“Lavish living” is not a sin in of itself and there are many Scriptural references that prove it.
First of all, I’d be interested in seeing what Scriptural passages you have in mind.
In the second place, one can “prove” a lot of things with isolated Scriptural texts. It always astounds me when Catholics, whom I expect to know better, pull out a line like that.
I think that the basic OT attitude is summed up in Proverbs 30:8-9: modest prosperity is a blessing from God and may even be spiritually beneficial inasmuch as it gives one cause for gratitude and the leisure to seek God, but excessive wealth is spiritually dangerous. Certainly the prophets have a lot to say that seems quite critical of the wealthy of their days. And the NT goes beyond this, glorifying holy poverty and consistently treating wealth as at best a snare and a temptation.
St. John Chrysostom, St. Thomas Aquinas, and many other saints have clearly taught that, at the very least, whatever wealth you have beyond a reasonable sufficiency to support you according to your station in life belongs to the poor. Of course, there’s room for a lot of debate as to what that might mean. If you’re simply saying that one should hesitate to judge that a particular person is living too lavishly and thus sinning, then I thoroughly agree. Obviously a category like “lavish living” is highly context-dependent–what are the needs of others; how far is one’s luxury harming or helping needy people; what are the legitimate social functions served by one’s luxury; etc. But if you are ruling out in principle the possibility that certain forms of lavish living might be sinful
simply because of their “lavishness” in their social context, regardless of the rich person’s subjective attitude to them–then in that case, I think you’re going squarely against the Christian tradition.
Furthermore, I did not say that “lavish living” was intrinsically sinful. In fact, all *I *said was that there was a problem with a “conservative” ideology that glorifies the pursuit of wealth. Davidlamb criticized Fr. Corapi for “lavish living,” but after all, Fr. Corapi was a member of a religious order, bound to follow the counsels of perfection.
So I think David and I are on the same page (David, correct me if I’m wrong) in saying that wealth in itself is not intrinsically sinful, but that the Christian tradition has consistently held up holy poverty as an ideal and regarded wealth as spiritually dangerous. Not the same thing as sinful at all. In fact, a thing can be a good gift of God and (in a fallen state) spiritually dangerous at the same time. Sex would be another example–in fact the traditional Christian attitude to sex and to wealth is very similar.
You also ignore the Catholic distinction between venial and mortal sin in your dichotomy. I don’t think that excessive luxury (however we define that) is mortally sinful unless it involves direct injustice or callousness (like the rich man who let a poor man die at his gates while he lived in luxury in Luke 16). However, it could still be
venially sinful.
It is one’s attitude toward material that concerns Our Lord. It is our attachment to things and especially in context to our treatment of others, rather than our possession of things that is at issue.
I agree that that’s the
most important factor, but it’s not the only one. We aren’t disembodied souls. Bodies and bodily things matter.
I think I would rather stand before God, the wealthiest and most generous of people, than the poorest and most covetous. In my experience the most generous, loving and concerned individuals I know have been the wealthiest, while the poorest have been hateful, resentful and unkind. It is an anecdotal generalization that does not hold true for all, but it proves that the simplistic view of “wealth=bad, poverty=good” is just as wrongheaded as the old Jewish assumption that wealth indicates God’s favor.
No one has said that poverty is good. I have said that the traditional Christian ideal is
holy poverty. (There is, in orthodox Christianity, no corresponding ideal of holy wealth, although there is a concept of
righteous wealth.) But that’s very different from regular old poverty. Most people can’t handle poverty very well, just as most people can’t handle celibacy very well. And that’s precisely why social justice is so important and why what DavidLamb calls “right wing Conservatism” is so toxic and immoral. “Right-wing Conservatives” put a moral burden on the poor that few sinful human beings can bear. On this very thread, you see people sniffing at poor people who want some of the luxuries that most people in our society take for granted. Poor people, simply by their circumstances, are expected to live lives of heroic virtue, denying themselves all luxuries and working long hours at several jobs just in order to provide for their families and open up more opportunities for the next generation.
Of course very poor people tend to be “hateful, resentful, and unkind.” They are sinful human beings put in extremely difficult circumstances.
That’s precisely
why it’s important, from an orthodox Christian perspective, to have some form of “redistribution” that avoids extremes of wealth and poverty.
