NOTES for Luk 12:16-21

One remarkable detail draws attention in this text. The rich man talks to himself. It is precisely to his own soul that he addresses the words: "rest, eat, drink, be merry." And this contains the key point that allows us to understand the text correctly.

To talk to oneself is madness. But not simply madness; it is the worst madness in the world, because it means that, for the person, God does not exist in principle. It means that the place of God is occupied by the person himself. A person accustomed to living before God cannot talk to himself at all, because how can one talk to oneself when God is near?! After all, we usually call mad not simply people who talk to themselves, but those who talk to themselves when other people are nearby. But when there are no people nearby, God is nearby. This means it is no lesser, but even greater madness (though society usually considers the opposite) to talk to oneself, even silently, when no one is nearby.

And what good would there be, someone may say, if he had addressed those same words not to himself but to God? Would his sin have been any less because he addressed God with the same self-confident boasting? But the whole truth is that this is impossible. Even if a person tries to boast before God, as if declaring his independence from Him, very soon, if the person is truly addressing God, God softens his heart and turns him to Himself. Only when a person talks to himself can God do nothing.