By his appearance, one would never have guessed that Charlie had amassed more than $2.5 million in assets. As he sat in my office at the bank, Charlie could have been mistaken for a pauper. His clothes were dirty and torn. His oversized cap shaded his beady eyes and covered his disheveled hair. His crooked smile uncovered a number of decaying teeth. Obviously a presentable appearance wasn’t important to him, but acquiring wealth certainly was!
After I had updated his yearly balance sheet, Charlie broached the subject of purchasing another farm. How curious, I thought. With his tremendous accumulation of assets, why would he want yet another farm, particularly as he approached retirement age? Knowing Charlie held membership (nominal as it was) in one of the local sectarian churches, I thought I’d query him a bit on an ethical level. “Charlie,” I began, “what’s your ultimate goal in life?” Apparently no one had ever asked him that question, because he looked at me rather blankly. There was a long pause, and then his response. “Well, I guess I’d like to give each of my children a million dollars when I die.” “But the problem,” he hurried on to say, “is that they don’t give a hoot about all the assets I’ve accumulated. I’ve offered my son a fabulous salary just to show some interest in my properties and to take over some of the responsibilities, but he wants no parts of it! And my daughters, well, they couldn’t care less about the assets I’ve acquired!”
As Charlie continued, I began to see a dad who had accumulated tremendous wealth, and in the process had lost his children. Over the years Charlie had lived as dirt-cheap as possible, never listening to the pleas of his wife and children to lead a “normal” life. No! The lust for one more house and/or one more farm had consumed his time and energies.
My heart bled for Charlie, because while his hands were laden with assets, yet in a sense his hands were empty. His wealth had become a curse, because his children despised him. As I looked at the rich-yet-poor man sitting across the desk from me, my mind began paraphrasing the words of Jesus: “And what shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world, and lose his own children?” (Mark 8:36).
–Paul W. Brubaker
September/October 1988