Religion & Spirituality
Most Christians know Jesus had a thing or two to say about rich people, and we can sometimes think that Jesus thought all wealth was bad. This leads to an uneasy state of mind where we feel guilty for having wealth but also are told that God blesses his children. What did Jesus actually say about money? Was he entirely against it? Is money always a sign of God's favour?In our parable today Jesus is going to tell us about a rich man and a poor man whose fortunes are reversed after they die. Many Christians are very familiar with this story. What a lot of those same Christians might not be familiar with, though, is that Jesus was not the first to tell a story like this.Jesus is retelling a very popular, well-known Egyptian folktale, that most of his hearers would have heard before. However, Jesus tells it with a twist at the end that, if they are listening, the Pharisees and other Jewish leaders would perceive as a direct and piercing criticism of their neglect of the poor and vulnerable.Far from a parable on what hell is like or a simple message of "wealth is bad," Jesus' message is a challenge to the Western church to pay attention to a responsibility we may have neglected: justice for the poor and vulnerable.Social justice can be seen as a "dirty word" in evangelicalism because some Christians understandably do not agree with all the ideologies of certain social justice movements. But, as Jesus, the Old Testament prophets, and God himself make abundantly clear throughout Scripture, we might be throwing the baby out with the bathwater, as well as throwing ourselves out of the Kingdom of God.