jesus hates money, funerals, and your children.

There's a post that's being floated around Facebook that looks like this:

Obviously, there's a lot that can be said about it, and I actually agree with most of it. There's just one part I want to focus on today:

"jesus was… anti-wealth"

There is no scripture reference provided to show how the author came to this conclusion, but I would venture a guess that he was probably referring to Matthew 10: 17-22, commonly known as "The Story of the Rich Young Man":

17 And as he was setting out on his journey, a man ran up and knelt before him and asked him, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” 18 And Jesus said to him, “Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone. 19 You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’” 20 And he said to him, “Teacher, all these I have kept from my youth.” 21 And Jesus, looking at him, loved him, and said to him, “You lack one thing: go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” 22 Disheartened by the saying, he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions.

A quick, on-the-surface read of this scripture could easily lead us to conclude that Jesus was anti-wealth, for the simple reason that he told this man to give his up. Sounds reasonable, right?

But was the money the problem, or the young man's attachment to it? Would Jesus have told every other wealthy person to do the same? Or did he ask it of this young man specifically because he knew he was more attached to it than he was to God?

I love this story that Mother Mary Francis, P.C.C. quotes in her book, But I Have Called You Friends: 

"You know the homely little tale often told about the hermit, the very holy hermit who had lived in the desert for years and years. He had no possessions, he fasted strictly, and he had come to think, as I suppose one could easily be tempted to think if left to one's own unaided speculations, that he was a fair sort of fellow in God's eyes. But in his naiveté he brought this to God's attention. You remember how he reminded God that he was so detached from everything, how he was really living his life completely for God - and a few other points for God's edification. And the Lord informed the self-complacent hermit that he was more attached to the cat he had than the king of France was attached to all his possessions."

This hermit thinks he is doing a great job living the gospel since he has next to no possessions, and yet the one thing he does posses - his cat - he is more attached to than the king is to all his wealth. (Which, if you think about it, kinda makes sense. If I only owned one thing in the whole world, I suspect that that one thing would start to feel like my whole world and would become almost impossible for me to part with)

I think this story is so insightful because it shows that it is not possessions themselves that have the power to keep us from God, it's our relationship with them. Even if a cat is the only thing I own, if I love that cat more than I love God, he is probably going to ask me to give it up. If, on the other hand, I have a successful business that makes a lot of money, but really I'm just passionate about my job and couldn't care less about whether it was making me rich, chances are, God won't ask me to give up my wealth if I'm not putting it ahead of my relationship with him.

That being said, is it HARD to be detached from wealth once we have it? Absolutely! That's why Jesus also says, in Matthew 19: 24,

24 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.”

Jesus is telling us it is HARD to make it to heaven when you're rich! This is why it is so important to work on detachment. It's hard to make it to heaven when you're rich, but don't think for a second that being poor makes it easy. You couldn't pay me a million dollars to walk up to a poor person and tell them how lucky they are that they're having such an easy time making it to heaven. If people truly believed that being poor got you to heaven faster, they would probably stop trying to make more money.

Returning for a moment to the hermit and his cat, Jesus talks about detachment from things other than wealth too. For example, in Luke 9: 59-60…

59 He said to another man, “Follow me.”

But he replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.”

60 Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”

… and in Luke 14:26…

26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple. 

Are we to conclude that Jesus was anti-funeral and anti-family? Does he really want us to hate our children?? A quick, purely on-the-surface read of these scriptures - such as with the story of the rich young man - would make us conclude that he does. But if you utilize a dab of critical thinking (After all, Jesus attended Lazarus' funeral and reminded the rich young man to honor his father and mother), you'll probably conclude that it isn't very likely that Jesus wanted us to leave our dead to rot in the fields and despise our families. But if there is one thing in the world that it is more easy to be attached to than wealth, it is our loved ones (or in some instances, our cats). That is one thing for which the vast majority of people would be willing to sacrifice any and all of their possessions. Jesus is driving home the point that we need to have that same kind of dedication to God, even more so. He wants us to love God even more than we love our own families and our own lives. Is THAT hard? Um, YES. I would venture to say that most people never achieve it. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for it. And if you think Jesus wouldn't ask us to strive for something that is impossible, take a gander at Matthew 5:48:

48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

He was a radical revolutionary all right, that Jesus. He said some crazy stuff. But it's good stuff, every bit of it. 

Judging or punishing someone for having wealth is just as bad as judging or punishing them for not having it. Being rich doesn't make you a bad disciple of Christ any more than being poor makes you a good one. Neither, incidentally, does owning a cat.