Christianity was always for the poor (2024)
jacobin.com
jacobin.com
Fast-forward to today: most people aren’t living under that kind of direct economic violence. In fact, doing what early Christians did — selling everything and giving it away — would often create more suffering. Try paying for healthcare or your kid’s college without savings. In a modern context, investing, and wealth-building can be acts of love and protection — not greed. I don't think it'd make me a better man and father to just subject my entire family to poverty.
So maybe the point isn’t “money = evil,” but “systems that enrich some by grinding down others = evil.” The ethical challenge is still valid — just adapted for a world where your 401(k) isn’t funded by enslaving your neighbor.
It's not that we should interpret the Bible differently and make it say whatever we want; but that like any story, we need to look at the context within which it took place.
Only because the present (American) system is set up as such.
Today we enjoy countless benefits due to workers’ movements of the past. These benefits were fought every step of the way by the business class. It’s highly ironic to attribute all this to capitalism.
[1] https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/04/01/l...
For hundreds of millions of people they are a basic human right and completely free.
Never had a job? Doesn’t matter, still free.
Come to Europe. PhD candidates are not treated as students. They are treated as adults, and get the salary of an (entry-level) engineer with a master degree.
You get paid a living wage to do a PhD in most countries actually.
If this is about (your) kids? Send them to Europe for higher education. Many universities with great international ranking have virtually no tuition. But they can be quite competitive in terms of getting a passing grade.
Indeed. Chemical Engineer that has always loved programming + InfoSec to include it in some way, shape, or form on what I do...
I took a chance during Covid and was fortunate to land DevSecOps-y roles. Not a 10x engineer by any means, but I have been working my way through Knuth's TAoCP and slowly learning to love lower level.
Living now in the Netherlands, but didn't know that there were such types of benefits to studying a PhD.
I'll definitely need to have a good think (and budgetary assessments as well) ... having to pay rent in the Netherlands due to the (probably artificial) housing crisis feels like a seriously limiting factor to afford studying.
With all due respect my friend. That is 100% how it still works right now. That is how it has always worked. The reason you think otherwise is because you are not poor.
It seems to me economic growth is the proof that money is not a zero-sum game, and that one can create value, that creates jobs, opportunities and a betterment in life across the board. A tide that lifts all boats.
You can validate that by looking at world economies. The countries with no innovation/entrepreneurship aren't better off for having less people building wealth: everybody is just poorer. In contrast, more capitalist wealth-oriented economies tend to create more opportunities.
None of this has much to do with economic growth, economic growth is an artificial construct on top of the material reality, used to justify a specific way of viewing the economy and the way things are structured.
This is turning our eye to our own choices of wealth rather than looking to the wealthiest in our society and asking ourselves if such hoarding of wealth is just, while we are surrounded by things like homeless encampments. Surely such hoarding is “grinding others down.”
One of the question was “Do the nobles follow him or the weak?". It's reported that Abu Sufyan answered: “The weak and poor among us follow him. As for the high born and noble, none follow him.” The Emperor after that replied “I then asked you if the noble or the weak followed him. You answered that the weak followed him. Even so has it been with all the prophets, such having followed them.” [2]
[1] Heraclius:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclius
[2] The Hadith of Heraclius | Part 2 | Heraclius Interrogates Abu Sufyan on the Prophet:
https://www.aljumuah.com/the-hadith-of-heraclius-part-2-hera...
And Christ straight up kicking out business from the church (as in he flipped their tables over, literally):
There is a theory that this was a critical factor in how fast the early Christianity spread across the Roman Empire - that these newly-bankrupted believers had no choice but to travel and try recruit new members to the Church, in a Ponzi-scheme-like fashion (except nobody was cashing out).
But the Jesus movement led by James the Just and Peter after his death probably was, if the Ebionites were their 2nd-4th century descendants.
Now the crusade’s definitely went awry and became an excuse for Venetians and others to take land and power. Especially by the fourth crusade and sacking of Constantinople, etc.
all American political parties are part of the global left in general
America is a fundamentally leftist nation. The social issues American political parties fight over are not applicable in most parts of the world. In most parts of the world left wing political movements (communists) hold the same social lines as the GOP.
From a property perspective, America never had to deal with land redistribution because America never had a feudal system that required it. This property rights make sense in America in a way they didnt in feudal systems.
For example the communist party of Kerala enacted major land reform to redistribute land, but now that the land is redistributed, ownership carries on as normal. America had the opportunity to skip the first step.
Americans have no idea how good they have it
I do not deny that, compared to places where girls are not educated, America is far more progressive as a nation. That's the baseline parties in the US operate in; it is obviously different in other places.
However, it is common to identify the left as championing progressive causes and the right as aiming to preserve existing (or to return to prior) power structures.
The GOP is very definitely a right wing party, even if the baseline it operates in would be regarded as left wing in more oppressive nations.
The issue is that those who label themselves leftists today are indulging in nihilism believing the very institutions that were once far left are somehow evil aristocratic institutions. This sort of nihilism is suicidal and stupid
It would not outrage evangelical conservatives at all. It is what they believe in, except they put it into nicer words. Women should be helpmeet for their husbands. They should homeschool and focus on family, need education only to the level necessary for that.
As for Republicans, they consistently vote for policies to achieve the above.
> America is a fundamentally leftist nation
If you define the left in some completely novel way, maybe.
> America never had to deal with land redistribution because America never had a feudal system that required it.
You might want to read more about how America came to be. The land distribution was rather large issue there.
I don't think it is an absurd notion. The founding fathers maybe wouldn't be outright Montagnards by the original standards of left-right division in the French Revolution that would start soon after, but they would definitively be on the left. The US liberal democratic republic with no official class system and at least a theoretical commitment to individual freedom would be to the left of almost all European governments until the 20th century, if you don't discount too many points for slavery and its aftermath.
My opinion, is that the fundamentally leftist ideology of liberal democracy has been so ideologically victorious it is now the centre, so people now talk anything but socialism is right-wing.
In fact, after being on HN since 2008, I have never encountered someone as wrong as you are.
They are pushing for policies that would do that in effect if not in name. They are gutting public education (which the lower class uses) and trying to force women into motherhood by preventing abortions. Many women who have abortions do so because they are trying to get an education and a child would disrupt that.
I don’t think you understand leftism or American politics
Modern Christianity is probably closer to what Justinian codified [1] (to when the first Bibles date [2]) than earlier traditions. (Not an expert.)
[1] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Justinian-I/Ecclesiasti...
https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2013/01/15/a_triu...
I vaguely remember that in Asian countries this is big too.
Feel free to seek out what the sharia has to say about usury (strictly forbidden) and what Islam considers a good way to use wealth (hint: giving to the poor, building orphanages, madrasa and mosques, doing pilgrimages). You will be hard pressed to find a monotheist religion which really likes the rich to be honest.
I’m not going to give you about an explanation about all the way Islam has changed and become multiples since the 7th century because that would require a book length essay rather than a paragraph but you get my point.
A "translation" of the Bible is always considered moving from the original text, not from the likely language of the speaker.
There are evidences that Matthew wasn't written in Koine but Syriac and that significant fragments of the Gospels (which is what is quoted) are translation from Aramaic.
The author of this article is a religious historian, which explains a lot of the "circuitous" language (his word).
But to me, the whole article is just "blah blah blah", pointless exposition with no real bearing on current reality.
Whatever may, or may not, have been the case in the Levant 2000 years ago (and no one really knows); this is 2025, and according to many US "christians" the most famous quote of the little bebe jesus is "f_ck the poor, let 'em rot in the gutter". Ironically, failing to acknowledge that many of them fit into that very category.
If the author would like to differ with the ideals of christianity regarding wealth, maybe he should write to the vatican? You know, that autonomous country inside of Italy, with it's own central bank, and storehouses of looted nazi treasure. The current pope aside, they haven't exactly been a savior of the poor historically.
I'm sure many earnest, caring, giving christians will be downvoting my post. But a reality of our world, outside of philosophical sophistry. is that religion has been the source of more murder and mayhem than any other single cause.
It may have been originally a practice of the poor, but the only reason it's still a phenomenon in the modern world is because the wealthy and powerful have promoted and used it as a tool to rile the poor into dismembering each other, to see which rich guy gets the goods.
Sorry, I'm an evangelical atheist for life...
Cite that's not to your imagination?
https://newrepublic.com/article/176117/prosperity-gospel-chr...
and one citing the "optimal economic output" theory of the real lib-tards:
https://thereformedconservative.org/christians-engaging-in-s...
For any large heterogeneous groups, one can only speak statistically. Many "christians" do still seek to help the poor, but there is a significant emerging trend, especially in the "prosperity gospel" that says god blesses the rich.
or, to quote another fictional character: "Greed is good"
Cooperation is a more productive strategy than competition. The primary reason to practice it, is because we'll all be better off.
However with competition, a few players are able to reap even greater rewards individually, in spite of overall productivity being less.
Therefore, competition favors the victors. As for the "losers", see the hyperbolic quote in my original post...
Consider: the core teaching of Christianity is that a certain person, Jesus of Nazareth, was the promised Messiah (the Anointed One, King of Jews, a role written about at length by the Old Testament), that He was the Son of God, that He had both a fully divine and a fully human nature, that He died a painful death on the cross as a price for forgiveness of all human sins and direct access to God for every person, and that He literally rose again from the dead three days after that. That's the core of the faith, that's the most important part that makes Christianity, Christianity. Those are the things you need to agree you believe in so that you can legitimately call yourself a Christian. The rest is secondary.
Now tell me, how does this have anything to do with economics or the forgiveness of literal debts? The Bible is very direct and quotes Jesus as saying: "My kingdom is not of this world. If My kingdom were of this world, My servants would be fighting so that I would not be handed over to the Jews; but as it is, My kingdom is not of this realm." (John 18:36). This verse outright contradicts any interpretation that Christianity is about political power or concerns on this side of the divide between mortality and the eternity (parenthetically, this is the reason why to me what American Evangelism developed into is so disturbing). It should be something of concern, but not the concern. Christianity is not communism. Christianity is not benevolent philanthropy. Christianity is none of those things that one tries to pin it down, if one adopts a frame free of God as the core consideration. Christianity is about trying to establish a connection with God, while it's not too late to do that. Trying to reduce it to a cause revolving around money in some way is absurd in the magnitude of misunderstanding on display here.
I know that many here will be sceptics or non-believers, so many will skip this comment. But if you want to critique Christianity, at least do so in the spirit of not misrepresenting fundamental claims and tenets of the faith you disagree with. I trust that intellectual honesty is the name of the game on HN, and that's all I ask for.
And looking beyond early Christianity, one can pick any period of Christianity's history and find numerous rival doctrines.
I am an atheist but I was raised Christian (Greek Orthodox). I read all four Gospels as a teenager in their original Koine Greek - Greek is my maternal language and I am lucky enough that I still understand its version spoken two thousand years ago.
From my reading, and ignoring any later interpretation, what you say is partly right, but you are leaving out a very big part of what Christ taught and what he did when he was with his students. Yes, he claimed he was the son of God, yes he claimed that those who believe in him will find the kingdom of heaven, yes his followers believed he rose from the dead and ascended to the heavens (? "ανελήθφη εις τους ουρανους") afterwards. And that he will return and judge right and wrong in a second coming (that's actually from the Apocalypse). And all that- all that's cannon and nobody denies it.
But it makes no sense to deny the fact that while he was here, among us, he defended widows and orphans, the poor, the weak, the downtrodden, he fed the hungry, he healed the paralytics and the blind, and the lepers, and he recruited his followers (among whom Paul, or Saul, was not) from fishers and peasants, and called on them to be "fishers of men". And there is no denying all the parables, mentioned in the article, in which the unrighteous, the rich, the powerful, the selfish and the greedy get their just desserts. There is no denying the parable of the Good Samaritan and Christ's commandment to him who has two chitons, to give one to whomever hasn't. There is no denying that he attacked the usurers in the temple in rage, crying that they desecrated his father's house, no denying that he spoke truth to power and held the feet of the scribes and the pharissees over the fire for their corruption and greed.
Christ preached love, and compassion, and philanthropy, for all his followers while they live in the world. And he didn't just preach them! Those are important, fundamental responsibilities that the faithful must observe if they are to gain entry into the kingdom of heaven, after his second coming. His kingdom is not of this world, as you remind us, but to gain entry to his kingdom one must live their life as a Christian in this world. And "it is easier for a camel to pass a needle's eye than a rich man through the gates of heaven" (my liberal translation, from memory).
And there is no denying the fact that his teaching was for his followers to share. Share everything, like he shared everything with them. "This is my flesh, eat from it. This is my blood, drink from it". Λάβετε, φάγετε τοῦτο ἐστί τό σῶμα μου, τό ὑπέρ ὑμῶν κλώμενον εἰς ἄφεσιν ἁμαρτιῶν. Take, eat, this is my body, parceled for you to relieve your sins. The most sacred rite of Christianity, even the most modernised, Westernised Christianity, far removed from its Eastern roots, is the rite of communion.
The author of the piece did not hallucinate. Christianity is a form of sacred communism. Maybe the message was twisted and its meaning lost as it travelled in time and space away from its origins, but the message was loud and clear when Christ was here: share everything with your brothers and sisters and take care of each other in this world otherwise you will not be with Christ in the other.
In a novel tangential appreciation of Ο Τελευταίος Πειρασμός, O Teleftéos Pirasmós I hope you enjoy a local school production of a Greek classic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-MucVWo-Pw
That Jesus claimed to be the son of God is actually contested among bible scholars. See e.g.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis%27s_trilemma#Criticism
8 Λέγει αὐτῷ Φίλιππος· Κύριε, δεῖξον ἡμῖν τὸν πατέρα, καὶ ἀρκεῖ ἡμῖν. 9 λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Ἰησοῦς· [l]Τοσούτῳ χρόνῳ μεθ’ ὑμῶν εἰμι καὶ οὐκ ἔγνωκάς με, Φίλιππε; ὁ ἑωρακὼς ἐμὲ ἑώρακεν τὸν πατέρα· [m]πῶς σὺ λέγεις· Δεῖξον ἡμῖν τὸν πατέρα; 10 οὐ πιστεύεις ὅτι ἐγὼ ἐν τῷ πατρὶ καὶ ὁ πατὴρ ἐν ἐμοί ἐστιν; τὰ ῥήματα ἃ ἐγὼ [n]λέγω ὑμῖν ἀπ’ ἐμαυτοῦ οὐ λαλῶ, ὁ δὲ [o]πατὴρ ἐν ἐμοὶ [p]μένων ποιεῖ τὰ ἔργα [q]αὐτοῦ. 11 πιστεύετέ μοι ὅτι ἐγὼ ἐν τῷ πατρὶ καὶ ὁ πατὴρ ἐν ἐμοί· εἰ δὲ μή, διὰ τὰ ἔργα αὐτὰ [r]πιστεύετε. 12 ἀμὴν ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν, ὁ πιστεύων εἰς ἐμὲ τὰ ἔργα ἃ ἐγὼ ποιῶ κἀκεῖνος ποιήσει, καὶ μείζονα τούτων ποιήσει, ὅτι ἐγὼ πρὸς τὸν [s]πατέρα πορεύομαι· 13 καὶ ὅ τι ἂν αἰτήσητε ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου τοῦτο ποιήσω, ἵνα δοξασθῇ ὁ πατὴρ ἐν τῷ υἱῷ· 14 ἐάν τι αἰτήσητέ [t]με ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου [u]ἐγὼ ποιήσω.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=%CE%9A%CE%91%CE...
This takes place during the last supper, after Judas has left. Philip asks whether Jesus can't just show them "the father" and Jesus says that anyone who has seen him, has seen the father, because the father is in him and he is in the father, and that he does not speak by himself but the father speaks in him and acts his (the father's) acts. Then he tells his disciples to believe that he is in the father and the father is in him (again) and that anyone who believes in Jesus will be able to do what Jesus does and more besides (I think he means miracles) because Jesus is going towards the father.
Finally:
καὶ ὅ τι ἂν αἰτήσητε ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου τοῦτο ποιήσω, ἵνα δοξασθῇ ὁ πατὴρ ἐν τῷ υἱῷ· 14 ἐάν τι αἰτήσητέ [t]με ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου [u]ἐγὼ ποιήσω.
My quick translation:
"and what you ask for in my name, that I will make true, so that the father is glorified through the son. If you ask for something in my name I will make it true"
So he's clearly saying he's the son of the father; and it's difficult to see what other father he means but god. I don't know why bible scolars have to go and split hairs here, it's very obvious what the Evangelist is saying Jesus is saying, you have to squint very hard to see something else.
There's plenty more of that from the same chapter and in other places in John and the others. And then you can read the passages on the cross where people come and make fun of him for having said he's the son of god.
People are assholes, trolling a man dying on a cross, but either there was a nasty rumour going around or Jesus really did call himself the son of god and that got up peoples' noses. On the other hand there's the bit about calling himself the King of the Judeans, which he seems to have vehemently denied in front of Pilate, so who knows? To his students anyway he seems to have clearly said he's the son of the father and the students certainly believed it.
As you say there are allusions to "son of God" in the other gospels but it's far less frequent and more ambiguous, and may well have been interpreted/revised in light of the experience of Jesus' resurrection.
I suppose bible scholars are splitting hairs, but as programmers we know that sometimes you have to split a few hairs to get the bottom of things.
The Christianity I’m familiar with (Eastern Orthodox) places radical humility and fraternal equality starkly in the foreground. (“I believe, Lord, and I confess, that You are truly the Christ, the Son of the living God, Who came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the first.”) Any wealth is God's wealth; any beggar, criminal, or "undesirable" is a fellow human that needs to be lifted, not scorned. Spiritual movement forward comes by the grace of God against the kicking and screaming of earthly attachments. There is no place for “you” in this religion.
Is it an economic movement? No. But it directly calls believers to let go of the things that bind them to the material world, wealth in particular, and to share whatever they have with others. (“If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.") Indeed, ascetic monks who live in caves and continuously pray for humanity under their breath are seen as coming closest to a Christ-like existence.
That is a far cry from the distorted version of the faith being peddled by mega-churches and echoing in the halls of American power. Apparently, believing in Jesus is sufficient without all the other inconvenient bits.
Anyway, while it may be a mistake to label Christianity “communist” as a whole, nothing in the article remotely jumps out to me as egregious or revisionist as far as the most traditional variant of the religion is concerned. (And, FWIW, this label should not be confused with big-C Communism, which is an explicitly anti-religious movement.)
> It's mind-boggling that one would choose to cherry-pick what amounts to a few chapters of a far larger body of teachings, and re-interpret Christianity as an political movement
Knowing God, knowing Christ, is supposed to change you. (If it doesn't, maybe you're headed for "Depart from Me, for I never knew you".) It's supposed to change you to love people, even your enemies. It's supposed to change you to not love the things of this world - money and power. You're supposed to live that out.
So, yes, to first order, Christianity is very much not about money or politics. It's about you and God. But to second order, it's about everything. It's about caring for the widow and the orphan and the alien. It's about not ripping other people off, but instead giving to meet the needs of people around you. It's about loving people, even if they're not in your church or of your race or your political persuasion. It's everything you do, and how and why you do it.
Christianity is Jesus Christ substitutes the sin of a faithful man or woman with His righteousness.
You cannot buy faithfulness, and you cannot obtain righteousness through good works on your own.
The target has never been against wealth, but the love of money, or trusting in the things of this lifetime. For instance, Proverbs 11:28 says not to trust in wealth. Mark 8:36, Jesus states that if you seek wealth over everything else, what good is it when you die? In 1 Timothy 6:17-19, Paul encourages Timothy in his leadership to instruct wealthy people to not put their hope in their wealthy, but to do good with what God has given them.
In article "rich young man is mentioned" - uh, oh, hi should give everything! Let's see:
- first Jesus answered: obey commandments in your life - that rich man duty too.
- then when he answered he do that since his young years Jesus proposed him to leave everything behind - it was explanation what this man was looking for: heart tied to earthy things. And invitation.
Not everyone should be monk but definitely we need more peoples devoting lives for others good: nurses, teachers.
And that story shows bright like sunlight that riches make your life miserable - and this article tries to state exactly reverse thing :> Who you trust? I recommend Jesus over Lucis.