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Comment by jordanb | Hacker News Reader

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It is important to contextualize this statement. It appears in three gospels, but in each it is in response to a rich man asking what he must do to inherit eternal life. Each instance of the story is told with slightly different emphasis (or they could be similar stories - i.e. this was his standard "line" for rich people), but Luke's account includes 18:27 He replied, "What is impossible for mere humans is possible for God" NET

This does not mean it's okay to hoard wealth at the expense of others, of course.

I think that Saint Basil the Great's sermon to the rich[1] is instructive for a historical and reasonable Christian instruction on the rich.

Let me add an excerpt I really appreciate: But how do you make use of money? By dressing in expensive clothing? Won’t two yards of tunic suffice you, and the covering of one coat satisfy all your need of clothes? But is it for food’s sake that you have such a demand for wealth? One bread-loaf is enough to fill a belly. Why are you sad, then? What have you been deprived of? The status that comes from wealth? But if you would stop seeking earthly status, you should then find the true, resplendent kind that would conduct you into the kingdom of heaven.

And one more because I can't help myself: Since, then, the wealth still overflows, it gets buried underground, stashed away in secret places.... A strange madness, that, when gold lies hidden with other metals, one ransacks the earth; but after it has seen the light of day, it disappears again beneath the ground.

(The whole thing is worth a read, Basil just went hard non stop)

1. https://stjohngoc.org/st-basil-the-greats-sermon-to-the-rich...

The message IS clear...but I don't see the same message as you. Solomon was /beyond/ rich. So was David. So were countless people that are destined for heaven(as in, Jesus describes them being in heaven in the new testament).

Those people all did some things we can see and talk about - and possibly many things we did not see, do not know, and can not talk about. At the very least, those people we know are in/destined for heaven: followed God, feared God, obeyed God.

I don't believe their being or not being rich is part of the calculus for "getting into heaven" as you said. Being rich may make you less likely to do those 3 things though, in which case you would correlate richness with not getting into heaven.

'I don't believe their being or not being rich is part of the calculus for "getting into heaven" as you said' -> I think viewing that some rich people go to heaven as Jesus not explicitly condemning rich people (which he clearly does multiple times) and not him showing the unlimited power of God's grace is a misreading of the text.

The subsequent verses are much less quoted but very explicit about this: And looking at them, Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

This is supported by other text where Jesus says explicitly what people should do with money:

Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me"

So anyway it's very clear that using money selfishly (which is what many Christians do) is clearly not what God wants from us, it's just that God can love us for our imperfections and sin, which in my view is sorta the main idea behind the New Testament. God wants us to love each other like he loves us, and he would certainly give up his money for us since he even gave up his own son, but accepts that we will be more selfish than that.

> God wants us to love each other like he loves us, and he would certainly give up his money for us since he even gave up his own son, but accepts that we will be more selfish than that.

I love how you put that, and wholeheartedly agree.

It continuously blows my mind how few people on the internet understand the distinction between the Old and New Testaments.

It is not that easy. If we look at historical context we can see that for example in judaism they have this midrash:

"The Holy One said, open for me a door as big as a needle's eye and I will open for you a door through which may enter tents and camels."

Sounds familiar? The meaning of that saying in jewish context is that we cant really understand Gods abilities.

Could the christian saying mean something else? Sure. We dont even know if jesus even said that exact phrase.

My point is more that there are often more than one interpretation of vague sayings from 2000 years that been through an oral tradition, translations and copying.

In your example the saying suggests that a Camel going through the eye of a needle is an extraordinary event like a rich person going to heaven in the traditional Christian saying.

It is incredibly clear and without nuance nor is there a reason to suppose it's an issue with translation. Its also consistent philosophically nor is it the sort of thing that the powerful would want inserted when they compiled works.

If you disregard it then it makes more sense to disregard the entire bible.

> In your example the saying suggests that a Camel going through the eye of a needle is an extraordinary event

So is the Son of God descending to earth and being nailed to a cross for the sins of man.

No, it is not "incredible" clear what ancient jews meant by that saying. Hence the wildly different interpretations. Are you really saying that it is incredible clear that the jewish understanding of the jewish saying is wrong and only your christian understanding is correct?

Half the planet either explicitly or implicitly believes in the just world hypothesis and America especially valorizes, empathize s with, and seeks to emulate the rich even when they do nothing to earn their wealth and on average do enormous harm.

It is therefore hardly shocking that some fail to see the plain meaning of the language and their confusion needn't imply actual credible controversy.

It is pretty clear that the saying you provided and the Christian saying are different sayings with different meanings that share the metaphor about a Camel going through the eye of a needle.

The surrounding context is Jesus telling a rich person to give his material wealth away because it is barrier to salvation. It is clear that focus on the temporal comforts privided by wealth stunts ones need for spirituality. The man cannot give up his attachment to wealth and gives up on salvation in the Christian sense.

It is hard for me to get from this that the rich are especially virtuos and therefore the only lesson was intended to be taught is that not even the rich can be saved without god.

It seems very clear that wealth was a direct impediment to salvation.

You have not provided any evidence for your claim that there is no connection between the "christian" saying and the prexisting jewish saying. The schoolars disagree with you that there exists only one single historical intepretation of the saying. You are just reading in what you personally want the text to read. Just like all fundamentalists.

You don't need to prove a negative. For any trillion combination of sayings which share 4 or more words in common no evidence exists for the connection of one to the other. The words are manifestly different save for using the same idiom about a camel through the eye of a needle.

They are again different in meaning with one being that attachment wealth is a barrier to being saved and the other being through god all things are possible. If you believe a plain interpretation of the text is in accurate the onus is on you to prove why and you haven't.

I find it interesting that they attack the camel and needle analogy when the previous line is: "I tell you the truth, it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." That is a pretty definitive statement and makes it clear that the camel and needle line is metaphor for the difficulty.

Wealth is not universally maligned in the Biblical tradition. Job is afforded material rewards in this world after his tribulation.

Prosperity gospel is plainly contradicted by the Bible (see again: The Book of Job), but so is the Redditor Christianity you are espousing.

There’s a whole sect who believes the opposite- that you are more spiritual and blessed by God the wealthier you are. Somehow being material wealthy is now a signal of your spirituality. :shrug:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology

This is the outcome when pearls are cast before swine.

You just need to employ the right strategy to deal with it. Possible options include:

  1. Claim that "camel" or "needle" are a mistranslation or symbolic.
  2. Separate financial life from your spiritual beliefs to avoid inner conflict.
  3. View wealth as a sign of God’s blessing or something used to do good, making it feel morally acceptable.
  4. Emphasize other passages that support generosity or success.

In general, it's easy to overcome cognitive dissonance in religion. You just accept additional beliefs that soften it.

In the flavor of religion in which I grew up, it's easier to just quickly pray for forgiveness than to bother justifying anything. The most vile genocidal maniac could pray for thirty seconds right before death and get into heaven. Why bother following rules when someone already served the punishment?

5. Interpret that the passage, especially in the context of the subsequent verses, is about the need for God to get into heaven. That is; it's claiming that wealth cannot empower people to find their own route in, absent spirituality.

With modern technology you can probably liquefy a camel sufficiently that you force it through the needle. Jesus ain't said nothing 'bout no hydrochloric acid and pneumatic presses.

Probably easier to just make a really big needle

Yes, but that would be less entertaining :-)

It's not about the money but the ego.

The two are very difficult to separate though, I've met very few who could handle a lot of money without becoming corrupted.

This. There are a lot of biblical teaching about money and how to handle it, and to multiply it. Unfortunately people tend to make that an end unto itself and that was never the point.

Hence the Gospel of Supply Side Jesus, remade in the image of America.

https://imgur.com/gallery/gospel-of-supply-side-jesus-bCqRp

Brilliant!!

Have you ever even read the passage?

> 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

> 26 And they were greatly astonished, saying among themselves, “Who then can be saved?”

> 27 But Jesus looked at them and said, “With men it is impossible, but not with God; for with God all things are possible.”

This sure doesn't look like ancient Hebrew to me.

Well yeah, the gospels were written in Koine Greek

That is not true: with God all things are possible.

Could God make a man so rich that even he wouldn't let him into heaven?

Wouldnt or couldnt?

"I don’t know. When my bird was looking at my computer monitor I thought, ‘That bird has no idea what he’s looking at.’ And yet what does the bird do? Does he panic? No, he can’t really panic, he just does the best he can. Is he able to live in a world where he’s so ignorant? Well, he doesn’t really have a choice. The bird is okay even though he doesn’t understand the world. You’re that bird looking at the monitor, and you’re thinking to yourself, ‘I can figure this out.’ Maybe you have some bird ideas. Maybe that’s the best you can do.”

No. Similarly, God cannot make a married bachelor, because this is nonsensical. The conversation then turns to questions about how we define God’s omnipotence: Doesn’t the existence of any sort of limitation placed upon God imply he is bound by higher principles and thus not omnipotent?

Possibly; but this may just be a lack of imagination on our part. For example, can God abanlqhgfznsjks? Probably not, because that particular string was just a random assortment of keys that I pressed; it conveys nothing meaningful, so to ask if God could abanlqhgfznsjks might not really be asking anything at all.

the human mind fails at infinities

i don't know why we find this so obvious when discussing math and yet so difficult when discussing God

I believe God can abanlqhgfznsjks. If a lot of bottoms can, than surely God can too.

The bible portrays God as explicitly being able to do nonsensical things, like creating a burning bush that is somehow not consumed. That it was on fire, but also not on fire, at the same time, was proof of a miracle.

And more generally, that's just the nature of the supernatural in any religion. If what was going on was entirely logical, it wouldn't be a miracle.

some people freak out about the idea of a burning bush talking at people

i freak out about what the bush said: I AM THAT I AM

the first recorded instance of recursion, spoken in a language famous for its lack of abstraction, to an uneducated goat herder, communicating an idea that even the greeks struggled with thousands of years later in a much more sophisticated and leisured culture

That’s not what that means at all, your inserting modern values into the parable. In the culture of that time, the rich were viewed with high regard. The understanding was that if you were rich, then clearly you were in a favorable relationship to God because he was blessing you with wealth. With that understanding, the sentence that directly follows the parable makes a lot more sense: “When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, ‘Who then can be saved?’” A modern telling of the parable would replace the rich man with a monk who’s taken a vow of poverty to run an orphanage in a God-forsaken third world country. The parable was intended to portray an absurdly impossible standard to entry; the whole point being that human merit, status, or morality, regardless of however the cultural context may define that, does not afford one any distinctive advantage before God.

Got some links to support this interpretation?

The rich is firmly attached to wordly things, they would rather sink with their gold than let it go. The monk that you've described is attached to his self by training it with sophisticated hardships. He hoards inner peace just like the rich hoards gold. Both are practicing the culture of personality. They need to leave that baggage behind, their self-centered life and their polished personas, and reorient their life around helping others. Once they do this, an enormous internal conflict will emerge - the struggle between their selfish and selfless sides, and at the end of this path they'll enter the kingdom of God.

Those who want to climb to the mountain top need to leave everything behind. The higher they climb, the longer will be the fall if they look back for a moment and slip on this narrow path, longing for what they left behind.

You are just wrong. The Bible never says that rich people aren't getting into heaven. Only that it will be difficult.

The whole invention of the “Eye of the Needle” gate fiction is an attempt to rewrite a Gospel statement by Jesus that it is difficult-to-the-point-of-impossibility into one that it is merely difficult-in-the-sense-of-mild-inconvenience.

What's missed is that the camel/needle thing is a joke.

The "eye of the needle" was a (very small) gate into Jerusalem.

To get a camel through that gate, it has to lower its head and crawl on its knees.

So Jesus was calling rich people camels; camels can be very arrogant beasts so it fits.

There are no primary sources for this

Dan McClellan, a biblical scholar (a practising Mormon, but not an apologist) discusses that here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlzR39RVQKs

This is an incredibly common and frustrating bit of bad theology. There's no textual or archeological basis for it, and the really interesting mystery is where exactly this myth even came from.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studie...

I, too, used to be a “preachermon”. I never found evidence that this argument was anything but apocryphal.

It would make a better argument to find a text describing how Jesus referred to a rich person (real or parable) and said, “this rich person gets it, be like him”. Direct, and without the mental backflips.

it is, however, very easy to find other ways jesus has phrased the idea "the rich don't get into heaven". In matthew he says the last shall be first and the first shall be last, in acts he has his disciples sell all of their stuff and pool the money, and in several other places he tells the faithful to give all of their stuff away.

none of this is at all true, none of it is supported by the historical record, none of it is supported by the rest of jesus's teachings (which explicitly and repeatedly state that the rich are not welcome in heaven), there never was an "eye of the needle" gate, no one even posited the existence of such a gate until the 9th century CE and the other gospels use different phrasing of "a camel passing through the eye of a needle" that indicate that "the eye of a needle" isn't a proper noun referring to a singular entity with a commonly-known name.

This is literally not true by scripture; Abraham was very rich, and is considered righteous because of his faith. He did not withhold even his own son from God. Money did not own Abraham's faith.

Job refused to curse or condemn God even when he lost most of his family and all of his holdings - his friends tried to tell him that because he lost his riches, he had obviously sinned, but he refused this. He gained back the things he lost, because of his faith in God.

Job 1:20-22

20 Then Job stood up, tore his robe, shaved his head, fell to the ground, bowed very low, 21 and exclaimed:

“I left my mother’s womb naked, and I will return to God naked. The Lord has given, and the Lord has taken. May the name of the Lord be blessed.”

22 Job neither sinned nor charged God with wrongdoing in all of this.

In those times, rich people were considered blessed by God, poor people or those afflicted with disease were considered cursed by God. People afflicted from birth were said to have been "born in sin" due to the sins of their parents.

The Pharisees and Sadducees were wealthly, influential people who preached exactly this. The Sadducees in particular didn't believe in an afterlife, and so were focused on only the "here and now" and material things of this world. Jesus specifically called them out to let them know their wealth wouldn't get them into heaven, and their success was not a sign of righteousness.

Jesus distinctly preached that money could not buy salvation, and that those whose focus was on money could not focus on God, and would therefore be condemned. He explicitly called out Zaccheus, a tax collector, when Zaccheus promised to repay any money he'd taken in bad faith four times over and to give away half of what he owned to the poor:

Luke 19:9-10: 9 Jesus said to him,"Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost."

Zaccheus probably had a lot of money left even when he was done, but the point is that money was no longer the priority in his life.

God may choose to bless people with prosperity, but your wallet doesn't make you righteous. It doesn't make you unrighteous either - your actions and your faith, or lack thereof condemn you. The whole of the Law is:

Matthew 22:34-40

34 When the Pharisees learned that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, 35 and, to test him, one of them, a lawyer, asked this question, 36 “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?”

37 Jesus said to him, “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ 38 This is the greatest and the first commandment. 39 The second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ 40 Everything in the Law and the Prophets depends on these two commandments.”

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