I want to focus on the first sentence of this quote and I freely admit that what I am going to discuss is NOT the message that Jesus was trying to communicate. Rather, I am going to write about the truth that was the point-of-departure or the spring-board that Jesus used as a "hook" to engage his audience.
That truth is that some investments are durable while other investments have very, very short "shelf-lives". Investors who want to be comfortable tend to purchase durable investments while people who "cannot get ahead" tend to purchase ephemeral wealth.
Examples of investments with a short shelf-life
- 1000 pounds of ripe bananas
- Dropping $400 on a date to impress a hot-chick (and gain status with your buddies)
- Scratch-off lottery tickets
- Stylish apparel
- Any electronics with proprietary batteries or power cord or storage media
- Exotic livestock
- Anything that is heavily advertised on mass media
Examples of durable assets
- Pint jars of canned tallow or quart jars of vacuum sealed wheat
- Buying your wife her choice of good cutlery or cookware
- Garden seeds, fruit trees, nut trees
- Durable, functional clothing that can be repaired
- Hand-tools, an abacus, classic books printed on quality paper, board games
- Breeds and species of livestock that are known to be low-maintenance
- Land
Since the middle of the Industrial Revolution, our ability to produce goods outran our ability to fully consume those goods. It became "necessary" to create demand through planned obsolescence and to create dissatisfaction (with the old, still useful goods) through advertising to keep the factories (wealth pumps) running. Advertising generated the cash-flow that enabled the saturation of mass-media into our lives.
One way to extinguish the urge to throw your time and money at short-term "investments" is to turn off the mass-media. Turn off the TVs and computers. Avoid social-media like the plague. Stop trying to keep up with Chad and Amber (who are frantically aping somebody else). Study couples who are five and ten years and twenty years older than you are and who are happy and content. Ask them how they did it. I bet they don't tell you it was because they spent their tax return on a downpayment for a Jet-Ski or because they are spending $800 a month on their phone bill.
Of course, the investment with the longest duration is Eternal Life, which was the main message of what Jesus was talking about. I believe that weening ourselves from the short-term, dopamine rush of short-term gratification makes it much easier to contemplate salvation. But I might be wrong.
