Among other things, the parable which follows shows
dramatically how difficult it is for the wealthy to even
hear the Bible's teaching regarding wealth.
(And the "wealthy" in our day includes not only the
"super-rich", but the "upper middle-class", who in our
day enjoy many more luxuries and possessions than
even kings, queens and emperors never even
dreamed of enjoying).
{ Luke 16:20-31: }
"One day Lazarus, a diseased beggar, was laid at
the door of a rich man's house. As he lay there
longing for scraps from the rich man's table, the dogs
would come and lick his open sores. Finally the
beggar died and was carried by the angels to be with
Abraham in the place of the righteous dead.
The rich man also died and was buried, and his soul went
into hell. There, in torment, he saw Lazarus in the
far distance with Abraham. 'Father Abraham,' he
shouted, 'have some pity! Send Lazarus over here if only
to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for
I am in anguish in these flames.' But Abraham said
to him, 'Son, remember that during your life-time you had
everything you wanted, and Lazarus had nothing.
So now he is here being comforted and you are in anguish.
And besides, there is a great chasm
separating us, and anyone wanting to come to you from
here is stopped at its edge; and no one over there can
cross to us.'
Then the rich man said, 'O Father Abraham, then
please send him to my father's home -- for I have five
brothers -- to warn them about this place of torment lest
they come here when they die.' But Abraham
said, 'The Scriptures have warned them again and again.
Your brothers can read them any time they want
to.' The rich man replied, 'No, Father Abraham, they won't
bother to read them. But if someone is sent to
them from the dead, then they will turn from their sins.'
But Abraham said, 'If they won't listen to
Moses and the prophets, they won't listen even though
someone rises from the dead.'
Note that despite the remarkable similarity between
Jesus' parable about the rich man and Charles Dickens'
parable about Scrooge, Dickens is far more optimistic
about the prospects for the repentance and salvation of
the rich than is Jesus. In contrast to
Scrooge, whom Dicken's portrays as being moved by
the ghostly apparitions to repentance and
redemption, the Gospel holds out no such hope
for its wealthy villains. On the contrary, the Gospel
insists : "If they won't listen to Moses and the prophets, they
won't listen even though someone rises from the dead." Note that despite the remarkable similarity between
Jesus' parable about the rich man and Charles Dickens'
parable about Scrooge, Dickens is far more optimistic
about the prospects for the repentance and salvation of
the rich than is Jesus. In contrast to
Scrooge, whom Dicken's portrays as being moved by
the ghostly apparitions to repentance and
redemption, the Gospel holds out no such hope
for its wealthy villains. On the contrary, the Gospel
insists : "If they won't listen to Moses and the prophets, they
won't listen even though someone rises from the dead."
To believe today's "televangelists", following
Christ and being saved is "a piece of cake".
All it takes to be "christened" (i.e. be considered
a Christian) is a preacher and a little water, and maybe
a short trip to an altar (or stage). Where do these
preachers and churches get these ideas?
Certainly not from Jesus, who laid down far more
demanding requirements for those who would achieve
eternal life by following his teaching :
{ Matthew 19:16, 21-24 }
"Someone came to Jesus with this question:
'Good Master, what must I do to have eternal life? '
Jesus told him that he must begin by obeying the ten
commandments. But, then he stressed . . .
'If you want to be perfect, go and sell everything you
have and give the money to the poor, and you will have
treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.'
But when the young man heard this, he went away sadly,
for he was very rich."
Instead of walking away, prosperous people have always
been able to find "Christian" preachers who would tell them
that they could keep all their wealth and still be "Christians".
In fact, if they gave just a little bit of their wealth to
the church itself, they would be treated as model Christians.
When Jesus urged his followers to shed their wealth,
he directed that he give it to OTHERS, not to himself or to
his associates. Many clergy use Jesus' words,
"it is more blessed to give than to receive" in order to
persuade others to give so that they themselves can
be on the receiving end of that giving! If they REALLY
believe it is more blessed to give, they why are they
on the receiving end of those gifts?
. . .
Then Jesus comes to the important point of this parable:
"It is almost impossible for a rich man to get into the
Kingdom of Heaven. I say it again -- 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!"
For Jesus, as for many other great prophets of the Bible,
the pursuit of riches on the one hand and of salvation
on the other are so incompatible that a choice
must be made of one or the other. And
the more riches one possesses the harder it
is to choose salvation, which requires
the repudiation of those riches.
{ Matthew 6:24 }
"It is almost impossible for a rich man to get into the
Kingdom of Heaven. I say it again -- 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!"
{ Matthew 6:24 }
"You cannot serve two masters: God and Mammon
(money). For you will hate one and love the other,
or else the other way around."
The multi-millionaire founder and current president of the
"Christian Coalition" Pat Robertson, wasn't a particularly
religious Baptist until he met Cornelius Vanderbreggen a
Dutch "theologian", who told him that a man of God can
be rich. "God is generous, not stingy," Vangerbreggan
told Robertson, as they dined at an elegant hotel.
"He wants you to have the best."
Many Christian clergy
have sold their souls for far less than Pat Robertson's
millions and have embraced and taught the Gospel
according to Robertson and Vanderbreggan,
which tells people they are saved just the way they are,
no matter how much misery their oppressed
and/or impoverished neighbors are suffering accross
the seas, or accross the tracks, if not accross the
street, while they enjoy "God's blessings".
If God is responsible for the "blessings" of the
well-to-do, then he must also be responsible for the
curse of "les miserables".
{Luke 12:15-21}
And he said to them, "Take care! Be on
your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life
does not consist in the abundance of possessions."
Then he told them a parable: "The land
of a rich man produced abundantly. And he
thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have
no place to store my crops?' Then he said, 'I will
do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger
ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.
And I will say to my soul, 'Soul, you have
ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink,
be merry.' But God said to him, 'You fool!
This very night your life is being demanded of you.
And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?'
So it is with those who store up
treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God."
"Yes, every man is a fool who gets rich on
earth but not in heaven. Sell what you have
and give to those in need. This will fatten your
purses in heaven! And the purses of heaven
have no rips or holes in them. Your treasures
there will never disappear; no thief can steal them; no
moth can destroy them. Wherever your treasure
is, there your heart and thoughts will also be."
Wealth is clearly a serious challenge for Christians. Yet
although some passages make it seem like all wealth
is evil, the great majority of passages make it clear
that what is evil is the imbalance in the distribution
of the world's wealth , and how it got
that way. After all, God created everything
in the world, and he "saw that it was good". And
after putting people on this earth,
{ Gen. 1:28-9 }
God said to them, "Be fruitful and
multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have
dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of
the air and over every living thing that moves upon the
earth." God said, "See, I have given you every plant
yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth,
and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have
them for food."
What Jesus condemned, is what the Old Testament
had condemned, not wealth itself, but the EXCESSIVE
wealth of SOME, AT THE EXPENSE OF OTHERS.
It may well be impossible to properly understand the
New Testament emphasis on the redistribution of
wealth from the unjustly rich to the unjustly poor
without the background of the Old Testament,
which spells out and condemns much more explicitly
many of the ways in which the weak have been
exploited and/or robbed by the strong almost from
the beginning of time.
When Jesus described his purpose in life in the words of
Luke 4:18, (above), we believe he was describing
the role of his followers as well. And yet, the
message that many Christian clergy and churches seem
to have gotten from the instruction at the end of
Christ's great sermon on the good Samaritan, "Go and do
likewise", is that they should follow the example of the
of the priest and the Levite in this parable.
While churches have been giving token food
baskets at Thanksgiving and Christmas, it has often
been "infidels" and secular organizations that
have been truly serious about rescuing the hungry,
the imprisoned, the naked, the homeless,
the uninsured, the addicted, the embattled,
the refugee, the immigrant, and on and on and on.
We do not intend to create a new "denomination"
and thereby add to the division that already exists among
Christians, but we do intend to light a fire under
people, and especially leaders, who claim to be believers
in Christ, on behalf of those whom Jesus wants us to love
AND LIBERATE. And we want to honor, embrace,
join and support , the "good Samaritans" of our day who
put us and our clergy to shame!
Christians need to be warned not to be fooled by people who
are more concerned about promoting the G.O.P.
than GOD. For many who promote "Christian
Conservatism", their actual faith and religion is
not CHRISTIANITY, but "CONSERVATISM", and
Christianity is nothing but a tool for promoting
what they really care about. If the Bible's
teaching and values were what they wanted to
"conserve", they would be defending the poor and
the powerful against the rich, instead of the
other way around.
Many of these people may not be honest enough
even to let themselves face it, but their actions
show that what they are fighting to recover and/or
preserve are various "traditional" advantages
that have been enjoyed either by the rich over the
poor, by employers over their employees, by
businesses over consumers, by those in the
white majority over people of color, by the
"native-born" (i.e. long-time immigrants to this
country) over recent or prospective immigrants,
by men and boys over women and girls, and by the
middle-aged and healthy over children, the elderly
and the handicapped.
Some of these "Christians" even tempt us to use
political means -- instead of moral persuasion --
to insure the continued dominance of Christians
over non-Christians, in this country , as
though they couldn't trust their faith to prevail
or prosper without enlisting a lot of extra political
muscle behind it!
Jesus was all about defending the weak against the strong,
and preached constantly to "the haves", like many of us
(who are wealthy by the world's standards) that
salvation was impossible, unless and until we can
learn to part with our excess wealth and redistribute it
to those who are REALLY ENTITLED TO IT, the "have nots".
According to John, 3: 16-18
" We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God's love abide in anyone who has the world's goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help? Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action."
(Luke 3:7-11) "John (the Baptist) said to the crowds that came out to be baptized by him, "You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. Do not begin to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our ancestor'; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire." And the crowds asked him, "What then should we do?" In reply he said to them, "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."
The LAST Thing America Needs NOW
is the Abolition or Reduction of
Taxation on the Estates and Income
of the $UPER-RICH ! |
CHRIST's Followers shouldn't just JOIN
those OPPOSING such moves.
They should be LEADING them!
|
Some insights of the wealthy :
Andrew Carnegie was one of the richest people to ever live
and yet after having given away much of his wealth himself,
explained toward the end of his life that (in effect)
"any man who dies wealthy is a failure".
See his very insightful "Gospel of Wealth"
Bill Gates, the wealthiest man of our times, if not of all time,
plans to leave his own children far less than the Republicans want them to have,
namely a tiny portion of his wealth ( a few million each).
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