Why Jesus Exaggerates

Think Directionally, Not Literally

It’s terrible to admit, but for a long time I used lines from Jesus to sneer at the rich. It was only logical, I told myself, to say along with him that “you can’t serve God and wealth” or “the cares of the world and the lure of wealth choke the word,” or “do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth,” or half a dozen other lines. With these verses I felt justified — superior — as a money-strapped college student. I believed I was simply trying to be like Jesus, who reserved his harshest language for the rich and the powerful and who lived a life of few possessions.

And yet, as happens every time I try to logic my way into using scripture as a bludgeon, my heart hurt. Part of me knew that my sneering was an ego game. 

I started to soften only after I got a basic salaried job and had enough money that I could spend more than fifty dollars at a time without spiraling into a panic. I didn’t want to admit it, but I was happier, and I was happier largely because I had a bit of money. 

Then one day as I taught a Sunday school lesson on the parable of the rich fool, something shifted in me. We read about how the fool decides to tear down his barns and build bigger ones to store his surplus grain. “You have ample goods laid up for many years,” the fool tells himself. “Relax, eat, drink, be merry.” But God replies, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” Then Jesus spells out the takeaway: “So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God.” 

As we unpacked the story, I leaned into the angle that the fool’s error was that he stored his wealth for himself, and that we should be cautious of doing the same thing. But the class didn’t like that. They said that the problem had more to do with the fact that the fool wanted to relax, eat, drink, and be merry. How could that be, I asked, since Jesus’s first miracle was turning water into wine at a wedding and since he described himself as someone who eats and drinks? Jesus wasn’t opposed to merriment. He was opposed to storing wealth. After all, in the only two scenes we see him interact with rich men, he tells one to sell everything he has and give the money to the poor, and he praises the other only after learning that he gives away half of what he owns.

“But what’s so wrong with storing wealth?” someone asked. 

I responded with a canned line about how storing wealth is selfish. And that’s when something shifted in me. I realized as I spoke the words that I didn’t believe them. Or rather I admitted to myself that I, too, would genuinely feel better if my spouse and I could store up some wealth for our kids and not be so stressed about running out of savings — even though it meant we would technically be saving money and even though we were technically rich, at least on an international scale, with our basic income. 

I didn’t know what to make of this realization. Were Jesus’s views of wealth misguided? Was storing up wealth not the big deal he made it out to be? Or maybe Jesus was right for his particular perspective as a first-century unmarried Jew, but my context as someone who was trying to build up a modest retirement account for my family in the 21st century was different? 

What I didn’t see at the time but what should have been obvious is that Jesus exaggerates. 

He exaggerates in the parable of the rich fool, and he exaggerates (often humorously) elsewhere. “If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away,” he says. And, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” And, “How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?”

We can only assume that Jesus didn’t mean such things literally. (Otherwise, the world would be full of one-eyed Christians!) 

So why the hyperbole? After all, Jesus could have said, “Rich people risk becoming disconnected from their fellow human beings such that they can no longer access true spiritual peace.” That’s literally true. But it’s limp. It lacks the visceral verve and pop carried in dramatic statements about eyes, needles, and planks.

Hyperbole is memorable. It lodges in the mind. It gets in the guts. And getting in the guts wakes people up. It moves them to act. So when Jesus tells a story about a rich fool deciding to tear down his barns and build new ones only to croak that very night, the takeaway isn’t a simple “don’t store wealth,” as I had assumed years ago as a fumbling Sunday school teacher. 

The takeaway is directional, suggesting that we must turn away from the natural tendency to endlessly ask, “How can I get more?” and instead more frequently ask, “How can I give more?” It’s about developing a generous disposition—one where we don’t cling to our possessions.

This is a universal lesson. The Buddhist nun Tenzin Palmo tells a story of a king who lived in a palace full of endless riches while his guru lived simply with only a loincloth and a clay bowl. One day the king was in the garden listening to his guru teach mindfulness when a servant came rushing up, shouting, “Master! Come quickly! There’s a fire in the palace, and we must put it out!” In response, the king, fully embodying the teachings, only said, “Do not disturb me. I am learning mindfulness and am not concerned with what I own.” But the guru, surprisingly still caught in desire, stood up in a panic, saying, “I must go. My bowl is in the palace!”

Such exaggerated and humorous stories wake us up and call for introspection. How are we like the panicking guru? How are we like the rich fool? Such stories, again, are not meant literally. They’re meant directionally. They help us stretch beyond our natural tendencies, whoever we are, toward something more divine.

Do you need to give away all your wealth and possessions? Should you become so unattached to what you own that you would let a fire consume it all? Personally, none of that strikes me as wise.

But in a world of excess wealth and dire poverty, couldn’t most of us do far more to head in that direction?

Jon Ogden is a Wayfare Senior Editor and co-Founder at Uplift Kids, a lesson library and curriculum for families to explore wisdom and timeless values together.

Art by J. Kirk Richards, @jkirkrichards