Wit & Attitude Quote by Martin Luther

Luther’s jab lands because it weaponizes piety against prestige: if wealth so often sits in the laps of the incompetent, then money can’t be treated as a reliable signal of God’s favor, wisdom, or moral worth. It’s a theological burn with a social target. In a world where elites routinely justified status as providential, Luther flips the script and makes riches look like divine pocket change tossed at people who have little else going for them.

The intent is corrective and destabilizing. Luther is trying to break the medieval reflex that reads prosperity as spiritual endorsement. His Reformation project depends on that break: salvation isn’t brokered by institutions, purchased through displays of success, or inferred from the sheen of comfort. By suggesting God hands out riches the way a teacher might hand crayons to keep a distracted student busy, Luther drains wealth of its metaphysical seriousness.

The subtext is sharper: if the rich are “foolish,” then their authority is suspect. Luther isn’t merely consoling the poor; he’s warning communities not to outsource judgment to the well-funded. That posture makes sense in early 16th-century Germany, where church offices and influence could be bought, and where resentment toward ecclesiastical and aristocratic extraction was rising. His line also pokes at the coming Protestant work ethic stereotype: even while Luther defended ordinary labor as dignified, he refused to let material success stand in for spiritual depth. Riches, here, are not proof. They’re bait, distraction, maybe even a test that many fail.