(Continued from Camels and needles, the Kingdom and peoples, part 1.)

Other verses truly are about how the love of possessions can lead to sin (1 Timothy 6:10). To learn that lesson, we can refer to those passages. But Mark 10 is not about that.

Did the disciples think like a lot of us do: that of course, the money of the rich gets in the way of true goodness and spiritual concerns? If they did, why were they “exceedingly astonished”? Instead they would have nodded their heads, like we often do. Yes, that ugly Donald Trump, living it up, buying whole island chains during coffee breaks — he’ll never get into Heaven.

Rather, to Christ’s disciples, the “rich” was not our perception of a greedy uber-capitalist Bernie Madoff. To them, rich people were religious scholars, people who cared for the Earth, community pillars, recyclers, good people who gave to charity and helped the poor. Their wealth enabled them to be more spiritual than thou. Without the pressures of a 50-hour-a-week job, they had more time to be spiritual and donate to all the worthy causes.

Jesus took direct aim. In effect, He said that it would be easier for a literal camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for anyone uber-“good” to enter the Kingdom of God.
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Was there ever a “needle’s eye gate” in first-century Jerusalem?

Every once in a while you hear this anecdote tossed about in reference to Jesus’ famous metaphor in Matthew 19¹. It goes like this: in Jerusalem of Jesus’ day, there was a very small, very tight passage through which it was really hard to get a camel. So that is what Jesus was talking about.

The better commentaries and study-Bible notes² bust that myth: there was no such gate. The only sources for that idea are commentaries long after the first century. To say Jesus meant it was only pretty hard for the rich to get into the Kingdom, not impossible, rejects the true meaning.

But there is an even greater error Christians believe based on that verse.

Have you heard of it? Nowadays, with all the “social gospel,” Christianity-is-about-helping-your-neighbor-and-feeding-the-poor notions around, it’s even more prevalent.

Ye have heard that it was said …

The Bible says rich people’s money may keep them from the Kingdom.

AKA: Jesus opposes wealth.

Figure A:

Many fundamentalists seek to explain away the obvious hostility to wealth in the saying attributed to Jesus [. . .] Unfortunately for the fundamentalists, the concensus [sic] of New Testament scholars is that Matthew’s passage barring rich people from heaven means exactly what it says. It remains to be seen how many of them are willing to give up all their wealth in accordance with the ideals they claim to profess.³

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