I’m in Palm Beach Florida. And I’ve never been in a place that oozes so much wealth. The cars, the buildings, the shops, the clothes, above all the houses, just reek of money. It’s smart, smooth, expensive, kind of beautiful in a slightly sickly way – a bit like a dessert laced with too much sugar – just puts your teeth on edge.

The USA seems a culture fixated on two things: the quest for the perfect body and financial prosperity. Every other advert on TV promotes some fitness tool that will reduce weight, tone the abs or whatever, and the other half show ways to make money (as do half the books on the airport bookstalls). Even the Christianity gets sucked into this too – so many Christian programmes also seem to promise the good life – shame it didn’t work out for Jesus.

I’ve met some fantastic and hugely generous people here, but it’s made me reflect a little on wealth and why the Scriptures are full of warnings about wanting to get wealthy: ”Do not wear yourself out to get rich; have the wisdom to show restraint." That could have been written for here.


The Christian life is said to be made of faith, hope and love, and extreme wealth seems to me to make it hard to preserve any of those. If you have everything you could possibly want, when do you ever have to trust God for anything? If money means you can get anything you want know, do you end up hoping for anything? I heard of a guy yesterday whose father owned a huge car company, and who had never done a day’s work in his life – he was now in his 60s. How can that kind of life have any hope, purpose, direction? And can you know the real meaning of love? I saw two teenagers cruise up to a fancy restaurant last night in a very flash Porsche - presumably daddy’s present - and wondered how easy it can be to confuse love with indulgence. Without some kind of involvement with people who have little, how can rich people learn faith hope and love? Only the poor (and perhaps even a bit of experience of poverty) can teach us faith hope and love.

Globally, even on a clergy salary I'm very well off. Compared to this place, I'm a pauper. It sounds a little odd, but I'm beginning to thank God I don't have too much money. As ever the Bible gets it: "For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction."