My Inner Rich Girl

I went walking this morning around the newer part of our neighborhood. The houses are much nicer than the older part of our neighborhood, and I found myself drooling over the details. Three car garages. Lattice patterns in the brick. Tudor style roof lines. Culdesac lots with half acre backyards. Not to mention that part of the neighborhood has access to a neighborhood pool. My favorite? Wrought iron details in the glass panels of over-sized front doors. Drool. Drool. Drool.




No way we could afford the kind of house I drool over. But I imagine affording it. I imagine walking around my four thousand square foot house, soaking in the awesome vibes it would give off. I would feel amazing owning a house like that. I would revel in the wrought iron front door, three car garage, perfectly manicured lawn, Tudor-style roof lines, stone face accent on the front of the house, granite counter tops, eighteen inch stone tile and dark, wide panel hardwood flooring, forty-eight inch walnut or cherry cabinets...well, as you can see I can go on and on.

Why do I want it so badly? What is so great about this imaginary house in my head, anyway? Really, if I think about it long and hard, it's because of how it would make me feel. It would give me feelings of happiness. I would feel like I could identify myself with something beautiful, and being able to pick out the details of beauty and then own them, I could identify myself with the house. It is beautiful. I chose it's beauty. And I own it's beauty. It is almost an extension of myself. I would feel beautiful by association. People would see me opening my wrought iron front door and associate the amazing door with me. And I would be able to see myself through their eyes, and feel amazing to myself.

But then, I would be rich. And, lets face it, it's hard to like rich people. Or rather, it's hard to be a likeable rich person.

Why do some rich people really bother us? Why do they get under our skin? Why do we dislike them so? And why do some rich people surprise us? You'd never know they were rich by the way they act. They act like they are just like everybody else, and so to find out they have money takes us back. It seems like those rich people that don't act like rich people go against the grain, act almost against what would be natural, but for that exact reason you almost like them better than the average person.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven.






When I heard this as a little kid, I really tried to imagine taking a six hundred pound camel and forcing it through the eye of a sewing needle. Then, as I got older, realized that a quilting needle had a bigger hole and that might be better. But even then, you'd have to turn the camel into puree and then reconstitute it somehow on the other side of a needle. Mmmm...puree camel.

But then I got even older and heard about the eye of the needle being a gate that a camel could only pass through by removing all his luggage and crawling through on his knees. But then I heard it was anatomically impossible for a camel to crawl. And then I heard that this gate probably did not exist at the time of Christ, so was most likely not the source of this metaphor.

When Jesus' disciples heard Him talk about camels and needles, "they were amazed." Which I take to mean they were thinking of quilting, or even possibly sewing needles, and the impossibility of a six hundred pound camel getting through that tiny little hole. "Who then can be saved?" they said. I think they were starting to realize that perhaps Jesus meant not only the top ten percent of rich people, but something more. Who then can be saved? If they asked that, they might have been thinking that this analogy put them ALL out of the running.

How could it be that the disciples saw all of us as rich? Because, to me, rich people are not me or people who have less, but only people who have more than I do. People with two staircases (one for going up, and one for going down). People with yachts. Private planes. Maybe something as small as a three car garage. Because I don't have that either.

My answer is we are all rich. Richer than we deserve. We have bodies. We have free agency. We have talents and abilities. None of these things are things we earned, they were given to us.

And why is this bad? Because we need our riches to be okay. To be happy. We don't feel good about ourselves without the wrought iron front door. We lose a piece of ourselves when we lose our things, the things that make us feel good, the things with which we identify ourselves.

So the eye of the needle as a gate works on one level. To enter the kingdom of God, you have to unload all your things and still be okay. Still be able to identify yourself without the riches, without the stuff, and I'll go on a limb and extend stuff to include our talents and abilities. Our strength, our intelligence, our bodies. This is why, to me, self confidence works against you in getting into the Celestial Kingdom. Because you have to give up everything your self confidence is based on just to get through the gate. Of course, the Lord doubles the talents of those who are faithful, and the camel gets the luggage back. But for that moment in the needle's eye, you have to be enough without anything at all. With only your own nothingness and your relationship with God. Christ told us if we lose our life for his sake, we'll find it.

And that is why I think camel puree is more appropriate. If we are a camel trying to get into the city, the best and only city worth going to, then we have to be willing to be pureed. To be separated from EVERYTHING that is what we are, what we use to make us a unique and special and likeable person. Everything, that is, except for God's love for us. If we have built our lives around feeling special and unique and loveable because of our relationship with God, and not because we are good enough, strong enough, talented enough, or rich enough...then we will still be okay as camel puree. We will be reconstituted as the most amazing camel ever. A super camel. A camel to rival all camels.

I think of Job. The story of Job used to bother me. A lot. But now I think of him as a pureed camel. God really wanted Job to fit through that eye of the needle. He really wanted to make him into a super camel on the other side, but it wasn't until Job let go of his pride, and admitted he was nothing without god, that he could be pureed into the finest camel puree so as to fit through that needle.

When Christ told his disciples about the camel and the needle, "they were exceedingly amazed, saying, who then can be saved? But Jesus beheld them, and said unto them, With men, this is impossible, but with God all things are possible."

Hey, with God all things are possible. Not the intrinsically impossible (as I noted in an earlier post), but all the things the universe allows to happen, God has the power to make happen. And, as I see it, one of those things is pureeing a soul, sticking it through the eye of a spiritual needle, and then reconstituting it on the other side to form the most powerful and amazing of super souls.

Is my soul an ultra fine puree? Ha ha! It is to laugh. I've got clumps of pride so big they won't fit down a drain, much less through the eye of a needle. This morning I was thinking that a house could make me a better person, which is in a way admitting my current house makes me who I am. In this post alone, I find myself still reveling in my smarty pants-ness. If I were stripped of my wit, my intelligence, my good looks, my home, my health, my friends and family...if God did to me what he did to Job, I know I would not be enough, left naked alone with what little relationship I've developed with God thus far. My sense of self worth is still pathetically tied to this stuff. Or, at best, I would just be plain mad at God, like Job was (in one of his worse moments), for taking away what I thought was mine, when in reality, according to Job (in one of his better moments), the Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. In other words, none of it was really mine to begin with.

I think that is the answer to my questions about rich people. Some people have money and it makes them who they are. They are not enough without it, so they need to remind themselves and others on a regular basis that they still have the money in order to feel good enough about themselves.

But that's not the only kind of problem person. Some people don't have money and it makes them who they are. They take pride in being able to go without, or they spend all their time thinking about what they don't have. Some people pride themselves in having just enough for their needs. They pride themselves in not being greedy for what they don't have, and they fear losing what they currently have. They sometimes look down on people who are money show-offs. They sometimes look down on people who don't work harder or are more careful with their money so as to keep it together. All of these people (and I'm in this mix myself) feel better about themselves by thinking others are worse.

Other people will always be the same no matter how much money they have because on some level they know the money isn't really theirs, could go away tomorrow, and come back the next, and that they are no different than anybody else.

Pureeing hurts. Will Heavenly Father have to set the blender on high for my soul like he did for Job? Or can I start breaking up the clumps of pride myself, looking more to Christ than to wrought iron front doors for my identity, for my ability to be okay, to be enough?




I want to fit through that needle. Really I do. Even if it means....(ouch)...being pureed.