At the Chapel this past Sunday, we looked at one of the most interesting parables in the gospels. In Luke 16:13, Jesus says “No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” When the Pharisees hear these words, they ridicule them, because, as Luke editorializes, they were “lovers of money.” In response to this ridicule, Jesus tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus and their experiences in the life which is to come. Right of the bat, the framing for the story is the relative value of money and the proper perspective that a member of the kingdom of heaven should take.
I said in my sermon that the main point of the parable is the wealth the rich man enjoyed during his earthly life was no solace in the next life. His earthly prosperity was not a sign of God’s favor—he winds up, after all, in torment—and it is clear that he would have gladly changed places with Lazarus, who lived a life of earthly misery, if he could have! All this would have been profoundly unsettling to the Pharisees in his audience, who tended to be drawn from the wealthier segments of Judean society, especially the leadership (it was only the wealthy who could afford to live a life of scholarly study of the Torah after all). In the Mosaic Covenant, God had promised prosperity to the nation on the condition of adherence to the commands of the Law. In addition, in the wisdom writings of the Old Testament, it is common to link together right living with prosperity. Think for example of a proverb like Proverbs 12:11—Whoever works his land will have plenty of bread, but he who follows worthless pursuits lacks sense. Although as I said in my sermon, Jesus does not simplistically moralize about wealth—he does not say that poverty is inherently virtuous and wealth inherently corrupting—it is clear that sharp-edge of the parable is aimed more directly at those that are wealthy.
I said that it is “clear” that the rich man would change places with Lazarus if he could, but perhaps I should be careful with making such an absolute statement. For you see, one of the greatest preachers of the modern era and a personal hero of mine, Tim Keller, has taken a slightly different interpretation. It is with great trepidation that I take issue with his take on this parable. However, it may help us learn a little bit about the interpretation of parables as well as how motivated reasoning can distort our understanding of the Scriptures. It is my position that Keller both misconstrues the point of the parable, and fails to do justice to the proper interpretive approach to the rhetoric of the parable.
Keller’s short treatment of the parable is found in the fifth chapter of The Reason For God: Belief in an Age of Skepticism. The book is an examination of several common apologetic topics that he often encountered in his ministry to educated urbanites in his church in New York City. I will say at the outset that I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It is EXCELLENT and a great resource for anyone dealing with questions of faith. The fifth chapter addresses the question of “a loving God would not allow hell,” a difficult and complex topic that Christian theologians have discussed from the days of the Church Fathers. Keller’s treatment is strongly influenced by writers like CS Lewis, who famously said in The Great Divorce that “the doors of hell are locked from the inside.” Keller’s thesis for the section is that “Hell is the trajectory of a should, living a self-absorbed, self-centered life, going on and on forever” (pg. 79). Rather than being an active punishment which God inflicts upon the wicked, hell is God allowing a person’s rejection of him to become permanent. Keller then turns to the parable for support:
What is astonishing is that though their statuses have now been reversed, the rich man seems to be blind to what has happened. He still expects Lazarus to be his servant and treats him as his water boy. He does not ask to get out of hell, yet strongly implies that God never gave him and his family enough information about the afterlife (pg. 80).
Right of the bat, I find several of Keller’s claims about the parable to be very tenuously supported from the text. The rich man does not seem to be blind to what has happened at all. He is in torment, and expresses a desire for relief from his torment as well as a concern that his brothers be rescued from it. In what sense is he blind to what has happened? Nor does he anywhere imply that he did not have enough information about the afterlife. I also think that it is not fair to say that the rich man “still expects Lazarus to be his servant”—Lazarus was never his servant. The overall tone of the rich man’s statements throughout the parable is one of urgent regret and even desperation. He is begging Abraham for relief for himself and for his family. Hardly indicative of a person who is locking the doors of hell from the inside!
The biggest problem with what Keller says here is his observation that the rich man does not ask to get out of hell. Strictly speaking, this is true—he does not literally ask that of Abraham. But here is where I think Keller fails to do justice to the rhetoric of the parable. As I said in my sermon, the key rhetorical strategy that Jesus is employing in this parable, as in so many of his parables, is hyperbole. He is deliberately heightening the contrasts present in the parable in order to make his point as clear as possible. This is why the rich man is not just rich but superlatively rich, and Lazarus is not just poor but superlatively poor. This is why we encounter Abraham in the story—the greatest of the Patriarchs and the father of the Jewish people. The rich man addresses Abraham not because he is ignoring Lazarus, but because he is the authoritative figure in the afterlife who could perhaps give Lazarus permission to help him.
This is key to understanding the request that the rich man DOES make. His request is another example of hyperbole. It is a superlatively minor request, almost absurdly so—he desires that his tongue be cooled for an instance by a dab of water from he finger of Lazarus. When this request is denied, the significance of the rhetoric is clear—if not even this absurdly small favor could be granted, then neither could greater ones, and the fate of the rich man is fixed with certainty. This is not lost on the rich man, whose next request turns to the fate of his brothers, who still had an opportunity to escape from the torment in which he finds himself.
To be honest, I find it almost impossible to read this parable and conclude that the rich man did not want to escape from the torment in which he is in. It seems to me that this essential fact is necessary for understanding the whole point of the parable, which is that a life of earthly wealth is meaningless and empty in the light eternity, worth surrendering if it meant that one could escape the torments of hell.
In my judgment, this is an example of “motivated reasoning” in which you come to a passage of Scripture with a point that you want to make, and then interpret the passage with that point in mind. Keller had a thesis about hell that he thought would make it more palatable to his audience, and he interpreted the parable in light of it. As a result, he arrives at a reading of the parable that is almost precisely the opposite of the point Jesus is making. Far from saying that the doors of hell are locked from the inside, Jesus tells us in this parable that the tormented in hell will instantly regret the life that they had led, but will in despair find that any escape is impossible.
This is, of course, not the most pleasant idea to grapple with, and many people in our modern audiences may find it offensive and impossible to accept. I do not think, however, that the correct response to this should be to attempt to conjure up a more palatable alternative, and re-interpret parables to support it. The sharp edge of this parable is important—it teaches us about the relative value of wealth, about the urgency of the gospel in this short and temporary life which we live, and the necessity to carry that gospel message to our friends and neighbors whom we love. As I said in my sermon, the cry from hell is “Go and warn my brothers!” May we as a church take this parable to heart.