Hence also the metaphor of death: dying is very hard and it is difficult to let go of finite centers. Yet it was also the easy way because it was a “letting go,” a cessation of striving. Moreover, it may have been easier for some, namely, the poor and the outcasts. Riches were not a temptation for the poor (except in societies that stress upward mobility); the poor knew that the world offered a scant measure of security. Righteousness was not a temptation for the sinner, social approval not a snare for the outcast. To die to a world in which one was poor, that pronounced one an outcast, was
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