When the prison door closes behind Boethius, he does not yet know that the cell walls are almost entirely of his own making. As the lock clicks home, he looks around desperately, blind to the fact that the key is in his own hands. Accused of a crime he did not commit, Boethius descends into despair, believing there is nothing good left in the world. He is wont, like most of us, to view life as good or ill, just or unjust, upon the external conditions of fortune.

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Fortune is one of those troublesome English words, its promise undercut by its ambiguity.

Its use first appears around 1300, personified as a Lady who dispenses gifts haphazardly to men. Its origin comes to us through Latin; one recalls images of Caesar casting his die and crossing the Rubicon, announcing that he serves no god but fortune. Yet only a few generations later in 1369, the word appears as an endowment of money or property, becoming synonymous with wealth. Which means there is an associative etymological link in the minds of medieval peoples between wealth and blind chance. Surely no astute observers of microeconomics, they assumed that accident, not fate nor merit, garnered good fortune.

We can permit their misunderstanding, as these are not easy waters to navigate. There is, after all, a long-standing philosophical distrust of wealth. St. Augustine, quoting Cato, notes that instead of hard work and just rewards, luxury and avarice have replaced virtue in the state (City of God 5.12). Cato saw Roman greatness in its resourcefulness and industry, not in its opulence. But Rome, like its American grandchildren, grew fat on its own excesses, lauding its material prosperity as proof of its greatness, forgetting the values that urged them toward success, and mistaking the ends for the means. A century after Augustine, Lady Philosophy instructs Boethius that, despite our aims, “wealth doesn’t make a man self-sufficient, or satisfied, even though this is what the promise of wealth seemed to promise” (III.3). Surprisingly, wealth requires rich men to rely more on others: they need the aid of banks and financial advisors, security guards and systems to protect their homes, higher insurance rates, etc., which makes us more dependent than less. “Riches,” she explains, “don’t remove need, but rather they produce a need of their own” (III.3), in short the need to maintain one’s acquisitive lifestyle.

As a philosophic system, Christianity also questions what value wealth grants to the spiritual life. Jesus looks skeptically at wealth (Mark 10:25, Luke 6:24-25), as does St. Paul, equating lust to greed—and both to idolatry (Eph 5:2). They, like Boethius, understood that wealth breeds a false sense of self-sufficiency. And the self-sufficient man becomes his own idol, in need of nothing and no one to help him become better and to redeem him from a fallen world. He chooses the trash heap of gold over the mansions of eternity.

None of us want to suffer. All want good fortune. Even the most committed Christians want promotion, a more prestigious position, a comfortable retirement. Are these desires entirely counter to the cause of Christ and the call of the heavenly city? Should we, like the monastics and the white martyrs of the early church, prefer voluntary poverty to a life of ease? Can I force my way through the eye of a needle, despite what Jesus says?

We excuse ourselves from the call given to the rich young ruler by stating that Jesus commands us to only give up the things that keep us from him. Curiously, I have never met someone who has relinquished wealth for the sake of Christ. Few today even embracing fasting as a regular spiritual discipline. I wonder, then, if we fool ourselves into believing that we are not motivated by riches as Jesus’ would-be disciple. Our lips say, “Not I, Lord,” while our hearts say, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” But if I cannot fast from food or say no to material gain, how can I resist stronger temptations? If I will not give up wealth and comfort, what will I give up for Christ?

All Christians have struggled with this aspect of discipleship, American Christians perhaps the more so. Those of us in the middle class tell ourselves that we are not really rich. Rather, it is the politician who is wealthy, the millionaire who is at ease. Not I in my mortgaged home with my fine furniture, two-story home, and Prime shipping. We ignore the fact that the average U.S. salary is roughly $60,000 per year, while the average global salary is just over $12,000 per year. Many economists would rightly object to my comparing apples to oranges, yet it remains true that the poorer people in the U.S. are wealthier than many well-off people in other countries. If we are not wealthy with food, shelter, and material wants at our finger-tips, what then is wealth?

There may be a way through the dilemma by consulting the wisdom literature of the Proverbs. Here are listed countless passages about the value of building riches, acquiring property, bequeathing generational wealth, all with the recognition that people are more important than money, and God is to be honored over all. It may be true, then, that one can have wealth and follow Christ; Jesus himself used the accumulation of money as a parable of the kingdom, requiring us to work, invest, and increase what we have been given (Matt 25:14-30). But we must not be deceived into thinking that we are not wealthy nor that our wealth doesn’t distract or inhibit the more abundant life.

The real problem, as observed by both Jesus and Boethius, is that wealth grants the illusion of security, the hope that we can manage life’s tenuous stasis. Insurance soothes the fear that the hurricane will not destroy—or at least will make destruction an affordable proposition. Wealth parades itself as an inoculant against suffering. But like so many vaccines, inoculation can never be total, and we are bound to come down with the flu eventually. Even Dives, who can endure significantly more economic loss than Lazarus, cannot endure the emotional suffering of his brothers’ damnation (Luke 16:27-28). Suffering is an integral part of the human condition, the consequence of living in a fallen world. Paradoxically, it is through suffering, not from suffering—the way of the cross—that we come closest to the heart of the Father (Ps. 34:18). In avoiding suffering, we are inadvertently avoiding our own redemption. In amassing riches, we are amassing a strength when we are saved only in the recognition of our own weakness.

In short, wealth keeps our gaze earth-bound and blinds us from the spiritual reality beyond the veil. This is because wealth is closely allied with its corrupting cousin, power, of whose influence we will have more to say hereafter.