Glenn Beck would have you believe that Jesus wouldn't have stood for "social justice" or "economic redistribution" when those were actually the hallmarks of his teachings. Glenn Beck says that this is Marxism, but long before Marx, Jesus was preaching "It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven" and "Sell that thou hast, give it to the poor and come and follow me." Jesus' teachings regarding wealth and poverty were absoulutely clear. Jesus was totally against the accumulation of wealth.
19 ¶ Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
21 for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.24 ¶ No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.
25 ¶ Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?
26 Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?
27 Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature?
28 And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
29 and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.
30 Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?
31 Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed?
32 (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek:) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things.
33 But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.
34 ¶ Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.
Laying up treasures on earth is the exact equivalent of the accumulation of wealth. What could be clearer? It is this perversion of Jesus' teachings as espoused by Glenn Beck and others that is at the heart of the perversion of present day Christianity. As the Rev. James Martin so clearly lays out in the following post, Jesus' whole ministry was about helping the poor and economic redistribution. Did Jesus ever charge for healing the sick or feeding the multitudes? Glenn Beck, multimillionaire, would have you believe otherwise. But he's not the first one.
The Christian church for 2000 years has endeavored mightily to twist or ignore Jesus' teachings regarding a Christian's duty to live simply, not accumulate wealth, (or having accumulated it, to use it in the service of others) and devote themselves to helping the poor. Although the Catholic Church has comprised many elements of charity, it hasn't been totally blameless in the accumulation of wealth itself. In the 1500s Pope Leo sold indulgences to raise money for his art collection. The Vatican Museum holds one of the world's greatest art collections. It's one of the top tourist attractions in Rome. Leo's "indulgences," for which people paid money to get their relatives out of purgatory, led to the Protestant Reformation. But the Protestant Reformation was also blatantly in cahoots with the rising merchant class who wanted to be freed from the restrictions of helping the poor and from the guilt of wealth accumulation. They wanted to be freed from the sanctions on acquiring wealth.
In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Max Weber argues that Protestantism, especially Calvinism, turned Jesus' doctrine of repudiating wealth and helping the poor on its head:
In the book, Weber wrote that capitalism in northern Europe evolved when the Protestant (particularly Calvinist) ethic influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing their own enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment. In other words, the Protestant ethic was a force behind an unplanned and uncoordinated mass action that influenced the development of capitalism. This idea is also known as "the Weber thesis". Weber, however, rejected deterministic approaches, and presented the Protestant Ethic as merely one in a number of 'elective affinities' leading toward capitalist modernity. Weber's term Protestant work ethic has become very widely known. The work relates significantly to the cultural "rationalization" and so-called "disenchantment" which Weber associated with the modern West.
Protestant theology was fully in accord with bourgeois values giving full support to hard work, savings and the acquisition of wealth while preaching salvation by belief. In other words you didn't have to do anything to help the poor or anyone other than yourself. You just had to believe the proper line. This was similar to the communist mandate to believe the party line. The 16th century European Wars of Religion were all about getting people forcibly to believe what whoever in power thought were the correct beliefs. Christianity turned from a religion of action (helping the poor and suffering) to a religion that required correctness of belief system. It was also serendipitously fully compatible with the rise of capitalism and the ethic of selfishness. In fact it was preached that God looked favorably on those who acquired wealth since it was considered a virtue.
Today the Glenn Becks of the world are continuing the ignoble tradition of perverting Jesus' doctrine of taking action in helping the poor, turning it on its head, demonizing it as Marxism and preaching that greed is good, wealth is good, that everyone has a God given right to accumulate as much wealth as he or she can and that it is immoral for government to take that wealth away in the form of taxes and redistribute it to the poor. In particular one need not feel guilty about his or her wealth and one need not feel any compunction to share or give away a part of it. While Jesus did not say anything about the role of government in the redistribution of wealth, it doesn't take a leap of imagination to conceive that someone who was against the individual accumulation of wealth and advised the wealthy man to give his money to the poor would have advocated the use of government as a tool for the purpose of redistributing wealth.
Billionaire Pat Robertson and other wealthy evangelists and preachers have completely perverted Jesus' ethics and teachings by accumulating great wealth for themselves. Naturally, they continue the perversion of Christianity by emphasizing that it is not what you do with your life or the actions that you take to help your fellow man, but the correctness of your beliefs that will get you into Heaven. They, therefore, threaten you with Hell unless you believe as they say you should believe. The Biblical evidence in terms of Jesus' teachings is the total opposite of this. When his disciples asked him the night before he was crucified what they had to do to get into Heaven, to spend eternal life with Jesus, this is how he responded:
31"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.
34"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
37"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? 38When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? 39When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'
40"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'
41"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. 42For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, 43I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'
44"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'
45"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'
46"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
Could anything be clearer? Jesus did not say you had to believe anything to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. He said you had to take action, specifically action to help the poor and less fortunate.
For 2000 years and especially since the advent of Protestantism these words have been largely ignored as the capitalist ethic has taken ahold and become the real Gospel that Beck and others are preaching. It's religion in the service of capitalism, religion that is fully accomodated to the capitalist ethic of unlimited acquisition of wealth, religion in the service of utter and total selfishness on the order of Ayn Rand's The Virtue of Selfishness, and religion in the service of the utter and complete negation of government's role to diminish misery and equalize wealth in the world.
Correctness of religious belief has been substituted for Jesus' call to action. And I would say that this is nothing more than brainwashing. To have to believe anything so astutely as to prevent yourself from going to Hell is nothing more than mind fucking. It's brainwashing, pure and simple and there's no need for it. Jesus himself said it was unnecessary. He didn't call for it. He didn't mention anything about belief systems when his disciples asked him what they had to do to get into Heaven. What was necessary according to Him was, as liberation theologists like the Rev. James Martin preach, a preferential option for the poor. Unfortunately, Glen Beck and many others, who anal retentively want to hold on to their wealth, equate this with Marxism which they have taken pains to carefully demonize.
