250. 2. People who worship themselves and the material world instead of divine providence feel justified when they see irreligious people raised to high rank, getting positions of power in government and the church, amply supplied with wealth, and living in ostentatious luxury, while people who worship God are living in disgrace and poverty. People who worship themselves and the material world think that rank and wealth are the highest possible joys, the only possible joys, joy itself. If they think at all about God because of their first childhood religion, they call these things divine blessings; and as long as they have no higher aspirations than this, they believe that God exists and worship him. However, there is something hidden in their worship that they themselves do not know about, an assumption that God will keep raising them to higher honor and greater wealth. If they do achieve this, their worship tends more and more into superficiality until it drifts away, and eventually they trivialize and deny God. They do the same if they lose the respect and wealth on which they have set their hearts.

In that case, what are rank and wealth but problems to these evil people?

[2] They are not problems to the good, because they do not set their hearts on them. They focus rather on the service or the good that respect and wealth can help them accomplish. Only people who worship themselves and the material world, then, can reject divine providence on seeing that irreverent people are given high rank and wealth and get positions of power in the state and the church.

Further, what is higher or lower rank; what is more or less wealth? Is it really anything but something we imagine? Is one person more contented or happier than the other? Look at a government official or even a monarch or emperor. After a few years, does their rank not become simply commonplace, something that no longer brings joy to the heart, something that can even seem worthless? Are people of high rank any happier on that account than people of lower rank, or even than people of no rank at all, like commoners or their servants? These can be even happier when things go well for them and they are content with their lot. What troubles the heart more, what is more often wounded, what is more intensely angered, than self-love? This happens whenever it is not given the respect to which, at heart, it raises itself, whenever things do not turn out the way it wills and wishes.

If rank is not a matter of substance or service, then, what is it but a concept? Can this concept have a place in any kind of thinking except thinking about oneself and the world, and precisely in the thought that the world is everything and eternity is nothing?

[3] I need now to say something about why divine providence allows people who are irreligious at heart to be raised to high rank and to become wealthy. Irreverent or evil people can be just as useful as devout or good people. In fact, they can be more ardent about it because they are focused on themselves in the good they do and regard advancement as intrinsically useful. The stronger their self-love grows, then, the more intense is their passion for service for the sake of their own renown. Devout or good people do not have this kind of fire unless it is subtly fueled by rank. So the Lord controls people of high rank who are irreligious at heart through their concern for their reputation. He inspires them to do what is good for the commonwealth or the country, for the community or the city in which they live, and also for their own fellow-citizens or neighbors. This is the Lord's government, his divine providence, with people like this. The Lord's kingdom is in fact an organized realm of constructive activities; and where there are only a few individuals who perform service for the sake of service, he works things out so that people who worship themselves are raised to the higher offices where they are inspired to do good by their own love.

[4] Imagine some hellish country on earth (though there is no such thing), where nothing but self-love held sway, where self-love itself was the devil. Would everyone not do more constructive things because of the fire of self-love and the radiance of his or her own renown than people did in any other country? While all of them mouthed off about the public good, they would have their own good at heart. All of them would be turning to their leader in order to be promoted, each one wanting to be the greatest. Can people like this see that God exists? They are enveloped by smoke like a burning building, and no gleam of spiritual truth can get through to them with its light. I have seen this smoke surrounding a hell made up of people like this.

Light your lantern and ask how many people there are in quest of high office in today's countries who are not loves for themselves and the world. Will you find fifty in a thousand who are loves for God? And only a few of those will be looking for high office. Given the fact, then, that so few are loves for God and so many are loves for themselves and the world, and given the fact that these latter kinds of love inspire more acts of service with their fires than loves for God do with theirs, how can people justify their beliefs by the fact that more evil people than good people are eminent and wealthy?

[5] These words of the Lord lend their support: "The lord praised the unjust steward because he had acted prudently, for the children of this generation are more prudent than the children of light in their generation. So I tell you, make friends for yourself of the mammon of unrighteousness, so that when you lose it they may accept you into eternal tents" (Luke 16:8-9).

The earthly sense of this is obvious. In its spiritual meaning, though, the mammon of unrighteousness means those insights into what is true and good that evil people have and that they use solely for gaining rank and wealth for themselves. It is these insights with which good people or children of light make friends, and which accept them into eternal tents.

The Lord tells us that there are many people who are loves for themselves and the world and few who are loves for God when he says, "Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in through it; but tight and narrow is the way that leads to life, and there are few who find it" (Matthew 7:13-14). On rank and wealth as either curses or blessings, and for whom, see 217 above.