The Prudence of This World Is Not the Prudence of God

What four Scripture readings and a lockdown in the Peruvian jungle taught me about letting go.

By Robert Erisman

Two days ago, the Gospel reading was Matthew 19:16-22 — the story of the rich young man. Yesterday, it continued into 19:23-30 — the camel through the eye of a needle, and Jesus' promise of a hundredfold to those who leave everything for His sake. And running underneath both days, in Ezekiel, in Deuteronomy, in Paul's letter to the Corinthians, was the same message, spoken in different centuries, to different people, about the same human problem.

The Lord has been saying one thing to my heart, over and over, for two days straight:

The prudence of this world is not the prudence of God.

I want to walk through why that phrase has stopped me in my tracks, and then I want to tell you the story it forced me to sit with.

The Young Man Who Walked Away

"Teacher, what good must I do to gain eternal life?" A rich young man brings this question to Jesus in Matthew 19:16-22. Jesus tells him to keep the commandments. The young man says he already has. So Jesus goes further: "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell what you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."

The young man goes away sad. He has many possessions, and he cannot let them go.

It's easy to read that story and feel a little superior to him. We wouldn't walk away; would we? But the honest answer is that most of us, most of the time, make some version of his choice. We call it prudence. We call it being responsible. We call it wisdom. And by every worldly measure, it is those things.

That's exactly what makes the next passage so unsettling.

The Needle, the Camel, and the Apostles' Shock

The very next day's reading picks up where the rich young man leaves off. Jesus turns to His disciples and tells them it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God (Matthew 19:23-26).

The Greek word used for "hard" here, duskolos, doesn't just mean difficult. It means obstructed, hindered, blocked. And the camel-through-a-needle image isn't a mild exaggeration; it's meant to sound humanly impossible, because it is.

The disciples were stunned. In their world, wealth was a sign of divine favor; proof that God was pleased with you. Jesus flips that completely. Wealth isn't a guaranteed blessing. It can be the very thing standing between you and the Kingdom.

But Jesus doesn't leave it there. "With God all things are possible." Human prudence hits a wall. Grace doesn't.

And then comes the reversal that changes everything: "Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first." Those who leave family, land, and security for Christ's sake will receive a hundredfold; not necessarily in material terms, but in something far larger: a spiritual family, a fuller life, eternal life.

The Same Message, Older and Wider

This isn't a one-off teaching. It's a thread that runs through Scripture long before Matthew wrote it down.

Ezekiel 28 warns rulers against the particular collapse that pride invites; the conviction that our own strength, wisdom, or resources make us secure. Deuteronomy 32 shows what happens when human strength forgets its dependence on something greater than itself; it's a picture of self-sufficiency crumbling under its own weight. And 2 Corinthians 8 gives us the deepest version of this pattern in the person of Christ Himself. He who was rich became poor, so that we, by His poverty, might become rich.

Put together, four different books, four different centuries, are proclaiming one unified message:

The Kingdom belongs to the humble, the poor in spirit, the self-emptying, the dependent, the faithful. Human pride collapses. Divine grace exalts.

That message isn't abstract to me. It's the story of my own life for the last several years.

The First Yes

In 2017, my wife Tami and I were presented with the same opportunity as the rich young man. We sold everything we owned. Every possession, every asset, every piece of our safety net, gone.

It wasn't courage. It was grace. It was both terrifying and exhilarating; one of the most freeing things I've ever done. It felt like the most tangible invitation God had extended to us: walk with Me, and don't look back.

We spent 2018 in training. In 2019, we were sent to Peru, to a small village called Tingo de Ponaza, in the district of Picota. Over time, we built real relationships there with the community and with local authorities. It became common for me to drive police up into the more remote pueblos where their own vehicles couldn't reach, whenever they needed to investigate something out there. We were known. We were trusted.

Then, in 2020, COVID hit.

When the Lockdown Became the Crisis

Peru had one of the strictest lockdowns in the world. Soldiers patrolled our village and the roads connecting it to the rest of the region. Families were allowed to send one person out of the house for thirty minutes a day — just enough time, in theory, to buy food.

But here's what most people don't realize about that season: it wasn't the virus itself that devastated our community. It was everything the lockdown made impossible. People couldn't work their land. They couldn't tend their animals. Crops failed. Livestock was lost. Jobs disappeared. And without work, there was no money — and without money, there was no food. Worst of all, the Churches were forced to close. There were no sacraments! People felt abandoned by God.

There are 124 towns in our region. We knew we couldn't help everyone. But Tami and I prayed, and we knew we had to do everything we could with what we had.

The prudent thing, the worldly-wise thing, would have been to hold onto what little we had left. Instead, God invited us to take every dollar of our remaining savings and start buying food.

"She Has Our Pass"

The soldiers stopped us constantly. We didn't have official permission to be out, let alone to travel between towns.

I remember constantly repeating at the checkpoint: "We're Mother Mary's missionaries. People are starving. This isn't okay. You have to let us pass."

They would ask where our pass was.

"Mother Mary has our pass," I would tell them. "And you need to let us go."

By the grace of God, they did. Not just one day; day after day, town after town, checkpoint after checkpoint, they let us through. It became our routine: drive into Picota, buy thousands of pounds of food, bring it back, package it with our team, and deliver it door to door, and town to town; and always praying with people along the way. Always reminding them that God has not abandoned them.

The Day the Money Ran Out

Here's the part I still can't fully explain, except to say it was God.

Our savings didn't stretch far. We knew, doing the math, that we were going to run out of money to keep buying food.

And the moment we did, the exact day, checks started arriving. $10,000. $20,000… Support poured in from people we barely knew - or didn’t know at all - at the precise moment we needed it most. We never missed a delivery.

Eventually, the people in our region had had enough of the lockdown. They protested, and the military presence eased. Life started returning to something like normal.

But the money kept coming. And so did the sense that God wasn't finished with us yet.

Beyond the Prudent Choice

At that point, our truck wasn't registered. We didn't have the permissions required to travel outside our district — let alone all the way to Lima, 750 kilometers away. Given the terrain, that's roughly a 36-hour drive.

And here's the difference that matters: in Picota, we were known. We had relationships, trust, a track record. Leaving for Lima meant leaving all of that behind. I didn't know a single authority between our district and the capital. No history, no standing, no favor to call in; just a conviction that God was calling us to go.

The prudent thing, by every worldly measure, was to stay where we were trusted and stop there. That's not what faith does.

So we packed up and we drove. We passed through well over 100 military and police checkpoints without proper licenses, registration, or insurance for the truck, in territory where none of our relationships could vouch for us. Every single time, we prayed, and we said the same thing: "We're Mother Mary's missionaries."

We made it to Lima. And from there, we found our way to San Juan de Lurigancho, the poorest district in the city, where we connected with a Catholic community known as the Corinthians. They had just run out of food. They had been praying for help.

And there we were. It still amazes me to this day, looking back through my life and seeing how God works.

More Than 30 Soup Kitchens

Through the partnership of so many people - donors, volunteers, the community in Lima - we were able to help launch more than 30 soup kitchens across the region. Not just meals, but everything it took to get each kitchen running: thousands of pounds of food, supplies, support.

It was a miracle. It could only have been God. And many of those soup kitchens are still operating today.

What It Cost!

It only cost us everything; but we gained so much more in return. I won't pretend this story is only inspiring. Some mornings I still wake up in a quiet panic. I have a wife and eight children, and by any conventional measure, we have nothing set aside for them. The world's prudence still whispers sometimes and I start to question this decision to leave everything behind and serve on mission. 

But God reminds me, every time: You have everything, because you have Me.

It reminds me of Peter stepping out of the boat. There are moments when I'm genuinely walking on water, and it's the greatest feeling in the world. And then the fear of the world catches up to me, and I start to sink, and all I can say is, “Lord, save me.”

And every time, He reaches out His hand and lifts me up.

The Choice That's Still in Front of All of Us

The rich young man walked away sad because he couldn't let go. I understand him more than I'd like to admit. I know the fear he must have felt, looking at everything he had.

But Ezekiel warns us where pride leads. Deuteronomy shows us where human strength runs out. Paul shows us Christ, who became poor so we could become rich. And Jesus tells us plainly: what looks impossible by the world's math becomes possible the moment we stop trusting our own math and start trusting Him.

The Kingdom belongs to the humble, the self-emptying, the dependent, the faithful. Human pride collapses. Divine grace exalts.

We let go. That's all it took. And it was the most freeing thing I've ever done. All it cost me was everything, but what I've gained is Him. I have a real relationship with JESUS, and that's worth more than anything in this world!