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. 

part 1: love to hate

qualifier: this is a post about why we feel the need to qualify things before we say them. you'll see my response shortly, but in the meantime, i have one of my own… i wish i had the kind of time to devote to writing that i did back in high school and college so that i could make this read more like an essay with a clear thesis and however many supports, each leading either one into the next or all three directly back to the thesis… but alas, i am banging this out during sophie's nap time, so forgive the rambling and circularity that are bound to appear!

a couple of weeks ago, one of my facebook friends shared this video:



i'll give you three minutes and four seconds to watch it…

i think this guy hits the nail on the head as far as pin-pointing this generation's prevalent fear of speaking our minds unless we are more or less positive that everyone who hears us will either agree or be silent. we feel the need to qualify every statement we make that has the remotest possibility of being misconstrued, hence the rampant overuse of "like", "sortta", "kinda", "ya know", etc.

my first reaction, like most people's, was to immediately place the blame on my generation and lament the fact that we are, in taylor's words, "like, the most inarticulate generation of all time".

but then i started with the "why"s. it's a habit i've been working to form in myself, since i really believe that all negativity - be it negative speech, behavior, or what have you - is a response to something, is caused by something. people did not just wake up one morning and start talking this way. so why did we?

to me, the real question is, "why do we feel the need to qualify everything we say to make sure that it's 'safe'?"

this post entitled watch your words pretty much sums up the answer for me.

honestly, i couldn't blame people LESS for wanting to qualify every statement they make. our rampant inarticulateness is very likely a direct result of our rampant UNKINDNESS. i don't think this is new, either. i think that the advent of the internet simply issued a big fat invitation to people everywhere to unleash all the ugliness and hate that was inside them ANONYMOUSLY and without fear of DIRECT CONFLICT, in much the same way that it provided easy access to pornography, luring in who-knows-how-many people who never would have entertained such temptation back when magazines and videos were the only way to obtain that kind of material. what i mean is, i don't think people were LOOKING for ways to unleash all the ugliness inside them, just like i don't think a lot of people were LOOKING for ways to get easy access to pornography… suddenly, it was just THERE! and even once you had signed online, no one had to actively SEARCH for things to get angry about or plug in a google search for "free pornography". all they had to do was scroll through their facebook feeds or check their spam folders.

before i go any further...

i do not think the internet is an evil thing! on the contrary, i think it is a WONDERFUL thing and i use it all the time. the point i'm driving at is that with the good comes the bad. just as the internet provides fast, easy access to GOOD things (like emails and photos between loved ones, current events, awareness campaigns, and caring bridge updates), it also provides fast, easy access to some very BAD things, and we need to be EDUCATED about this and practice DISCIPLINE and CAUTION when it comes to them.

so, to resume…

the video by taylor wasn't actually what started me thinking about this whole topic. my wheels had been turning for months after seeing how many hateful things people write on celebrity instagram feeds and in blog forums. there are entire websites (appropriately nicknamed "hate sites") devoted to bashing and hating on certain celebrities, bloggers, etc. again, i wasn't looking for these things; i didn't have to. all i had to do was google the names of some of my favorite bloggers. i was trying to find more information on them, and ended up finding a whole lot of other stuff i was definitely NOT trying to find.

it blew my mind to find that there are some people who have gotten so riled up by what they see online (and probably on television also), that they have reached a place where they ARE actively looking for things to stir up their own anger so that they can then spew it out. i could not (and still CANNOT) understand why people would actively subscribe to the facebook, twitter and instagram feeds of people they hate, just so they can hate them more, or why someone would put hours of their time into constructing and maintaining an entire website devoted to bashing someone they hate. it's as though some people literally LOVE TO HATE. (i'm not going to venture down that therapy trail; that one could be an entire post in itself).

CHRISTIANS, WE ARE FAR FROM EXEMPT WHEN IT COMES TO ONLINE NEGATIVITY.

and with that obnoxiously provoking statement, i'm going to stop, not because i'm cruel, but because sophie is awake and my time is up. this is actually a good stopping point though, because it gives me a good starting point for what i guess is going to be part 2 (with my qualifier about rambling, i should have known this would require a part 2…)

until next time!

rules

many people who take issue with the fact that churches (usually the Catholic one) have so many "rules" (really they're teachings, but i digress...) are the same ones who tend to favor more government legislation and vice versa. at the end of the day, most people are allowing either God or Government to run their lives. at least religion is something you choose to follow freely in this country. just sayin'.

chick-fil... eh?

in the wake of this whole chick-fil-a debacle, the following blog post by Wayne Self has become particularly popular and widely circulated amongst supporters of gay marriage: http://www.owldolatrous.com/?p=288.

i have a few problems with this post - the main one being that he claims the whole thing has nothing to do with First Amendment rights...


"Let’s also agree that this isn’t about curtailing anyone’s rights under First Amendment. The Constitution is a legal document. This is not a legal argument. No one is arguing that Chik-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy should be put in prison, or silenced, or censored by the government. This has nothing to do with government censorship or government abridgment of Freedom of Speech." (paragraph 5)

... which is simply not true. when the mayors of Boston, Chicago and San Francisco started calling for a ban on Chick-Fil-A franchises in their cities, they made this about First Amendment rights. it didn't have to be, but sadly, it is: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/08/03/jon-stewart-chick-fil-a-video_n_1736996.html (citing your sources is just more fun when it comes from the Daily Show).

but the part of Self's post i want to focus on in particular is this statement:

"This isn’t about mutual tolerance because there’s nothing mutual about it. If we agree to disagree on this issue, you walk away a full member of this society and I don’t. There is no “live and let live” on this issue because Dan Cathy is spending millions to very specifically NOT let me live. I’m not trying to do that to him." (point #2)


the problem i have is not with the statement itself, because i actually think that he has a valid point here. his point (if i understand it correctly) is that, when human rights are on the line, we cannot and should not merely "agree to disagree". to do so would be a gross injustice to those in society whose rights are being denied them. i absolutely agree with this.

what makes me frustrated is the fact that this is the exact point Pro-Life activists have been trying to get across for years. that there is no "live and let live" on the abortion issue because there are individuals and corporations (not to mention government-sponsored programs) that are spending millions to very specifically NOT allow children to live. that the statement, "if you don't like abortion, don't get one" isn't going to cut it. why? for the same reason that Mr.Self says he cannot, in good conscience, simply agree to disagree on the gay marriage issue: because in both his case and the case of Pro-Life activists, to do so would be to turn a blind eye to a portion of society that we perceive as being oppressed and denied basic rights.

it depresses me that it took the gay marriage issue for this concept to suddenly make sense to so many people, when for years it has been the cry of those fighting to protect the unborn. the Pro-Life opposition has instead opted to assume that there's no way the Pro-Life movement could actually have anything to do with protecting children, which would actually be kind of understandable, choosing rather to assume (or to pretend) that it has everything to do with suppressing women's rights for no apparent reason.

there are anti-gay marriage activists who are just as bad. those who choose to assume that supporters of gay marriage couldn't possibly think they are actually promoting equal rights, which would actually be kind of understandable, but rather choose to assume (or pretend) that they're all God-hating perverts who are hell-bent on living in sin for no apparent reason are just as guilty.

i'm going to propose something ridiculous. what if, just what IF... we all chose to assume the best of one another? if you're Pro-Choice, can you at least agree that it's a lot more likely that your Pro-Life neighbors are genuinely interested in promoting the rights of the unborn, not in trying to stomp on the rights of women? if you're against gay marriage, can you at least agree that it's a lot more likely that your pro-gay marriage neighbors are genuinely interested in promoting the rights of homosexuals, not in trying to hate on God?

regardless of where you stand on either issue, can we all agree that we're using the same argument to promote our cause, because ultimately, we are all trying do the same thing: to stand up for those who need us?


*disclaimer: i should hope this would be obvious, but i am in no way claiming that all pro-abortion activists or all anti-gay marriage activists assume the worst of their opposition in the way i described above. there are plenty of you out there who are very respectful in the way you disagree with one another, and i applaud you for that.

isn't it ironic?

Apparently, where the President's safety is concerned, the unborn suddenly count as people. Where their own safety is concerned, the unborn count as blobs of tissue.

http://www.lifenews.com/2012/05/08/white-house-abortion-ok-but-visitors-must-register-unborn-children/

HHS mandate is a blow to feminism

i'm confused. this whole birth control mandate has liberals screaming about women's rights and how women have fought so hard for the "right" to birth control and so forth and so on and on and on and on....

what confuses me is this: if these women are so concerned with equality and advancing women's rights, why are they hurling themselves back into the dark ages by running to big brother to pay for the birth control they can't afford, instead of to oh, i dunno, the men they're having sex with? God forbid the men be asked to pay for anything! God forbid we inconvenience our sexual partners. if you really care about empowering women, you should be up in arms over the notion that a man should be able to use a woman for sex without taking any responsibility whatsoever for the birth control they are both utilizing.

which brings me to the next thing that confuses me. certain women are making the case that birth control is too expensive to pay for themselves. foregoing for a moment the argument that, as with everything else in life, if you can't afford it, you either find a way to make more money or go without it instead of simply passing the buck to someone who has nothing to do with it (like your employer)... foregoing that for a moment, if your birth control is too expensive, it's unlikely that you're using condoms (which are cheap), and it's a fact that you're not using the "pull-out" method (which is free), both of which would require some exertion/sacrifice on the part of the man. so not only is the woman the only one who is actually exerting herself in any way in the whole "safe sex" process (going to the doctor for the prescription, dropping it off at the pharmacy, picking it up from the pharmacy, taking the medication on a regular basis, and then repeating the whole process throughout the year) - not only are these women taking all of the actual effort upon themselves, they're also the only ones paying anything. and they're doing this voluntarily!

as far as i can tell, these women, understandably, are sick of being the only ones taking any preventative measures in their sex lives, but instead of demanding that the equally responsible party (i.e., the men) step up and do their fair share, instead these women are petitioning the government to make their bosses shoulder that burden - two equally non-responsible parties who have no business getting involved in anyone else's sex life. it blows my mind.

ladies, next time you wanna complain that conservatives are the ones trying to hold you back and keep you in the dark ages, ask yourself why you apparently want men to take advantage of you both physically and financially. you're not the prostitutes, as Rush Limbagh might suggest, your men are. no one's paying you for sex. you're the ones who are essentially paying them by fronting the cost of their half of the birth control as well as your own half.

trying to pass the bill to your employer because you're too insecure to pass it to the men is an affront to the feminist movement in the worst way.

the government's money, aka your money

i'm starting to think that there is a significant number of Americans who literally do not realize that the federal government's ONLY source of revenue (that's money, folks) is TAXES. who pays taxes? WE do. so before you get all excited the next time the government tells you it's going to start paying for something, remind yourself who's really paying for it: you and i.