80 Ancient Ideals
presence in this world but not of it, a presence that exists above
time— for time is simply the medium in which we hope to achieve
our desires. Sell your goods and give them to the poor— the man
cannot do it. But now, thanks to Jesus, he knows what separates him
from eternal life. And maybe in time he will change. Northrop Frye,
speaking from the vantage of Blake, observes that “sensible people
will tell us that it is foolish to throw everything to the winds, to
give all one’s goods to the poor and live entirely without caution or
prudence. But they will not tell us the one thing we need most to
know: that we are all born into a world of liquid chaos as a man falls
into the sea, and that we must either sink or swim to land because we
are not fi sh” (80). Sensible people will not tell us this, but Jesus will.
When the young man leaves, Jesus broods aloud to his apostles.
“How hard it will be,” he says, “for those who have wealth to enter
the kingdom of God” (Mark 10.23). There is little if anything in
the Hebrew Bible that declares against wealth—to grow rich hon-
estly is a sign of favor from the Lord. What Jesus says is shocking.
But all he means, one might assume, is that money is a medium of
desire. If you have money, and money to spare, you can spend your
time imagining what you will buy with it: houses, land, livestock,
and brides. You can buy those things and wish for more and main-
tain your being inside time. The man without money is less tempted
to spend his life imagining what he will acquire, enjoying his new
acquisitions, and guarding the goods he already possesses. He can
think about the one thing the young man lacks— the one thing that
is everything. That one thing is freedom from the bonds of this
world— the getting and spending by which, as Words worth has it,
“we lay waste our powers.” “Martha,” says Jesus at another moment,
talking to his friend, “you are worried and distracted by many
things; there is need of only one thing” (Luke 10.41–42).
Why is Jesus such an inspired reader of others? How is he able
to look into the heart of the young man who wants eternal life and