10. We can conclude what from Jesus’ counsel on that occasion?

¹⁰ As you can appreciate, it is one thing to begin worshiping God; it is another thing to prove faithful to the end. (Matthew 24:13; Philippians 3:12-14) Jesus may have had this in mind when saying: “It is easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Mark 10:25) No camel could squeeze through the tiny eye of a sewing needle, so Jesus obviously was using a hyperbole, an exaggeration not meant to be taken literally. It shows, though, how hard it is for a rich man to do something. What? Not just to begin serving God, no, but “to enter into the kingdom,” actually to gain everlasting life.

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Wealth and the Family

WHEN thinking about the potential effects of wealth, do not overlook your family. Consider these items:

From Canada comes a report from psychiatrists who had studied the children of the superrich: “Life bores them. They have no goals other than pleasing themselves and cannot tolerate even the smallest frustration. They feel few emotions of any kind. Their main pursuits are buying things, traveling, and searching out new sources of excitement.”

The New York Times commented on a former millionaire: “As he became more successful in business and gained wealth, he says he saw his family change. ‘My wife and daughter would measure people by the money they had, and if I gave one daughter a $300,000 home I’d have to give the other daughter $300,000 in cash.’” After suffering a heart attack, “plus seeing what wealth had done to his wife and children,” he changed his way of life.

Concerning an oil-rich land in the Middle East, Arnold Hottinger observed: ‘Wealth as pathology is something also familiar to the many foreign physicians who come here to earn high incomes. Nowhere, they report, are psychosomatic ailments as common as here​—ailments which cause genuine suffering but are not caused by any demonstrable failing in the physical organism. There are, they say, young people who give every sign of being elderly, and old people who behave like juveniles.’