UTB - Rich men in heaven?

There is a well known concept in scripture, spoken by Jesus himself, that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven.

Now this tends to give the Bible student pause, because it's not really a parable, but more of a statement. So people have tried to explain this away in sermons and studies and Sunday School lessons, as best they can. It's a hard one.

One explanation is that the eye of the needle is actually the name of one of the gates entering Jerusalem. It's a rather small gate, so that a camel must kneel to get through it. Now that carries a good lesson in itself, because it means that the rich man must also kneel to get into heaven. But there are a couple of problems with this interpretation. One problem is that I can find no reliable source that says that one of the gates is named the eye of the needle. The other is that it makes the "rich man" element irrelevant, because all of us must kneel in that sense - the sense that we must submit to Christ and become spiritually humble, whether rich or poor. We're all in the same boat, there. Oh, you could argue that rich men will find it harder to humble themselves and kneel, but it doesn't really wash. It has more to do with pride than with wealth. So I can't accept this idea.

Another explanation: Jesus was saying that it is impossible for rich men to get into heaven. There is one very large problem with this interpretation. And happily, this problem also leads to the correct understanding of the verse.

"Rich" is a relative term. I first understood this on a trip to Mexico back in my younger days. My friends and I came across a man sitting on a horse. His family was with him, and they were all living in a shelter in the forest (yeah, we were caving). The horse was not his; he worked on the land, and his employer provided the horse. He was very nice, and in our conversation with him he mentioned that we were "rich."

"Oh, we aren't rich," we replied, and he smiled and said "You're here, aren't you?" And he was right. If we could afford to travel in our leisure time and visit caves in Mexico, then by his standards, we were indeed quite rich.

I pondered this concept for days afterward, and realized that "rich" is completely relative, like hot or cold. Richer than who, poorer than who else? To me, the doctor or dentist is rich. To him, the politicians are rich. To them, the successful actors in Hollywood are rich. To them... and so on.

I was considered rich by anyone who could not afford a car less than five years old, because I had a car that new. That person in turn is considered rich by someone who can't even afford the used car. Next down the ladder is the person who can't even afford the gas for it if he had that car. Then you have the homeless. Though that guy, living in a cardboard box, thinks he's at the very bottom of the food chain, he might be considered rich in the eyes of the child in India who picks over the garbage heaps trying to find food to eat.

So... who is rich, in the objective, absolute sense?

Well... there are now, and there have been for many centuries, a group of people, a class of people, who are so rich that they can't spend their money, or give it away, in quantities large enough to make any difference in their lifestyles. They have international wealth, they own banks, they are banks. No, I'm not going to address conspiracy theories or the Bildergergers, or the secret Federal Reserve people. But you and I know that there are international bankers who control most governments in the world. They control elections all over the world. Not conspiratorially, necessarily... but they do.

It was once said that controlling armies is not as powerful as controlling purse strings. There is truth in that. Much truth. And those people have some mighty big purses.

These people own our politicians partly by making money available to them for campaigning, but mostly by controlling what is said in the mass media. They own the newspapers, they own the TV networks, they own it all. You've seen it: somebody who would take his oath of office seriously is made to look like a fool the minute he gets any traction with the voters. Totally incompetent morons are made to look dignified. Scandals are simply ignored. And each of those politicians knows that his career, his wealth, his "power" can disappear overnight if he fails to please the people who can make or break him.

These rich - let's say Rich™ in order to distinguish from the merely rich - these Rich™ men have kept the wars of the world going, so that those countries will have no choice but to borrow from them the money needed to buy weapons and finance their defense. They buy the weapons from who? The Rich™ of course. So money is made from war, by selling better and better weapons, and earning interest on the loans made to buy those weapons. The research for designing those new weapons? We pay for it. People die, and die, and die - and poverty is kept as the natural state of things - in order to make the Rich™ richer.

They pour nasties into the rivers and spew poisons into the air to make themselves more money, then they tell you to vote for their political party - either one - to put a stop to it. When you do, nothing stops. They provoke hatred for the USA by setting a foreign policy in place that interferes with other nations and peoples, keeps vicious dictators and regimes in place, violates our own Constitution, and all to force a situation where they have a better environment to do "business" - and they leave us to pay for it in blood and a bloated military budget. They give us two parties to choose from, one promising war, the other peace, but what we get is what they want, every time. They don't just own the banks, they own us.

With every day that goes by, our system of limited self government becomes less limited and more out of reach of our control. The Constitutional Republic that was originally given to us by God becomes more godless with every legislative session.

In return we get jobs. We get taxes. We get enough to keep us satisfied, so we won't rise up. We stay asleep.

I'm not saying all this to inspire you to rise up, or vote differently. You won't anyway. I'm saying it to lead to this: if you were God, filled with love and mercy for your children, and you were now about to hand out justice with that mercy... would you let the Rich™ into heaven?

It is, indeed, harder for a rich man to get into heaven than it is for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.