I write this from the breakfast room of my comfortable home in Edina, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. People from other communities call Edina residents "cake-eaters," because of the relative wealth of its residents (other towns, they say, get the crumbs). Right now, Edina is blanketed in snow, and on my block the trees and bushes are decorated with beautiful, twinkling white lights. That classic tableau is what I see out the window -- a Christmas card come to life.
In a way, it is a wonderful place for Advent, that Christian season before Christmas dedicated to reflection and waiting for the coming of the Messiah. The snow quiets everything, and one can walk through Edina's streets and parks in that wonderful hush of winter. Nor is the peace broken by police sirens; that is a sound I have never heard from my home. There are no people yelling in the street, and even the cars are quiet, as they slowly traverse the winding streets. There is calm, above all, because that is part of what money can buy, and does. It is where I have put my treasure.
As with so many other things, though, Jesus troubles that calm within me. I worship at an old stone church, which I can walk to over a beautiful stone bridge spanning Minnehaha Creek, a brook which runs near the back and side of that church. The church, too, is calm and warm. This morning, though, the Advent reading was about the one who came before Jesus: John the Baptist. This is the miraculous John the Baptist who somehow convinced people to follow a Messiah who had not yet appeared, and told the people who came to him for baptism: "Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise."
The message of Christ, even before he appeared, was challenging to the wealthy among us -- to me. The only theology John the Baptist offered were the directives to repent and to give away our wealth, retaining only what we truly need. The second (and third, and fourth) coat which hangs, unused, in my closet represents sin. The truth about that wealth was so deep and clear in the eyes of God that it was at the heart of Christ's message even before he began his ministry.
From where I sit, by the window in my breakfast room, that is chastening. Much as I may want to condemn the impure, the different, the gays and lesbians, the loud politicians, the lazy people among us, it turns out that the one Christ condemned, from the start (or, through John the Baptist, before the start), is me and my closet full of sin.
Now I sit with a new spirit of quiet.
I don't quite know what to do with it, either. I can start, I suppose, with my coats.
amplificathon: Heart Felt - Advent Challenge Day 14
We worship money. How different our relationship to money is when the spiritual replaces the material in importance.
The point of this piece is to look within ourselves, assess what wealth we can share with those in need, and to do so. It doesn't once mention the government. Calm down, not every remark about giving is an argument for socialism.
Matthew 22:15-22: "Teacher," they said, "we know you are a man of integrity and that you teach the way of God in accordance with the truth. You aren't swayed by men, because you pay no attention to who they are. Tell us then, what is your opinion? Is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not?"
But Jesus, knowing their evil intent, said, "You hypocrites, why are you trying to trap me? Show me the coin used for paying the tax." They brought him a denarius, and he asked them, "Whose portrait is this? And whose inscription?"
"Caesar's," they replied.
Then he said to them, "Give to Caesar what is Caesar's, and to God what is God's."
If the issue was as black and white as you propose we wouldn't be having this discussion 2,000 years later.
As to your remark "It doesn't once mention the government. Calm down, not every remark about giving is an argument for socialism", this is a liberal forum and liberals typically think of themselves as compassionate, and conservatives as stingy. It frames everything as "us vs. them, we are good they are evil, we are right they are wrong, there can be no compromise". Its an attitude that is fundamental to the liberal mindset & shows up all over this forum, as in your post that Jesus is a "progressive" & the Bible advocates socialism (as in, Jesus is on our side). As if Jesus would advocate for the form of govt that has murdered more of its own people than all other acts of mankind combined. wrwhiteal seems to have gone on a typing binge, but maybe the blind partisan bias finally
No you don't sir..and there's something else I would like to add to your condescending statement.
Every one of us is one day away from being where "there but for the good grace of GOD go I" and no amount of money, or responsibility can shield you from it. I know first hand about this because you see...I USED to be you. But guess what?... after that experience, I received the best gift I could have ever been given and it is the gift of empathy. For once you have been given the gift of empathy for your fellow man it automatically follows to give people the dignity that every one of us deserves.
Because you referred to someone named "Amy" as "sir," I suspect you were aiming your remarks at someone else.
Under the biblical system, aid to the needy was available, but it was not simply in the form of handouts. God's primary means of financial provision is the avenue of work (Ephesians 6:5-7; 2 Thessalonians 3:10), For example, there was the law of gleaning. When a farmer harvested his crops, he was not to go back and gather the food he missed. Rather, it was left for the poor to come and pick up (glean) for their families..
Liberals/Dems like to incite rage in their socialist faithful flock with fictions of 'handouts to business'...
While the FACT is that our GREEDY, PARASITIC Government is soaking business/corporations, just like they are stealing from the people... wasting it down the black hole of Fed Govt waste, pork, corruption...
The Dems had 'super-majorities' + POTUS for nearly 2 years... if there were these fictional 'handouts/subsidies', when WHY WERE THEY NOT REPEALED?
A thousand cheap, sleazy, pandering, cynical politicians in history have sought to gain power/resources for themselves and their God of big government by demonizing busines, free enterprise, capitalism...claiming to want to 'help the poor/middle class'....
Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc, etc...
You need to understand/acknowledge that free enterprise feeds/cloths/houses/doctors us.. provides us 100% of our goods/services/prosperity/strength...
While the GREEDY, cynical, pandering 1% pols/DC bureaucratic parasites have us $15 trillion in debt, and are sucking the productive economy dry, robbing EACH AMERICAN...
Govt is the GREEDY 'Enemy of the people'... which is bankrupting us, impoverishing us..
I was just rejecting the article's implied/stated argument that Jesus demonized 'the rich', or looked down on productivity..
Jesus wanted everyone to be successful, productive, 'rich'..
Christianity itself was founded by 'the rich'... Christianity's patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were all fabulously wealthy men
Jesus taught self-reliance, individual responsibility, not handouts but rather development of the entire person to avoid the need.
Apostle Paul: "If a man will not work, neither shall he eat “
Jesus would reject socialism, the modern all powerful, centralized, confiscatory/consuming nation nanny-state... Jesus thought we should help each-other individually, or through private Churches...
The state taking earnings/labor from one group and handing it to another was opposite his teachings... there is no redemption, no Charity, no worth/morality there...
The Christianity of Jesus was founded on individual responsibility... individual charity...
Jesus:
* commanded “thou shat not covet thy neighbor’s goods’… Not the liberal/Dem’s ‘class warfare’
* taught that Christianity is is about helping the whole person, not just distributing handouts…. Don’t just give them fish, teach them to fish…”Those who won’t work won’t eat”
Jesus's church was where the rich and poor, those of all races met together.. the opposite of race and class divisions/warfare... knew that divisive race/class rhetoric did no good.
On the other hand, virtually every dictatorship/oppressors in history has risen to power by promising to be champions for the' poor and oppressed'.... Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, Mao, Pol Pot, etc..
Jesus did not want all his followers to be rich, "rich" mean nothing to Jesus; he and his disciples lived as though the end were coming very soon. He taught his followers to store their riches in heaven. He told them to sell all their belongings and follow Him. He said it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for rich man to enter the kingdom of God.
This piece is not advocating socialism, it's encouraging all of us to look at our lives through the lens of the faith Jesus taught. Whether you want the government to help the poor or not, you can't deny that Jesus commanded that it is YOUR responsibility to help the hungry, the naked, the homeless. How have you helped today?
There was no superior morality in being poor...
Jesus regarded wealth/success/prosperity as the likely residue of applying Christian work ethics, attitudes, culture.