One way to think about Jesus and money is to consider the old joke about three types of people in the world.
1. People who either don't know or care what Jesus said about money.
2. The second group are the believers who care very much. What Jesus said about money becomes the foundation for what they think and feel about money.
3. The people who know what Jesus said about money-or at least they think they know-and wish they didn't.
I overheard the third type of person at a seminar about money and wealth. He was asking the speaker a question as I was returning to my seat after a break. He said: "Jesus taught that a rich man can't get into Heaven. How can you say that is it good to be rich?"
This one comment about a rich man and the Kingdom of Heaven is probably the single most misunderstood verse about money among all of the words of Jesus. And it is my candidate for the Bible verse most likely to produce people who are afraid of becoming rich out of fear for their own salvation.
The story of the rich man occurs three times in the Bible. In each case, Jesus talked about a rich man and the Kingdom of God or Kingdom of Heaven. In fact, Jesus did not say that a rich man can't get into Heaven. This means that the upset student at the seminar had misquoted the story. And by confusing the Kingdom of Heaven with Heaven, he had missed the real point of the story.
The point is that the Kingdom of Heaven is not the same as Heaven. The Kingdom of Heaven is about changing the economic reality of people living on planet Earth. It is not about an afterlife.
What is the best way to liberate people from such misunderstanding? The only way is to put the words of Jesus into context. What did the words mean in the context of the story? And what did the story mean in the context of the economic system?
The alternative is to live your life feeling guilty about wanting money and guilty about having it. This is what happened to the man at the seminar. He misunderstood the point of the story. As a result, he was stuck in the Eye of the Needle about money, without realizing that he had completely missed the point of the story.
Jesus was not saying that the rich cannot get into Heaven. Jesus was condemning an economic system that produced so much poverty. He was not insisting that people must be poor to get into Heaven.
