Through The Eye Of A Needle
“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”
These are Jesus’ actual words, according to the Christian Bible. The first time I heard them was in school from Brother Comber. It was his favourite quote which he brought up often in ‘Moral Science’ — a class designed for those kids who weren’t Christian and had opted out of Catechism.
Strange, but these are words that you never hear from anyone’s lips these days. It’s almost as if there’s been a widespread agreement in the West, much of which still subscribes to the Christian tradition, to not mention them anymore. Why? Because it makes some influential people uncomfortable?
It’s like the Eighth Commandment in the Old Testament — which forms the basis of Jewish, Christian and Muslim belief systems — which also is rarely, if ever, heard of in these times.
Thou shalt not commit usury, is what the edict from atop Mount Sinai says in no uncertain terms. It proclaims: “If thou lend money to any of My people, even to the poor with thee, thou shalt not be to him as a creditor; neither shall ye lay upon him interest.”
One would think this would be inscribed in large letters on the walls of every bank and financial institution in the world. But it isn’t. It isn’t to be seen anywhere, even though the biblical words are straight-forward, unequivocal and undisputed.
You know, bible-thumpers will drive themselves deafeningly silly in (mis)quoting from the Bible while condemning gays, or arguing that women are inferior to men, or suggesting the validity of slavery, but they go silent on the commandment against usury, or the fate of the rich man through the eye of a needle.
I am familiar with the spins by some good souls on Jesus’ warning to the ‘rich’. Some say the eye of the needle is meant to signify a gate, others that the caveat applies to the load carried by a camel. No matter what the twist or the obfuscation, you cannot escape the fact that Jesus was saying that a man bloated by worldly riches has a zero chance of getting to ‘heaven’.
The question then is: what did he mean by ‘rich’?
The answer is neither enigmatic nor obscure. All you need to do is look around you at the world of today. You’ll see that Jesus was referring to one who accumulates and clings to wealth, property and things beyond even his wildest needs or those of his family.
I suggest to you that the only way a man can amass surplus wealth today is by depriving others of their fair share. By any definition, yours or mine, it involves dishonesty, theft, and copious amounts of greed. In a single word, the practice is evil.
I marvel at those who are callous enough in this world to practice such obscenity, and think that by merely going to church every now and then — or to a synagogue, gurdwara, mosque or mandir — will help them finagle a way through the eye of the needle. How off the mark can you get!
