diesel prices. The petrol-economy becomes the means by which every Indian is robbed daily, indirectly. You not only pay extra for petrol and diesel, but also pay more for every item of daily consumption.

Let that be; let’s stay focused on Jesus’ teaching on the treasures that we need to gather. The very first thing to note here is that we are required to be rich, not paupers! We are to gather up treasures, not stay destitute. Only that the treasures we seek are different. What are they?

Jesus says, ‘Man does not live by bread alone’. Bread, we need; but it is, by itself, insufficient. Our body and soul alike need nourishment. We are used to thinking of God like a spiritual fast-food joint. Odd though it might seem, we should think of God as our spiritual provision store. It is our duty to ‘cook’ what is obtainable from there, and assimilate the spiritual food to our fortification, rather than expect manna from heaven to fall all around us.

As in relation to nature, so also in relation to God we need to labour. This spiritual labour will make us ‘fruitful’. Physical food is what we consume. Spiritual food nourishes others through us. That is what it means to be ‘the salt of the earth, the light of the world’ as well as to be ‘fruitful’. As Pope Francis said recently, ‘no tree in nature eats its own fruit’. Fruits are for others.

Spiritual fruits come only out of godly resources. God is the fountainhead of universal values: love, truth, justice, compassion, etc. We work with nature to ensure our survival. We need to work with God to ensure our perfection. So Jesus said, ‘Be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect’. It suffices animals to survive. Human beings have a need to be perfect. Perfection is not what we advertise to the world; but what others sense about us.

To relate to God is to relate to the highest possibilities in us. The intuition that a human being is not one but two-in-one has been basic to philosophy for millennia. Hence the possibility of a conversation with oneself. What do I do when I think or write? Am I not relating to myself – the self, unclogged by the mundane world? Am I not, if you like, farming myself to create enduring treasures, as I farm nature to produce things of daily consumption?

Now ask: who is sensible? Those who seek physical goods, or those who seek the enduring things of the soul and the mind? The consumerist culture blinds us to the fact that this dimension of possibilities is real, and that it is invaluable as compared to everything else. That is why publicity is irrelevant to it; whereas visibility and publicity are crucial for what the world covets.

With reference to the treasures of the world, we are consumers. With reference to godly treasures, we are creative geniuses. Creativity is the essence of godliness; for God is Creator. How can we be children of God, if we remain mere consumers, and not become creative with our life and personality? Creativity is the bridle-path to the treasures that endure. It is a divine gift; and like all gifts, it needs to be nurtured and perfected, which is the quintessence of the spiritual discipline –or the way- of Jesus.