Yes, because he spent loads of time with the rich asshats of biblical times didn't he. ๐ Of course he hated them, he grew up in a working family struggling to get by.
Rich people who feck over poor people aren't going to heaven. Quit making Jesus into this all forgiving pussy! He was a man like any of us with the same feelings we have. Reread the Book of Amos and tell me I'm wrong.
Originally Posted by: DakotaT
1. Never said the rich who eff poor people were going to heaven.
2. Jesus was a man, but the only man in human history who kept the law of the Old Testament.
3. I thought the Book of Amos was in the Old Testament.
4. I thought the point of Amos's prophecy was that idolatry was damning. Which is the whole point of that bit about rich men and eyes of needles. Rich men aren't going to go to hell because they sin big time in their treatment of the poor/less fortunate. Rich men are going to hell because they treat wealth as an idol and because they are blinded by their wealth/success into thinking *they* can determine their fate.
But more than that. The rich man's biggest problem isn't even his idolatry of wealth. Plenty of poor people treat wealth as an idol. (See any number of reality shows for evidence.)
The rich man's biggest problem is that he is a success by the standards of the world and he therefore is more resistant to the teaching that it isn't the standards of this world that determine our salvation. No worldly standard can do that. Rich man or poor, compassionate man or greedy man, we're all dust in the end. Unless we admit that all our wealth, all our success, all our good decisions, all our bad decisions are as nothing. Unless that we have one route to salvation, and one only.
Treating others like shit is not a bar to heaven. Treating others wonderfully is not a guarantee.
The only way to heaven is putting your faith in Him and, because you have done so, trying again and again to follow the Great Commandment even though you keep failing to do so.
I know you want to go all Old Testament and make Jesus into this fire and brimstone guy. But he's no more that than he is the airy-fairy Kumbaya singer. He doesn't forgive all. He only forgives those who repent in faith sufficient to His standards for faith (which only He knows). But if someone meets those standards, then he *is* all forgiving. Or, rather, he *has been* all forgiving -- that's the bit about Good Friday; if we have faith sufficient unto Him, then our sins *have* been washed away. Even if ours are the sins of the Pharisee or the filthy, exploitative rich.
I'm a human being. I like to think I'm saved. And I have these thoughts (far too often, as these too are violations of the Great Commandment) that hope certain other human beings are not. But the reality is it isn't my call. It's never going to be my call, or yours, or Billy Grahams, or anyone else's but His. And, ahem, thank God for that. Because neither I nor you nor any of the rest of us are either competent or worthy of such decisions.
I don't believe all will be saved come Judgmentd Day. But I believe Jesus wants all of us to be saved. And I believe he cries for all those who won't be. Including every one of the shameless idolatrous rich men who couldn't overcome their success at worldly things to get through the eye of the needle.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)