‘Woe to You Who Are Rich’: The Sermon We Keep Ignoring

Jesus Was a Socialist. Deal With It.

 I was stunned by the reaction of a Catholic Reverend Father to the election of a socialist mayor by New Yorkers. It’s hard to put this into words, but here it is:

Jesus was a socialist.

The problem isn’t socialism.
The real problem is what we’ve been conditioned to believe socialism means. (Too many people have a Pavlovian reaction to the word.)

Sure the greatest socialists in history were atheists; they didn’t believe in God. Perhaps it was because the Church of their time was the biggest exploiter of human labor, or because it was in cahoots with the paramount feudal lords of the age....

Interesting....

Why is this hard to say?
Because if I have to point to a white Bentley and tell you it is a white Bentley, then I am clearly not dealing with a normal situation.

For Jesus, capitalism as practiced in many nations today would be anathema.

There is nothing inherently godly about capitalism — if anything, it tends toward evil. Nothing could be clearer than the human propensity to fall into diverse temptations when money is involved.

My TPD 501 professor — a young Ghanaian PhD, some forty-one years ago — defined capitalism simply as “the profit motivation.” Simple.

Then again, there’s nothing inherently evil about being motivated by profit; Scripture recognizes this.

But capitalism is hardly self-regulating. No one clamors for regulation of a system that keeps making them more and more money… except perhaps Warren Buffet and one or two others.

Anyway — I found this item stored in one of my manuscripts. Fortunately, I saved the link I copied it from.

Here’s some food for thought (Enjoy it)

In metaphors, parables, and direct assertions, Jesus issued denunciations of inequitable treatment and the traditions and structural barriers that stood in the way of people’s material well-being.

He said, “Woe to you who are rich. Woe to you who are full now” (Luke 6:24–25) and “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” (Matthew 19:24).

He commended a rich tax collector who pledged to give half his fortune to the poor and repay fourfold anyone he had defrauded (Luke 19:1–10). There is also the poignant parable of the haughty rich man who ignored the desperation of a beggar “covered with sores” and ends up in hell (Luke 16:19–26).

And again, in the parable of the sheep and the goats, Jesus declared that people who do not respond to the hunger, thirst, and nakedness of those in need “will go away into eternal punishment” (Matthew 25:31–46).

Jesus railed against the rich without compromise or qualification. But because his social-justice pronouncements concerning poverty and wealth are so extreme, they are often ignored or dismissed as quaint and unrealistic.

Yet when understood in the context of Jesus’s historical setting, what may appear quaint or unrealistic is, in fact, valuable ethical guidance.

Source: https://www.redletterchristians.org/evangelicals-dangerous-understanding-of-jesus/

I rest my case

#dk