“Labour not to be rich: cease from thine own wisdom.” (Pr 23:4 AV)
Talk about a verse that seems to be anti-capitalist! This is not what Solomon is attempting to share with his children. It is not wrong to labor and become rich in the process. Obviously. Solomon was one of the wealthiest of world leaders at the time. Rather, what Solomon is trying to say is wealth should not be the primary purpose for working. Wealth is a result of working. But wealth in and of itself should not be the goal. One needs wealth in order to make more wealth. College costs money. Trades require training that costs money. Setting up a business takes capital. One needs to spend money to make money. So, wealth is an important part of laboring. If wealth is not the point of working, then what is? If we do not put in the hours so we can afford the things we need and want, then why should we work? What is the point?
Someone once said, “If you find something that you love to do and fill your day doing it, you will never work a day in your life.” That seems to be true. I have known several wealthy business owners in my time. One thing stands out to me. They do what they do for the love of it; not for the wealth it produces. They also have a higher sense of purpose than those who do what they do just to gather more things. The golf course I caddied at had several of these people. There was old money and new money. There were self-made millionaires as well as the wealthy who inherited their fortunes. For the most part, these are amazing people. The world is much smaller to them than it is to the rest of us. They see things differently. They see their lives as something that could alter the course of humanity in some way. It may be small in the sense of producing a product that would change how humanity accomplished something, or something large like one golfer who was part owner of a large TV network. The point is, that the vast majority of the wealthy clients I worked for saw their vocation as a calling more than a resource for vast amounts of wealth. This proved itself out by the philanthropic pursuits in which they were engaged. Often those projects became larger than their source of wealth. They were not content with the yacht or the sports car. What they really wanted was to donate toward a new research wing of a hospital or start an endowment for those who could not afford college. They did not labor to become rich. They became rich so they could labor.
Solomon was a very wise man. God gave him the liberty to pursue whatever his heart desired. Even if it wasn’t God’s perfect will for his life. He allowed him to do this so experience would become his greatest teacher. Solomon had everything his soul could want. He had more riches than any king that existed at the time. He had 1,000 wives and 2,000 concubines. He had more than he could possibly consume. He concluded that laboring merely to attain as much as one could is an empty pursuit. He figured out, after all that he had gotten, that purpose us the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. If the riches one attained did not accomplish a greater purpose, it was pointless. It is just a number on a sheet. It is metal in the vault. It is paper in the drawer. That is all it is. If it does not serve a purpose, it is laid up where moth and rust will corrupt it. Laboring for a purpose, calling, or goal is what drives the individual to get up and continue amid great adversity or times of loss. The question then arises: what are you working so hard for? Why do you get up in the morning? What purpose does your life have? If your life does not have a greater purpose than Self, then wealth will be empty and burdensome.
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