How Jesus Reacted To Two Wealthy Individuals

Myth:

Jesus asked the rich young ruler to sell and distribute the wealth amongst the poor; therefore, wealth is bad.

When viewed from another angle:
The issue was about his TRUST in his wealth (Mark 10:24).

Now let's meet a "bad" guy - Zacchaeus. This guy was rich (Luke 19:2), and yet, we do not see Jesus asking him to liquidate his assets and disperse the funds.

The difference here is, Zacchaeus was not banking on his self-righteousness, unlike the rich young ruler, who supposedly kept all the commandments. When grace and unconditional love came to his life, the fruit followed.

It's never about people having money, but money having people.

Salvation is not just about a passport to heaven. The Greek word from which 'saved' is translated is Sozo, and here is the link to what it means.

Listen to the first words of Jesus after he began his ministry:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,
Because He has anointed Me
To preach the gospel to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.” - (Luke 4:18-19 NKJV)

Freedom in every area of one's life is what Jesus came for. Sickness or poverty does not glorify the Father, who is Love, especially when the redemptive work on the cross took care of all those problems with one sweep.

Was Jesus a Socialist or a Capitalist?

"God created man in His image and then man returned the favor." - George Bernard Shaw

One of the things that we love to do is mold God to fit our views.

Contrary to the folklore, Jesus was neither a socialist, nor a capitalist. Both these resources operate using the resources on earth. Jesus' source was the kingdom of God.

When the need came up to feed the five thousand (not including the women and children), neither did the poor give what little they had, to fund the need at hand, nor did the disciples organize a fund-raising event to gather the money from the rich. With the little that was given to Jesus by a little boy, He multiplied it supernaturally and in abundance. He did not just meet their bare needs. There were baskets of leftover food.

Since Jesus' source was not the economic systems of the world, it did not matter how bleak the circumstances around Him looked like. He was the answer, because He was connected to the Kingdom.

The kingdom of God is within us. The One who is in us is greater than all the earthly resources put together. Even though we are in this world, we are not of this world. We are supposedly, the "children of God". We are supposedly the "Ambassadors of Christ" and the ambassadors are not taken care of by their host countries.

But leave it to the enterprising churchianity to sell this truth on how to earn this blessing! I do not know if there is another truth that has been more abused by the organized Christianity. The solution is freely available through the redemptive work on the cross. The fact that this has been been prostituted much does not take away from the truth that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of poverty. There is nothing "spiritual" or "virtuous" about poverty. In my view, the organized Christianity played a prominent role in glamorizing poverty when not one human soul has to live under the yoke of poverty or mediocrity anymore. The church should be part of eradicating the curse of poverty, instead of inadvertently glorifying it.   

In Christ we are blessed!

But why?

"The blessing" is not the end of the story. We are not blessed to testify that, "God has blessed us", while our neighbor struggles. We are blessed, also to BE a blessing, to be conduits of His unconditional love. Giving a homeless man a cute sermon on how Jesus loves him won't answer his immediate problems. We need resources to spare. 

But how can we, when we are allergic to the very term 'money'? Aren't we supposed to be "spiritual"?

No sane person who is financially struggling would say that they do not want money. Broadly classified, there are mainly two groups of people who criticize wealth. The first group has never experienced poverty. They have their needs and desires met, month-to-month. The second group has bought into the lie that poverty is godly, when it is actually a curse.

Money, by nature, is neither evil, nor good. It comes from a tree. When zoomed in, it is energy. It is a neutral element. In the hands of a drug pusher, it is called "drug money", but to the person who is a conduit of Love, who knows WHO the Source is, money is nothing but a tool.

24 / 7

Jacob cheated. Peter had a temper. David had an affair. Jonah ran from God. Paul was a murderer. Gideon was insecure. Thomas was a doubter. Sarah was impatient. Elijah was depressed. Zacchaeus made money illegally.

And yet, God loved them all, unconditionally. His love was not based on their religious theatrics or their heart-felt devotion.

Why then, would we assume that God’s love towards us is based on our actions, especially now that the price for the sins of the whole world has been paid by Christ Jesus on the cross?

 

Life would be a lot lighter when we are not so self-focused.

Be free from the yoke of trying to impress God.

We are loved, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.

What actually took place is this:

"What actually took place is this: I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn't work. So I quit being a "law man" so that I could be God's man. Christ's life showed me how, and enabled me to do it. I identified myself completely with him. Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ. My ego is no longer central. It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God. Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not "mine," but it is lived by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I am not going to go back on that.

Is it not clear to you that to go back to that old rule-keeping, peer-pleasing religion would be an abandonment of everything personal and free in my relationship with God? I refuse to do that, to repudiate God's grace. If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping, then Christ died unnecessarily."

- Galatians 2:19-21, The Message

I'm Right!

Cartoon, by David Hayward

 

Unpresentable || Spoken Word

Heart Vs Infrastructure

I disagree with the notion that one has to be in a particular camp (religious or non-religious) to experience God.

Saint Teresa of Avila was a Carmelite nun. Brother Lawrence worked in the kitchen in a monastery. And yet, both of them experienced God deeply and intimately.

The infrastructure is irrelevant; it is not the medium through which we connect with God. Heart is, and it does not care if the physical body is in a monastery, megachurch or the loo.

Why I Like This Video

 

This is one of the most popular videos on YouTube that is getting a lot of hits lately. It is liked and disliked by many for several reasons. 

I like it because it pops the self-righteous bubble that is seen in churchianity and briefly touches on the differences between the man-made religion and the gift of God through Christ Jesus.

I hope and would like to believe that the word 'hate' is not directed against a group of people that differ with his views. If it is, welcome to yet another branch of Christianity, which has close to 40,000 denominations.

I am siding with the idea that his feelings are targeted towards the religion, which to me is not an institution or a group of people, but a mindset that makes one run on a never-ending treadmill to "please God".

Old VS New

Thanks to the internet, we now have access to a ton of Christian messages than our earlier generations. We no longer have to be limited by tunnel visions!

While I'm thrilled with this convenience, I'm not attracted to a message, book or an article, simply because it is tagged "Christian". 

What I look for is, if the content is rooted in Jesus' perfect work on the cross.

Narrating the parables of Jesus or quoting 10 scriptures from the Gospels simply for the sake of it won't cut it, because Jesus was still living under the old covenant. 

Contrary to the popular assumption, the new covenant starts only after the resurrection and not with Matthew Chapter 1. 

Selah  ; )

So how do we know that the messages that we listen to or the material that we read stems from the old or the new covenant?

Under the old covenant, I get to bear a nice-looking, but a heavy yoke of trying to earn the blessings. My ego gets to be the star. The blessings or curses are hinged on my performance.

Under the new covenant, Jesus did all the heavy lifting; we are freed from the yoke and are liberated, once and for all. Jesus is the star here and through His obedience, we are made righteous (not self-righteous). Grace or Unconditional Love is the oxygen that we live in. Under this covenant, we are God's masterpieces, not unworthy worms.

Are you a Parrot or a Seeker?

"seek, and ye shall find" - Jesus

Parroting is easy. It's a life of staying on the surface. Someone does the thinking and interpretation for us. And we faithfully parrot "the truth", or so we think.  

Seeking is hard because it requires us to leave our comfort zones. It requires us to ask hard questions. It may sometimes lead us to swallow our pride and admit our ignorance, which may not be a pretty experience for our ego which thrived on "being right". In this journey, we may be ostracized by our churchy contacts and the so-called friends.

Regardless of the challenges, the journey of the truth-seeker is worth it, if the desire is to be in union with the Truth, instead of dogmas and concepts that merely puffs up one's head.

True seeking, however, will not begin until we experience the emptiness of floating in the Parrot zone.