Jesus Was No Socialist

Why are haunted houses never small or modest?

First Reading: Ecclesiastes 1: 2; 2: 21-23

Vanity of vanities, says Qoheleth, vanity of vanities!  All things are vanity!Here is one who has labored with wisdom and knowledge and skill, and yet to another who has not labored over it, he must leave property. This also is vanity and a great evil.

For what profit comes to man from all the toil and anxiety of heart with which he has labored under the sun?

All his days sorrow and grief are his occupation; even at night his mind is not at rest.

This also is vanity.

Second Reading: Colossians 3: 1-5, 9-11

1 Therefore, if you be risen with Christ, seek the things that are above; where Christ is sitting at the right hand of God:

2 Mind the things that are above, not the things that are upon the earth.

3 For you are dead; and your life is hid with Christ in God.

4 When Christ shall appear, who is your life, then you also shall appear with him in glory.

5 Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, lust, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is the service of idols.

9 Lie not one to another: stripping yourselves of the old man with his deeds,

10 And putting on the new, him who is renewed unto knowledge, according to the image of him that created him.

11 Where there is neither Gentile nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free. But Christ is all, and in all.

Gospel: Luke 12: 13-21

13 And one of the multitude said to him: Master, speak to my brother that he divide the inheritance with me.

14 But he said to him: Man, who hath appointed me judge, or divider, over you?

15 And he said to them: Take heed and beware of all covetousness; for a man’s life doth not consist in the abundance of things which he possesseth.

16 And he spoke a similitude to them, saying: The land of a certain rich man brought forth plenty of fruits.

17 And he thought within himself, saying: What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits?

18 And he said: This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and will build greater; and into them will I gather all things that are grown to me, and my goods.

19 And I will say to my soul: Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years take thy rest; eat, drink, make good cheer.

20 But God said to him: Thou fool, this night do they require thy soul of thee: and whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?

21 So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich towards God.

These mass readings for this Sunday amount to a clear rejection of the left-wing idea of “equity.” Justice, Ecclesiastes asserts, requires that a man keep what he has earned from his labour. Not just his physical labour, but also what he has earned from his wisdom, and knowledge, and care. No doubt it is legitimate for government to take some in return for services rendered. No doubt it makes sense to provide a “social safety net” as group insurance. But for a government to get into the business of wealth redistribution is, in the words of Ecclesiastes, “a great evil.” That should settle the matter.

If not, the Gospel conveys the same message. Someone comes to Jesus demanding that his brother divide their inheritance equally. And Jesus refuses.  So much for Marxist equity.

Jesus says “who hath appointed me judge over you?” This is odd, and commands our attention, because Jesus is the rightful judge of the deeds of all. No one has to appoint him. How is it he has no authority in this case?

Because there is no moral issue involved. In an inheritance, neither party has earned the money. Neither has a moral right to it. So it is an administrative issue, a matter for king or Caesar: what does the law say? 

Jesus then goes on to address the moral issue: demanding equity is the sin of covetousness. 

This is not to let the rich off the hook. This is not to praise the rich. As the second, epistolatory reading tells us, their pursuit of riches is idolatry.

I worked for some years in Toronto with and among the “mentally ill.” Some of the names of these street people might surprise you. You might recognize some of the family names. A striking proportion of the severely mentally ill come from prominent families. Few seem to emerge from wealthy families with psyches fully healthy and intact. Most large old houses are haunted, and have closets full of skeletons. We know this, as a folk truth.

Thoe who are rich are likely to be covetous; for those who are covetous are likely to grow rich. This is obvious on the simple and self-evident principle that when we try to get something, we are more likely to get it. The same will be true for those who strive for social prominence. They are almost inevitably idolators.

Mental illness is spiritual illness. Mental illness naturally comes of growing up in a family with values askew. And the sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons, unto the third and fourth generation.

The rich are not to be praised or admired; at the same time, it is folly to envy the rich. 

Giving to the Poor

 

I keep seeing stupid posts saying things like this: “Elon Musk is worth $442 billion. Such greed! There are only 8 billion people on Earth. If he handed all that money out, everyone on Earth would be a billionaire. No one man should have so much.”

Seriously. I see and hear this repeatedly.

Do the math: 442 divided by eight: Elon Musk could give each of us 55 dollars and 25 cents.

Musk would then have nothing, and nobody else would really be any richer.

A similar comment: “How can Musk complain about homelessness being due to addiction and mental illness? Why doesn’t he give some of his money to the poor and actually do something about it?”

This assumes that homelessness is caused by poverty; that you can fix poverty by giving poor people money; and that Musk is doing nothing useful with his money.

In principle, nobody should hoard possessions. See the parable of Dives and Lazarus. Luke 16: 19-31. If you have two coats, and you see someone else freezing, you owe him one of them. 

However, someone who is rich is not necessarily hoarding. Not all gains are ill-gotten. Musk or another wealthy man may be living modestly, but using his money as a tool to improve the world. Entrepreneurs commonly are. Musk clearly is. Give away all his money, and we get none of the innovations he is responsible for, which cumulatively improve everyone’s lives far more than a one-time payment of $55.

And if we do have more than we need, we must target our charity so that it actually does help others, rather than just using it to salve our conscience, or make us feel superior. We need to do what is best for them, not what is easiest for us. 

Homelessness is not caused by poverty. 

I volunteer at Romero House, giving meals to the poor. Some of the people who volunteer there have been on the streets themselves. They never got off the streets because someone gave them money. It is always because they found religion. Ask AA about that. Ask the Salvation Army.

One guy gave me some interesting information. Back in those days, he would beg on the streetcorner uptown. He claimed he cleared thousands in a week just doing this. The problem was, in the afternoon, he spent it all on drugs or alcohol.

So it does no good to simply give a truly destitute person money. It probably does them harm. 

The local own council sought last year to end homelessness by setting up a village of containers converted into mini homes, in a downtown parking lot where the homeless already gathered.

Yesterday, I saw the containers have all been shut down and moved into a pile. At the onset of another winter. Clearly the experiment did not work. 

The problem is meaninglessness. These people are in real need; they are dying by the day. But we have to give them meaning and hope, not money for another fix. Or, worse, a free fix. 

We need to get out and talk to them, about Jesus, the Gospel, God. As the religious charities are or ought to be doing. If you want to help, volunteer with them.

The Prosperity Gospel

Pray and Get Rich.

To please a friend, I once attended a video showing promoting the “prosperity gospel.” It was like a corporate motivational speech.

The basic message I got is “God has chosen you for leadership.” So he’s going to grant you prosperity, presumably so you have the means to lead.

Is this a legitimate premise?

It seems to defy the Gospel of Luke, which actually seems to see the possession of significant wealth as itself sinful. Witness the story of the rich man and Lazarus: the rich man goes to Hell purely for not sharing his wealth.

And it defies the nature of God.

If giving away one’s wealth to the needy is a good deed, then anyone who has significant wealth is lacking in at least one good deed. Why then are they the leader? Why are they chosen by God above their moral betters?

The prosperity gospel therefore seems to require the Calvinist assumption of predestination: some of us are chosen before birth for salvation, and are given all good things. Nothing to do with our own merits.

I do not see how this can be reconciled with a morally good God: this is a God who plays favourites. This is as bad as we are if we discriminate against some, say, simply for the colour of their skin.

A Lutheran might counter that the distinguishing feature is faith: God rewards those who put their faith in him.

But no honest man can simply choose to believe. An honest man seeks truth. And a moral God does not reward dishonesty.

And surely, as a practical matter, all of us know people of deep religious faith, who are poor.

Actually, Jesus does not pay as well as Moses.

God does clearly choose some to lead. Moses is the perfect example; the prophets in general. The saints.

How many of the prophets were prosperous?

Moses died before reaching the promised land of milk and honey.

John the Baptist wore animal skins and ate locusts. He died in prison.

Isaiah risked starvation, had he not been fed by angels in a cave, a price on his head.

They apparently did not need personal wealth in order to lead. They experienced extreme poverty instead.

This is not a universal rule: David and Solomon achieved kingship, and there are a few crowned saints. Wealth is not proof of sinfulness. Yet both David and Solomon, good men as they began, fell into grave sin as a direct result of the temptations of wealth and secular power.

Jesus defines Christian leadership: “You know that the rulers of the nations lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. Whoever desires to be first among you shall be your bondservant, even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

This surely defies the prosperity gospel.

Material wealth, the New Testament makes clear in many passages, is always at least a distraction from the divine. “One cannot serve both God and Mammon.”

Moreover, if doing good brought obvious material rewards, there would be no morality left in doing good. The worst of us would do good out of self-interest.

Accordingly, a just God must have ordered the universe so that morality will cost us wealth, not acquire it.

This also requires the existence of some kind of happy afterlife: a just God must ultimately favour the good. Yet for the good to be good, the favour must be shown in such a way that the rewards for goodness are not visible and obvious to all.

And so the reward must come in some invisible later state.

Jesus explains it: in this present field, God sows the evil with the good. He must allow the weeds to thrive amidst the wheat. All is separated at the harvest, on the final threshing floor.

The Needle's Eye

A really annoying sermon today.

The reading was:

As Jesus was setting out on a journey, a man ran up,
knelt down before him, and asked him,
“Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”
Jesus answered him, “Why do you call me good?
No one is good but God alone.
You know the commandments: You shall not kill;
you shall not commit adultery;
you shall not steal;
you shall not bear false witness;
you shall not defraud;
honor your father and your mother.”
He replied and said to him,
“Teacher, all of these I have observed from my youth.”
Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said to him,
“You are lacking in one thing.
Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor
and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.”
At that statement his face fell,
and he went away sad, for he had many possessions.
Jesus looked around and said to his disciples,
“How hard it is for those who have wealth
to enter the kingdom of God!”
The disciples were amazed at his words.
So Jesus again said to them in reply,
“Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God!
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle
than for one who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
They were exceedingly astonished and said among themselves,
“Then who can be saved?”
Jesus looked at them and said,
“For human beings it is impossible, but not for God.
All things are possible for God.”

 (Mark 10: 17-27).

The priest immediately trotted out that disgusting old saw that Jesus was actually referring to a gate in Jreusalem called “the needle's eye,” which it was difficult to get a camel through. But heavens, no, not impossible. We can all do it, with a little effort.

So it's all okay, rich people. Relax. Camels can pass through a needle's eye, and you will no doubt get to heaven. Jesus didn't really mean what he said.

This is bollocks on several grounds.

To begin with, there is no good evidence that there ever was such a gate in Jerusalem.

Second, the same image is used several times in the Talmud, and it just does not sound as though they all refer to some city gate. For example, the rabbis argue that dreams are rational by pointing out that “They do not show a man a palm tree of gold, nor an elephant going through the eye of a needle.” This would make no sense if it were indeed possible for an elephant, with effort, to go through the eye of a needle.

It was, in fact, an established idiom to refer to something as being impossible.

Most importantly, in the Gospel itself, Jesus says in so many words that he just described something impossible.

Jesus looked at them and said,
“For human beings it is impossible.”

So you, a priest, really want to call him a liar?

Next issue: does this mean Jeus is telling the rich they have to give their money away or go to Hell?

You hear that one too. Political leftists love to cite it. The rich are evil.

No, he is not. Read that passage again. A man comes up to Jesus and asks what he needs to do to inherit eternal life; at the same time, he calls Jesus “good teacher.” Jesus's response is that nobody is good except God.

Jesus then lists the Ten Commandments. The clear implication is that they are sufficient in order to inherit eternal life. He goes on only when pressed; the man is not satisfied. He wants more. He apparently also wants to be told that he is “good.”

What follows, with the camel and the needle's eye, is an illustration of Jesus's initial point, that no one is authentically good except God.

The idea is not that we should give everything we have to the poor; Jesus actually assumes we are not likely to do that. It is to acknowledge that we are not good. We must never think of ourselves as righteous or justified; we could always do more. We could, for example, give everything that we have to the poor. Insisting on being thought of as, and thinking of himself as, righteous, is where the man is lacking, not in the fact of being rich.

Jesus actually concludes by saying it is impossible for ANYONE to be saved, not just the rich, without the help of God.

To need God is to be saved. Not to need God is to be damned. Everything else is just about working out the implications.