The rich and the kingdom of God (2)

The disciples were amazed at his words. But Jesus said again, "Children, how hard it is to enter the kingdom of God! (Mark 10:24)

The disciples were amazed at Jesus’ teaching that the rich were so hard to enter the kingdom of God. Was they shocked because of the fact that they also were not exceptional from the possession oriented life. They might not reach to such understanding. They might be perplexed before his teaching that was totally different from their traditional viewpoint.

For the Jews, to be a rich means to be blessed by God. The history of patriarch from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob till Joseph were consistent to such accumulation of wealth. The descendants also were the blessing of God. It includes a long life without any sickness. On the contrary, poverty is God’s discipline. A handicap and an incurable disease are also the result of sin.

Today Korean church might be captured by the composition of “Jesus success, unbelief failure”. They are worshipping success and extremely are afraid of failure. We cannot blame such attitude for it is human nature. The problem is that it is twisted as the centre of faith because church incites it candidly.

The prophet of the Old Testament delivered totally different message. They focused on the message of justice and peace rather than material blessing. At this point, the Old Testament is a historical struggle between a king’s political and economic ideology leaded by priest and prophesy divine message of prophet. If the disciples’, the common public of Israel, idea were closed to the thought of the former but Jesus was the latter.

A different world viewpoint cannot but crash. Including the Old and New Testament 2000 years of Christian history also is such crashing history. When such crash reveals as religion it is an experience of ‘wonder’ and as non-religious then it could be anger. Fortunately, the disciples’ experience was the former.