Well, I've been saving this particular subtopic to be the last post in this current series. It is a segue into other issues in Christian religion and Christian faith, and I want to talk about one or more of those issues, too. So this post is a bit of a transition into other topics and will therefore have the beginnings of other things mixed in with it.

One of the more intriguing scriptures in the "our wealth" area concerns what we often refer to as "Jesus and the rich young man," a biblical passage which goes like this:

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: 'You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.'" He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. Then Jesus looked around and said to his disciples, "How hard it will be for those who have wealth to enter the kingdom of God!" And the disciples were perplexed at these words. But Jesus said to them 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 someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." They were greatly astounded and said to one another, "Then who can be saved?" Jesus looked at them and said, "For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible." (Mark 10:17-27, NRSV)

The first thing I'll note about this passage, just to clear a point out of the way, is that I've heard it said that when Jesus refers to the camel and the needle, what he was referring to was a particular gate or rock formation which required a camel to crawl through on its knees. The theory goes that it was very difficult, though not uncommon, for camel drivers to coax their camels through in just such a fashion. Maybe. I consulted Dr. Ben Witherington's socio-rhetorical commentary on Mark with respect to this passage, and according to Witherington, there is no known factual basis for this. He says that some manuscripts record this as "a rope through the eye of a needle," supporting the idea that Jesus was referring to an impossibility. Witherington, whom I respect and whose scholarship I have never had cause to doubt, takes this passage to mean that in terms of a rich man trying to get into the kingdom on his own, it is absolutely impossible. With God, however, it is possible.

No disrespect, then, to Dr. Witherington, but I would like to pick it up from here, because it is precisely this latter possibility to which rich Christians cling, and I want to raise some points; points which deal directly with the topic at hand, but also lead inevitably to far more broad-sweeping issues in Christianity. To get things started, I want to also refer to another scholar whose work I respect; Alfred Nolan. At least, I'm pretty sure it was Alfred Nolan, in Jesus Before Christianity, who wrote of this passage and summarized it in the following way: when Jesus says it is impossible with men but possible with God, what he is saying is that it takes a miracle for a rich man to enter the kingdom. And, adds Nolan, the miracle is not getting the rich man into the kingdom with his riches. The miracle is in getting the man to give up his riches so that he can enter. At the very least, Nolan's view should make us stop and think for a long while. More on this in a few moments.

I began this series of posts by talking about aversions and excuses, and the reactions of rich Christians to this particular passage has long intrigued me. Not only are we more than willing to presume that God will get us into the kingdom with our riches rather than God will get us to leave our riches, but we are so willing to accept this that the second alternative never fully occurs to us, and our response to Jesus' words spoken to the rich young man are even more intriguing. What I have heard said every time this passage is encountered in a group discussion, every time, is, "Yes, but look at the text. Jesus tells the man 'you lack one thing.' He's saying it to that man, not to us. That's what he lacked. You and I each lack our own thing." Maybe. Maybe so. Certainly Witherington agrees with this take, and I'm nowhere in the same league, not even close, to his scholarship. But yet what if—what if the lesson from the passage is that it really does apply to the rest of us? What if it's simply too convenient for us to explain it away the way we do? What if we don't see it, simply because we don't want to see it? What if Nolan is right?

I don't know, but here's what gets me about our standard reply. Just suppose—to pick the most provocative example I can—Jesus had said, "You lack one thing; stop having sex with that man you live with. Then follow me." If this were the case, I would venture to guess that a good many Christians would, rather than consider this to be an individual command to a single human being, use it as an additional passage in their personal sets of proof texts condemning homosexuality. Naturally, if challenged on the point, they would say that they "know" it is not an individual command directed at that one person, because they consider it to fit into an overarching theme against homosexual behavior throughout the corpus of scripture. Of course, I could say in a parallel fashion that the command (suggestion?) to go sell everything and give to the poor is also part of the overarching, interlinked themes of social justice, compassion, mercy and the like; and so therefore I "know" it isn't a command for one specific individual. Conversely, a homosexual Christian might say that the command (suggestion?) was, indeed, individual to the man, since he or she "knows" that there is no anti-homosexual arch in the biblical corpus. So. Beyond illustrating the ubiquitous condition that we all interpret scripture pretty much however it suits—which is to say, personally benefits— us, what's the point?

One point is that in the pews, interpreting scripture is (news flash!) pretty much done in just such a way; we interpret scripture according to our own frames of reference. We all do this, and I am certainly no exception. I would probably go so far as to say that, whether we like it or not, the translations of Bibles we buy off a shelf or order from Amazon are also interpretations; much more sophisticated and more scholarly, but still interpretations. (This is one of the big areas of hermeneutics, right? What's the line between translation and interpretation?) And I think that for those of us in the pews, the interpretations aren't based upon a wide enough base. We need to be better educated, more exposed to variety of ideas and considerations, and the like. And we need to ask ourselves more basic, more fundamental questions. In particular in terms of these posts, I'm toying with questions in Christian life that are not addressed very far very often, such as, is it possible that there is a difference between "following" Jesus versus "being a disciple" of Jesus versus "being a Christian," between "the kingdom of Heaven" versus "Heaven per se," and between whatever concepts we can throw into the mix? Do you have to follow Jesus to be a Christian, or not? Is the kingdom of Heaven the same as the Heaven up in the sky that little kids dream of? What does it mean to be a Christian, and why are we, each of us, a Christian? Are we in it for ourselves, for others, for God? I bring these to the forefront today in the light of this passage, wondering if some of these broader issues do anything to help answer others.

To begin with as an introduction, as far as "following Jesus," and "being a disciple," I can't delineate any large difference between the two. A follower is a disciple and a disciple follows. The real question is, to what extent does one follow? I'm beginning to think that Jesus seriously meant that anybody who wanted to follow him fully while he was alive absolutely had to give up everything else. The twelve had left everything, including leaving their families (so much for twenty-first century "family values"). So these disciples were the ones who followed Jesus, as opposed to being people who went to witness him speak, heal, or otherwise teach and practice his ministry. I realize that some scholars would say Jesus had hundreds of disciples who followed him (physically or ethically) to varying degrees, and I suppose it's reasonable to say so. It seems reasonable to me, for example, that in a certain sense Martha (the sister of (yet another) Mary) was indeed a disciple of some sort. But to me, the overall language of Jesus seems to indicate that to be a disciple meant to follow, which meant to leave everything; including one's home, possessions and family. The fancy sounding way of defending this view is that Jesus' ministry was one of orthopraxis; the practice was in the teaching and the teaching was in the practice. The more down to earth view is simply that to grasp what Jesus was trying to teach and accomplish, you had to live with him in his itinerancy. This is all just my opinion, but I can't see that a person could really be a devoted disciple during Jesus' ministry without giving up everything as Jesus had. It was necessary to do so in order to understand what was being done by Jesus, and I doubt that in antiquity this was a surprising state of affairs as far as teacher/student relationships went.

Of course Jesus is no longer here to physically walk the earth, so where does the preceding point leave us today? I think it depends upon how the individual decides to answer it for her or his self. One way I might try to answer this, and in fact often do try, is to make a reasoned guess at where Jesus would be specifically, doing what specifically, if he inhabited my region generally. But this is a pretty dubious approach to take, and gets to why I've never been a fan of "What Would Jesus Do?" The question is one a Christian must ask from time to time, and as a friend of mine says, at the very least it's a bit of an interrupt we can generate in our thought processes, to keep us from running blindly off kilter in the middle of a situation. I can respect this, but then again what troubles me is the fact that if I have to ask, it means I don't know, and if I don't know, how can I answer correctly? Such a question simply traces directly back to my being an existentialist, I know. But of course, being one, to me the question seems as legitimate as it does unavoidable.

For the sake of brevity, at this point it seems to me the jump to make is to start talking about the kingdom of Heaven (or kingdom of God, if you prefer). There's been significant thought over the past decade or two in the discussions of the kingdom. Well, I would say you could go back to Schwietzer, who grasped that the kingdom is within us, for a good start. But, the basic idea is that Jesus spoke a great deal about the kingdom. It was one of the things he talked about most often; maybe the one thing he talked about most often. He said the kingdom belongs to children and to the destitute. He said the kingdom is amongst (or within) us. Some of the recent scholarly views of the kingdom term the kingdom as the "reign and rule of God." (I suggest Stephen J. Patterson's work on the kingdom for a really good, readable, concise presentation of the subject.) What I tend to do, in a landscape that fills most of my little brain, is to view the kingdom of Heaven as the way the world is. By this I mean the way the world is in its underlying reality. This is necessarily the way the world functions, by what means and rules if you will, in the being of God. So the kingdom of heaven is the state of being of the world as it is in God, as opposed to the state of being of the world as you and I tend to perceive, view, weigh and measure it in human terms—and the the two are radically, radically different. It's a very long story, but the part which applies here is that—in my opinion—when the New Testament writers refer to "entering into the kingdom," they are talking about entering a state of being wherein we perceive and act in this world according to the way it is in God's being, as opposed to Man's. Entering the kingdom is not talking about going to a place called Heaven; it's about existing in a different state of being. So what does this have to do with "What Would Jesus Do," and what are we supposed to do without him here to tell us face to face?

Well, I think that in Jesus' orthopraxis he was trying to help people into the kingdom. He was trying to bring people into a different state of being. I'm not talking just physical, like giving up wealth, but more so I am talking about our whole—well—being. How we see, how we think, how we feel. How we reason, how we intuit, how we conclude. I think Jesus was really trying to call us, to show us, to invite us into, living according to the way the world is. A world of loving compassion and mercy. A world where worldly power does not matter. A world that you cannot see, cannot comprehend, cannot enter, if you are concerned about the things of the opposing kingdom: the kingdom of Man. And so the idea would be that if you are in the kingdom, you no longer need to ask what Jesus would do; you instinctively know; it's who and what you are. How you are supposed to live becomes intuitive. And so when Jesus said narrow is the gate, narrow is the way that leads into the kingdom and few people find it, he didn't mean few "go to Heaven." He meant very few enter the kingdom. Very few reach that state of being.

So. Where does this leave the discussion? I think we need to come full circle in this post, back to the possible and impossible. Being rich by the standards of Man's kingdom, that is being wealthy and having a bunch of assets racked up on a bank report, says something. Or, at the very least, it implies the very real likelihood of something: that you are in a state of being other than the kingdom of heaven. And, as long as you perceive the world and life in terms of the priorities associated with Man's kingdom, you cannot make the state-change to the kingdom of Heaven. Here's an analogy that just popped into my mind. I haven't vetted it, but let's look at it this way for now. Let's suppose that violence and peace are states of being within a person. If Jesus said, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a violent man to be a peaceful man. With man this is impossible. With God it is possible." This example is easier to analyze, if only because we aren't biased toward a particular interpretation. A man cannot be violent in his soul and peaceful in his soul, and this is the point. You're violent, or you're peaceful. To be the latter, you have to stop being the former. Would we really read this and think that the point is that God is going to figure out some way for this man to be both, or would we take this to mean that God will change the man, so that he is no longer violent? I think we'd conclude the latter. In this way, I tend to agree with Nolan: the miracle of God is to get the rich to become poor; not to bring the rich to the kingdom of Heaven and allow them to keep their riches.

The point is not the riches per se, and I think this is where the nugget of truth comes into play when people say, "It's not what I own, but what my priorities are." It is not the things in my house or driveway, nor my house for that matter, that keep me from the kingdom. True enough. But, it is extremely important to understand that they are the symptoms which indicate that something is keeping me from the kingdom. The very act of accumulating wealth indicates that there is something awry in my interior being; something that is contrary to the kingdom. For if I was in the kingdom, as fully as Jesus was, I would never have taken the time, never had the inclination, never spent the resources, to acquire what I have. I would have been doing something else with my time, my money, my mental energy; namely, helping those who are suffering. Jesus' point is, I think, it is impossible for the person who is rich to enter the kingdom. Not because he is rich per se, but because the kind of person who worked to become rich, and/or to remain rich, willfully inhabits the kingdom of man. Just as violence indicates a lack of peace, being embedded in Man's kingdom indicates I am not embedded in Heaven's kingdom. It's not complicated. It's important, yes, but not complicated. If you're rich, you're not in the kingdom. The only way you'll get into the kingdom is to become poor. And you don't want to do that, do you? And the very fact that you don't want to do it, that you don't even think you have to do it, that you argue against the necessity of it, proves its impossibility. Unless God breaks you, brings you to humility, places you somewhere that you can see, it won't happen. You are a camel, and you cannot pass through the eye of a needle. Not until you become something other than a camel. If I had to summarize succinctly: It isn't that the Way of Jesus has rejected the rich; it is that the rich have rejected the Way of Jesus.

With respect to my thoughts, feelings and opinions on the matter, this seems like the most on-target conclusion I can make to this series of posts on our aversions and excuses when it comes to our wealth.

Moving along to future posts, this discussion, to my mind, points out the need to ask ourselves, hopefully for the umpteenth time, some very basic questions. What does it mean, to each of us, when we say, "I am a Christian," and, "Having claimed to be a Christian, why do I choose to be a Christian?" These questions are inextricably linked to the discussion at hand, and the range of answers I can offer are inextricably linked to why I am talking about wealth and poverty, and what I am and am not claiming about religion and faith in this present series of posts.

School is approaching again, so I don't know how far I'll get, but next on the agenda are a few posts on these latest questions, hopefully with a tie-in to the present series I now finish. We'll see.