The Needle's Eye

The Needle's Eye

Andrew Carnegie, perhaps the wealthiest man of his era, wrote 'The Gospel of Wealth' in 1889, arguing that the rich had an obligation to distribute their wealth for public benefit before they died. His inspiration was partly Christian. He gave away approximately $350 million in his lifetime (worth billions today) — building libraries, funding education, supporting the arts. He said: 'The man who dies rich, dies disgraced.' Whether or not Carnegie had entered the kingdom, he had grasped something Jesus was saying: wealth is a spiritual danger precisely because it tends to become the center of identity and security. The camel and the needle were not a metaphor for impossibility; they were a call to the surgery of surrender.

Jesus' saying about the camel and the needle shocked His disciples: 'Who then can be saved?' (verse 25). They lived in a world where wealth was interpreted as divine blessing. Jesus' reversal of this assumption was stunning. But His response to the disciples is equally important: 'With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.' The danger of wealth is not that God hates money — it is that money tends to replace God as the source of security and identity. The surgery required is not necessarily the selling of all possessions (though sometimes it is) but the complete reorientation of trust: from wealth as foundation to God as foundation. The question for the wealthy is not 'How much do I have?' but 'Who do I trust?'