"Money curse": Why are corrupt officials not afraid of hell?

"Dehumanization" is profiting from someone's sorrow. Photo: UOJ

The hypertrophied mania for enrichment is essentially a form of mental illness. Shura Balaganov, who knew exactly how much money he needed for happiness, can be considered a great non-possessor and ascetic compared to today's super-corrupt individuals.

The fact that these people are not ashamed is not surprising at all. When there is no conscience, where would shame come from? The most terrifying thing for these insane rich people is that they do not understand one important thing.

Spiritual laws, in terms of their principle of action, are no different from the laws of physics.

They work in any case, regardless of our awareness of them and our attitude towards them.

Metaphysics of "dirty" money

Money earned from the blood and suffering of people do not only have the common features of any money. They also carry a metaphysical content. It is called an eternal curse. And I would not wish anyone to fall under its power.

The parable of the foolish rich man is not a moral lesson. It is a tragic case of false self-identification. The madness of the rich man, both evangelical and modern, lies in an ontological error.

He identifies his being, his personality with his possessions. "I" equals "mine".

"My soul!" says the rich man, "you have many goods laid up for many years." He believes that his soul can be nourished and sustained by material things. The rich man builds his life on possession. He believes that his identity is secured solely by material wealth.

No one denies that people need money. They provide for the basic needs of our body. We need somewhere to sleep, something to eat, we need to wear clothes, and all this costs money. But the madness of the rich man is not in his superabundance, but in the fact that he equated "being" with "having". The loss of possession for the rich man is equivalent to the disappearance of being itself.

Therefore, it is not surprising that billionaires, losing millions, end up with a suicide. There are many examples of this: Adolf Merckle, Dmitry Bosov, Jesse Livermore, and others like them. The madness of the rich man is that he made the main bet on emptiness, abandoning the eternal in favor of the transient.

Stewards, not owners

The Savior calls to "be rich in God". This is not just charity, but an inner transformation. True wealth is grace, forming and transforming our personality, making it capable of communion with God. This wealth cannot be taken from us even by death. The rich man, having free will, uses it to enslave himself to matter.

All our property, movable and immovable, and all honestly earned money is called "unrighteous wealth" in the Gospel language.

Not in the sense of sinful, but in the sense of not belonging to us. Everything in this world is God's: our body and what a person considers their property.

In earthly life, a Christian is offered to manage this "unrighteous" wealth so that God can entrust them with the eternal. We are called to be stewards, not owners. We are managers of someone else's property, God's, not ours. As soon as we begin to consider ourselves owners, we move from the category of "stewards" to the category of "slaves" and become subject to the power of this "unrighteous" wealth. Here the trap snaps shut. A person becomes a captive of passion.

Chronos and Kairos

The rich man in this parable operates with linear human time – chronos. He plans for many years. God interrupts him, introducing qualitative, decisive time – kairos. "This night your soul will be required of you" (Luke 12:20). The parable warns: salvation and judgment exist in the dimension of kairos, and a person, living in time, must always be ready to transition into eternity.

The parable serves as a negative example of what happens when a person does not practice sobriety and does not strive for the acquisition of grace. The rich man makes a mistake that the holy fathers call "external distraction and captivity of the mind". The mind of the rich man is completely absorbed in external planning and fear of loss, and therefore cannot become a place of meeting with God.

The words of the rich man: "Soul, take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry" is an illusion of peace.

True peace is achieved only through the purification of the heart from passions and the acquisition of the Holy Spirit. The rich man tries to replace grace with material satiety, which is essentially a spiritual self-deception.

The Light of Tabor and the prayer of the hesychast

Palamite theology about the uncreated energies of the Holy Spirit provides a theological basis for "being rich in God". True wealth is the uncreated Divine energies, also called Divine light or grace.

The spiritual practice of the Jesus Prayer is directly opposite to the state of the rich man. The prayer of the rich man is a monologue of self-satisfaction: "take your ease, eat, drink, and be merry" (Luke 12:19). He relies on himself and his deeds. The prayer of the hesychast is a dialogue of humility and reliance on God. He renounces his own righteousness and self-sufficiency, completely relying on God.

The moral of the parable is clear. The Lord warns us against excessive concern for the material.

For the rich man does not just work, he becomes a slave to his property. His life energy is entirely spent on the logistics and planning of the earthly. While non-possession frees the body and mind from concerns about chronos, making them free for kairos – prayer and inner work. Only in this way does the soul grow wings, and it becomes like a heavenly bird, which is rich in God.

The parable of the foolish rich man is a stern warning: if a person spends their time solely on providing for their body and caring for their ego, they miss the only thing that matters – the salvation of the soul.

Profiting from misery

At the beginning of the publication, we talked about shameless people obsessed with money. But they did not lose their conscience immediately; they started their dehumanization somewhere. There are many examples of such beginnings today. Here is one of them.

In general, people who do not particularly need anything rent out their abandoned rural houses to refugees who have lost their homes for a pittance, or even for free. These houses stand without windows, doors, with leaky roofs. And when these homeless victims of war use their last money to make repairs, install windows, doors, patch the roof, create some decent interior comfort, they are evicted from this house. In order to rent it out to other people, but now for good money.

This and similar schemes are no different from those billion-dollar corruption cases that are talked about in the news today.

The profit obtained in this way contains the same curse and the same essence. And it will definitely work, regardless of the amount acquired from human misery.

God forbid to profit from people in this way, because such money will lead to endless eternal torment.

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