Martin Luther, teaching on Psalm 69, warns about the “misfortune of prosperity.”
This passage is worth meditating on…
But if we would see correctly, then all the complaints in the Psalms run today most strongly against the misfortune of prosperity. For now peace attacks more than the sword did formerly, clothing more than nakedness, food more than hunger, security more than difficulty, abundance more than poverty. (LW 10:353)
He continues a few pages later on this same topic:
Just as there is no greater iniquity than the highest equity, no greater injustice than the highest justice, no greater loss than the greatest gain, so there is no greater adversity than prosperity and no greater danger than no danger at all. This is so because it makes people careless. “When they shall say, ‘peace and security,’ then shall sudden destruction come upon them” (1 Thess. 5:3). Nothing is safe where everything is safe, nothing so sick as when everything is healthy; there is no temptation when all is temptation, no persecution when all is persecution. Thus the devil now fights the church with the greatest persecution, because he fights with no persecution, but rather with security and idleness. (LW 10:361)
