A FORGOTTEN PIECE OF SCRIPTURE

Sir,

“Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into the kingdom of heaven,” Matthew 19 verse 24. If you religiously read your Bible, you will know that these are words which are recorded to have been said by Jesus.

Imagine Jesus saying these words today; what would be the reaction? Jesus says it is impossible for a rich man to enter heaven and I guess the loose-lipped and eloquent Peter would have said; “So dude, you mean no one can be saved then. You must be joking.” It is this superb reaction from the disciples which tells us that they understood impossible as ‘impossible’. Also, it is such a reaction which suggests that there was a sizeable number of rich people during Jesus’ time on earth.

Explanations

You can throw all sorts of explanations and interpretations to Jesus’ statement, but these words need neither explanation nor interpretation. The camel-through-the-needle-eye hyperbole simply exaggerates emphasis in what Jesus was conveying. Historical explanations that seek to shed some light on this hyperbole have been rendered baseless because they lack tangible evidence. So, we rather stick to exactly what Jesus said.  
I am not about to preach nor test your faith, but when last did you hear your church pastor reading from this portion of scripture?

Gospel

Here’s the thing, this is one portion of scripture which has coolly been ‘forgotten’ because it does not correlate to the kind of gospel we are pushing and the lives we are living.

Your mind must be already racing through all the many Bible verses which describe wealth as a sign of divine approval and blessedness, but don’t you think Jesus’ words contradict those many statements. Of course, it appears there’s some contradiction because in a world where everybody is scrambling for wealth, how would a modern day pastor preach against the accumulation of wealth? But then again, someone can come out and say I am missing the point and do not understand the word of God; to understand the Bible you need the Holy Spirit. I can accept that but still insist that Jesus’ words need no Holy Spirit because they are plainly simple to grasp.

A part of me believes Matthew 19:24 faces deletion from the Bible because people are no longer promised heaven but are encouraged to offer more to get blessed. In simpler terms, being blessed is a cooler way of saying ‘get rich and live a good life while on earth’. There’s less preaching about poor people inheriting heaven.

There’s no denying that there are greedy and money grabbing pastors who long realized the deliberate twisting of biblical texts and truths as a sure way of accumulating wealth at the expense of religiously blind followers.

Lest you think I am the advocate of the devil – because that’s what most staunch Christians conclude when you share views different from what they deem odd or unheard of – let me end with these words from Galileo Galilee; “I don’t feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.” This, therefore, is the same school of thought I subscribe to, which fuelled me to talk about Matthew 19:24.

P Dlamini

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