A distinctive feature of the righteous in all the times was considered, if not as a total indifference, at least, as a sober calm relation towards these circumstances of life, in which it was. And the problem here is not in the ascetic indifference to everything which takes place all around, but in this system of values and priorities of the life, which is inherent to everyone, going on the way of righteousness. We could have said that to the one who put himself on this way, it does not simply remain time for lamentations about the difficulties of life, also, as for the demonstrations of exuberant joy about their absence. But the problem is not only in it: the way of righteousness supposes the understanding by man of the simple fact that the question of good and evil, quite as the question of choice between them (the key issue on the way of righteousness) is connected not at all with the question on the difficulties of life or with their absence.
Neither poverty, nor wealth in themselves justify any sin. When it comes to the spiritual way of the Christian, all this is true to an even greater extent. Indeed, the way of the righteous in the pre-Christian era meant the choice of the laws of the Kingdom, despite the fact that the Kingdom had not entered our world and our lives yet. After the coming of Christ, opens to every Christian the possibility of joining this Kingdom, to try what is that life, of which the righteous of early eras could only guess.
On the background of this new life, the difficulties of the old life, the life of our not yet transformed world, only go to the second plan, unless the life of the Kingdom really became for us a reality, if we are Christians in deeds, and not only in our own imagination. And Paul, for whom the Kingdom and his life became an absolute reality, witnesses of his own indifference to the difficulties of life and the external conditions, as of something obvious. That is only how the Christian should look at everything which doesn’t influence on his life in the Kingdom.
