Jesus Was Not About Charity

Christ the King (Photo credit: giveawayboy)

I’m a Star Wars scholar; not a Biblical scholar, but I have read the Bible a few times and I think almost everyone has gotten the wrong idea about Jesus. He was not really a charitable kind of guy. Charity was not his thing.

How can I say that? I mean Jesus not only talked about giving ALL your possessions to the poor (multiple times) he also said that it is easier for an elephant to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into Heaven… maybe it was a donkey, but if he knew about elephants that would have been a way better example. Look, I’m not questioning these statements, but I am questioning the motivation behind them.

Those who attempt to portray Jesus as this humanistic, liberal, hippy are taking those statements out of context. If you look at the context of Jesus’s ministry in the Bible, it is pretty clear that didn’t think people should give to the poor for any moralistic reason; he was preaching about the end times. Jesus stated that a generation shall not pass before the end of days. According to the Gospels, Jesus believed that the end was near. He was basically the Harold Camping of his day.

That being said, he believed that God’s kingdom was approaching that that those who were unsaved would face some pretty rough times on Earth after he and his followers were whisked away to Heaven. Okay, maybe he hadn’t thought all that through and that was just the later interpretation of the Book of Revelation, but he definitely didn’t think he would need the money since Heaven was right around the corner.

Supporting my point that Jesus was not really about the whole charity thing, in Matthew 15:26 he said, “But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.” He basically saw those who were not saved as dogs. But since he and his followers weren’t sticking around, why not give your money away and focus on spreading the message of the eminent apocalypse? That is after all what Harold Camping was doing to a lesser extent – Spending large sums of money on billboards spreading the “good news.”

Jesus specifically told his followers to give their money away and preach instead. It wasn’t about good will toward those who were less fortunate; it was because he wanted his followers to focus on spreading the message of Armageddon. Jesus didn’t give an ox’s ass about the poor. He just was focused on sitting at the right hand of God in Heaven.

That’s just my interpretation of it and I could be wrong. I welcome people to bring more evidence to the table to defend any differing opinions. Like I said, I’m a Star Wars scholar, not a Bible scholar. But I have read the Bible a few times and spent a fair amount of studying that too.