Australian Millionaire Gives Away All

Karl Rabeder: Your decision certainly is a very important step in your life. Now you need to consider an even more important challenge. What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? Ed.
As Jesus started on his way, a man ran up to him and fell on his knees before him. "Good teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "Why do you call me good?" Jesus answered. "No one is good—except God alone. You know the commandments: 'Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false testimony, do not defraud, honor your father and mother.'" "Teacher," he declared, "all these I have kept since I was a boy." Jesus looked at him and loved him. "One thing you lack," he said. "Go, sell everything you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me." At this the man's face fell. He went away sad, because he had great wealth.
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it is for the rich to enter the kingdom of God!" The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." The disciples were even more amazed, and said to each other, "Who then can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God." Peter said to him, "We have left everything to follow you!" "I tell you the truth," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. But many who are first will be last, and the last first." [Mark 10:17-31]
Money Made Millionaire Miserable, So He's Giving It Away
Source: AOL News

(Feb. 14) – If money can't buy you happiness, what do you do? If you're Austrian millionaire Karl Rabeder, you give it all away, right down to the last penny, or, in his case, Euro."My idea is to have nothing left. Absolutely nothing," Rabeder, 47, told The Daily Telegraph of London. "Money is counterproductive – it prevents happiness to come."On the block, or already sold, is his luxury villa with lake in the Alps, his 42-acre estate in France, his six gliders, and the interior furnishings and accessories business that got him rich in the first place. Actually, everyone will get the chance to live the Alpine luxury lifestyle, because Rabeder has decided to raffle off his home at $134 a ticket.When every penny of his estimated $4.7 million fortune is gone, he says, he intends to move into a small wooden hut in the mountains or a studio in Innsbruck."For a long time I believed that more wealth and luxury automatically meant more happiness," Rabeder said. "I come from a very poor family where the rules were to work more to achieve more material things, and I applied this for many years." After a while, however, he felt he was working "as a slave for things I did not wish for or need," adding, "I have the feeling that there are a lot of people out there doing the same thing."What brought him to his current conclusion? A three-week vacation with his wife in Hawaii, plus gliding trips to South America and Africa left him with feelings of guilt, he said, and the sense that there was a connection between his wealth and the poverty of the people he saw."It was the biggest shock of in my life, when I realized how horrible, soulless and without feeling the five-star lifestyle is," he was quoted as telling the Telegraph.Since selling off some of his possessions, with lots more looking for buyers, Rabeder says he has felt "free, the opposite of heavy," which was the feeling all his wealth gave him.All his money will go to the non-profit Mymicrocharity, which Rabeder says he has set up to offer small loans to needy people in Central and South America, and to encourage development and self-employment in the region.

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