Soul Insurance (By Leonard Lu Tze Jian)

Are you willing to sell all that you have and follow Christ?

Human Value

            I recently entered the working world. This new responsibility has given me a key to unlock some doors that I have purposely kept locked during my years as a student. One of them, is insurance. I thank God that He had prepared an insurance agent in my church to help me with this. When we first talked, he explained to me that insurance was about human value. He made a simple argument: If you were permanently disabled (unable to work one day), how much would you have to save to pay for your daily living for the next 20 years, not adding in your “maybe” medical bills?

            He took out his calculator and started punching numbers. Eventually, he said I’d have to take up about RM500 life + medical insurance to cover that amount. I smiled with a hint of shock and suspicion. I took his calculator and started punching my own numbers, and eventually got to the same point he did. Then I thought, “WOW! I never knew my own human value was so high!” Then I jokingly replied, “If my human value cost so much, how much do I have to pay to insure my soul?”

Soul Value

            I guess nobody will disagree than soul value is more important than human value. But can we buy soul insurance? Actually, we can! In Mark 10: 17-31, is the story of the rich young man. Here’s the modern version of the content:

            “Good teacher, how much does it cost to have my soul insured for eternal life?”

            “You already have the terms: keep the commandments,” replied Jesus.

            “All these I have obliged to since I was young.”

Jesus looked at him, “One more term: sell everything you have to give to the poor and follow me.”

            The man then left “for he was rich”. Isn’t it ironic? From the surface of things, it seems that we have to sell all that we have and leave nothing for ourselves for our souls to be insured, whereas life insurance demands that we earn more so that we can insure our human value. It seems impossible to balance these two. Is Jesus telling us not to insure our soul not our life? If that is true, why give us life?

Eternity Insured

            The truths in the bible always seem confusing because internally, they are colliding head on with our earthly values and beliefs. This almost always happens with issues of money and faith. In the story of the rich young man, the young man is like any one of us. He came to Jesus in hopes that Jesus would give him assurance that he could have the best of both worlds: eternal life in the spiritual world and luxury in the physical world. But Jesus knew what the man lacked, and he attacked it.

            It all boils down to this: Are you willing to sell all that you have and follow Christ? I don’t think Jesus was telling us that we cannot be rich because all wealth comes from Him (and He did make a lot of people really rich). Jesus was saying, if you are rich, can you give it all away in a second just to follow Him? Only when you can say “yes” to that question and go through with it, will you have soul insurance