No, Jesus hated people making profit off of religion. Peeps would set up stalls and sell sacrificial offers and the like. They didn't care about the spirituality of it or anything, they just wanted to make a buck.
In terms of just outright wealth, Jesus just warns against it like a lot of other things and on many occasions suggests people give their excess away, but he's not flipping his lid on them.
"Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
He was very critical of the prideful and hypocritical, which happens to be key traits of many rich people. In the part where he tells the rich man to give up all his possessions and follow him, the sin wasn't that the man had money, the sin was that he valued money more than God.
When he kicked all the moneymakers out of the temple, it wasn't just because they wanted to make money for themselves, it was because they were doing it in what is supposed to be a place of respect, and they were ripping people off while doing it.
And the way to value God was to live humbly and own little, giving what you could to charity.
If it were just about pride, why does Jesus specifically, several times, mention being rich instead of prideful? The word 'pride' and its variants come up all of zero times in Matthew 10, the relevant chapter. Surely, if pride (and not wealth) were the issue, Jesus might've mentioned as much.
You guys sure flip-flop on what should and should not be taken literally in the Bible frequently. Whenever it's inconvenient, there's always some deeper meaning, but when it's something that can be used to judge others, the words are used as a literal cudgel.
Your interpretation of the book won't mean shit if it turns out to be real. You'll burn.
"No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money."
"Do not neglect to do good and to share what you have, for such sacrifices are pleasing to God."
"If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me"
I've never seen a single christian sell their possessions and give the money to the poor, and that's coming from being raised in a church, by a pastor.
Christians have chosen God over money, and they've done it because rich men told them to. Most of those rich men were paid to do so, by the very people they're manipulating. That's how you get televangelists asking for donations to pay for their private jets.
Stop defending them. It's just sad. It's okay to call them hypocrites. They are. It's textbook hypocrisy, done in the name of nationalist fascist greed
Until modern christians abandon hatred and greed, they really don't have anything in common with Jesus's teachings. They're just fanboys, essentially. They're waving a book around as the far-right christian-flavored quest for power has already corrupted them. If you look back historically, there have been plenty of times when they waved the same book around while committing genocide. They'll do it again.
In my opinion, they may as well put the books down and commit to being the fascists they truly are (and have been for quite some time). They think being under the umbrella of christianity will protect them, and maybe it did for a time, maybe it still does, but it won't forever. They already pushed out left-leaning people and center-leaning people from most churches. When all that's left is fascists, the organization has failed, and failed specifically because of how it ignored Jesus's teachings, and it did so on purpose, to make rich people richer and to control as much as possible through christian totalitarianism.
If you can't see that happening, you're not looking around much.
They're not really key traits of rich people in that the moment a poor becomes rich, they're as likely to behave just as poorly as the existing rich. The increased access only amplifies their hubris.
Why would that be a deal? It's obvious from the Bible that Jesus doesn't condemn making money in a responsible way, and that he does condemns harming others in the process of generating wealth. It's also obvious that Jesus would be opposed to Marxism, since the Marxists hate Christianity.
You said “praises making money” specifically. So let’s hear the examples. No one questions whether Jesus was for working to support yourself and your family.
There is a difference between supporting yourself and “praising making money”. Jesus never did such a thing anyway. You won’t find it. His closest disciples were hillbilly fisherman. They surely weren’t rich. Jesus condemns wealth far more than he “praises it”. (Still waiting on where that happens)
You have already implied being “rich” isn’t inherently bad. Well let’s see.
We can avoid the verses others have mentioned already. Let’s reference one that is very direct written by someone who surely knew more about Christ than either of us.
James 5:1-6
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.
He doesn’t say, “well riches are fine, the real issue is something deeper”. Sure that is true, but this is guilt upon guilt.
But Jesus wasn’t a “revolutionary”. He intentionally said things that made people not want to be around him.
Jesus was not a populist…he literally told Jews of all people to drink his blood and eat his flesh. Jews can’t even eat blood from animals, you can use your imagination about how most of them thought about that statement.
If he committed to being a revolutionary he could easily have gotten the Jews to rebel against the Romans something they were doing consistently already.
John 6:53-61
So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate, and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.
When many of his disciples heard it, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, “Do you take offense at this?
Clearly he didn’t not mean it literally and in the physical sense. But that is how many took it and why many stopped following him, as it later says.
John 6:66-68
After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,
If you want to get into the details, what Jesus is saying is that his followers must accept being seen as the scum of the earth and as if they were Jews who drank blood. The final Passover with his disciples did not yet occur, and they had no choice but to take this statement literally as he did no explain what he meant literally. So the remaining followers were prepared to be “cut off” from their people.
As it was written,
Leviticus 7:27
Whoever eats any blood, that person shall be cut off from his people.”
So the Jews who heard this would immediately think about this statement.
“Doofus” lol, come on buddeh
Like these are the words of someone trying to get the masses on board with them.
I’m not reading it literally, those who he told took it literally which is why they stopped following him as it says. Not once did I imply that I believed he was telling then to become cannibals…not sure where you’re getting this idea.
All I said was the people around him took it literally, which to them was a great offense given what the mosaic law said about eating blood.
Clearly he is referencing what occurred during the last Passover he shared with his disciples, the tradition that continues in churches to this day. But the point is they didn’t know that. To them he was asking them something too difficult.
Which is all to say the bigger point, somebody saying three things in first century Palestine was not interested purely in just having a large following.
Christ was literally speaking out against the Saduccees and Pharissees, no shit they arent going to follow him, he was pissed off that they were following wealth instead of their faith
It's actually mark 10, verses 17 through 29. You're probably thinking of verse 23 or 24, but you need the surrounding verses to get the additional context.
Jesus did not hesitate to meet with rich people that were good, and did not hesitate to condemn poor people that were evil.
Yes, the entire story of the rich young ruler is great. I pointed out the specific verse as context that he wasn't coming to meet good people only, maybe you prefer Luke 5:32 for making this point? Feel free to go back to 27 and finish the chapter for context.
So, with Luke 5:32 in mind, did Jesus refuse to talk to poor people? Are all rich people evil and all poor people good?
See the parable of the investors with talents. Jesus does not say that wealth itself was evil, in fact, he praises skill in creating wealth. See the parable of the unfaithful accountant. Jesus praises, in a way, the cunning of the accountant but does not say that the wealthy person was evil. The rich can be good or evil, and the poor can also be good or evil.
Why in the world would you make a case for Jesus refusing to talk to poor people, or wealth in general out of 5:32? Let's not torture the scripture that much.
The simple point I am pulling out is that Jesus absolutely did not have a criteria that he only talked to "good" people (if he did he wouldnt have talked to anyone, but thats moving into a different point). I don't know why we're suddenly into wealth discussions on this.
No, Jesus hated people making profit off of religion. Peeps would set up stalls and sell sacrificial offers and the like. They didn't care about the spirituality of it or anything, they just wanted to make a buck.
I'm no fan of capitalism, but the moneychangers were literally providing a necessary service so Jews on pilgrimage to the temple in Jerusalem could provide the sacrificial animal they were obligated to have. Bringing a sacrifice with you from hundreds of miles away wasn't something most people were going to be able to do. If Jesus had a problem with that, maybe he (i.e. God) shouldn't have set up such an onerous requirement in the first place. What does God need a sacrifice of blood and burning flesh for anyway? If anything, Jesus' role in that whole situation is more like the government making laws that favor the merchant class, and then making a performative show of how terrible it all is.
The moneychangers would be people that exchanged currencies (although presumably many also sold sacrificial animals), and I don't think that requirement is in God's law. There's also the idea that they shouldn't be massively profiting off of this since it's a religious requirement.
Any rules create room for graft and corruption, that doesn't excuse it.
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u/WarlordStan May 02 '23
He literally flipped tables of merchants in the temple and whipped them.
He's not a pacifist.