Chapter 4 - His Teachings About Wealth

One day Jesus was teaching the people, and He said, in substance;

"Why are you worried about things to eat, and to wear." Look at the birds; they have not a fraction of your intelligence; they do not know enough to sow, or reap, or gather provision for the future; and yet they have no famine. You, with your great intelligence, surely ought to be able to live with more ease and safety than the lower orders of life; yet the only fear and anxiety are to be found among men. Seek the kind of kingdom your Father wants; a perfectly righteous order of things, and you will have plenty of everything."

This is a rather free translation of Matthew 6:25-34, but it is a very accurate rendering of the meaning of the original; much more accurate than that given by the King James version.

And I wish here to give you a word of caution. I frequently receive letters from people who lay great stress on the interpretation of some particular passage from the New Testament, and even on that of some single word; as if the letter of it was a perfect and infallible guide. Now, remember that Jesus taught and spoke in the Aramaic, a dialect which had entirely supplanted the Hebrew among the Jews of Palestine, and that His sayings, in that language, were held in memory about seventy years before they appeared in the Greek, written in the manuscripts of the gospels; and that from the Greek they were translated into the English of 500 years ago, in our King James version. Five hundred years ago many words in our language carried meanings which are lost now; and so you will see how foolish it is to pin so much faith on single detached sayings and passages, which may not at all convey the meaning He gave to them. We never can understand him until we study his teachings as a connected whole.

Wealth for All

On the face of things it would look as if He told the truth when He said that there was no need for worry. There is no lack of the things needed, and where there is no lack there is no necessity for worry. This world would produce food, under intensive cultivation, for more than ten times its present population. It would produce the fabrics wherewith to clothe ten times its present population finer than Solomon was arrayed in all his glory. It would furnish building material sufficient to erect a palace larger than the Capitol at Washington for every family now living, and there would be material enough left over to house another generation.

Our Father has provided the raw material for all the things essential to life, and He has provided a thousandfold more than we can use.

The race, taken as a whole, is rich; immensely rich; it is only individuals within the race who are poor.

The satisfaction of human needs is a problem of machinery and organization, and the machinery is pretty well perfected; it is now then, a matter of organization.

Seek the Father's Kingdom, says Jesus, and you solve the bread and butter problem. Does that sound like a rational interpretation of the passage we are speaking of? Turn to the 12th chapter of Luke, and read the parallel passage.

The Kingdom of God

Now, what did He mean by the kingdom of God? Practically all commentators agree, now, that He did not mean a distinct Heaven, which we cannot enter until we die; and they agree, also that He did not mean a church like the one we have now.

If you can conceive of the church as expanded until it filled the whole earth; all the people united in one, and all practicing what the churches preach now, that would be very like a Kingdom of God as Jesus describes it.

He illustrates it by showing that the birds know no anxiety; they live in the Father's kingdom. They all, alike, have access to the supply. There is no bug rust, and no shrewd bird has, as yet, cornered the worm market. When, instead of going freely to the Great Supply, the birds begin to compete for the limited portions of it, there will begin to be an anxiety among them. There can be no Father's kingdom unless all can have equal access to the Great Supply.

Equality and Democracy

You will find this confirmed in the twenty-third chapter of Matthew in the first twelve verses. Here He lays the foundation of the kingdom in the fact of the Fatherhood of God, and I will call the attention of the liberals especially to the fact that the sayings were addressed "to the multitude" as well as to His disciples.

He assures them all that God is their Father, and that they are brethren; and that hence, they should not compete for the best place at the feast. If, instead of struggling with each other, you will go lovingly to the feast together, is there not enough for all? Let there be no striving for mastery, or power over one another; just plain equality and democracy, says Jesus, and no one will have to bear a heavy burden anymore.

Suppose the father of a family should see his children gather around a table, where he had provided for them as bountifully as our Father has for us; and suppose that the largest boy should get to the table first and gather all the best food around his plate. When his little sister reaches for a nice piece of cake he slaps her; he strikes back the out stretched hands of the others, and says:

"Get away! Our father put this here, and I am the first one to get to it; so it is mine. Get away" (strike, push, shove) and, looking up to his parent, he addresses him thus: "Our father (biff), thy kingdom come (bang), thy will be done (whack)."

Would not that father say, "My will will not be done until you, with your brothers and sisters, go together to the supply I have provided."

And if the large boy should say then: "Well, father, I will hold it as your trustee, giving to the others as I think it best for them, and seeing that all is done decently and in order," would not the father say, "I do not want benevolence, or charity, or self-denial, or Sabbath observance, but that each one shall go freely to the supply for all that he needs."

The idea of Jesus appears to be that if each one will go freely to the supply, there can be no poverty or lack of any kind; and His idea appears to be sound. If the supply is super-abundant, and all go freely to it, how can anybody have lack? The trouble is that we have our eyes fixed, not on the Abundance, but on the Uppermost Place.

It is as if there were a mountain of gold, to which we might go for wealth, but on our way thither we find a few scattering nuggets which have been washed down by the rains, and we stop to fight for the possession of these fragments, and so lose the whole.

In this connection, look up the parallel passages in Luke, and note the one in the twenty-second chapter, where He cautions them against that most insidious of temptations, the desire to pose as a "benefactor." No benefactors are needed where all may go to the supply. You are to serve by inviting men to the feast, not by handing them a few crumbs from your own plate. It is not possible that there should be benefactions, benefactors or charity in the kingdom of God; so long as there is need for these things we are not in His kingdom.

And how can we hope to establish the kingdom by practicing things which do not belong to it?

"Love Thy Neighbor"

It is in this light that we must consider His command to love one's neighbor as one's self. What does it mean, this loving one's neighbor as himself? Suppose my wife and I sit down to lunch; and there is nothing on the table but a crust of bread and a piece of pie. And suppose that I hastily grasp the pie, and say; "My dear, I certainly love you devotedly; I do wish you had some pie, also," and I swallow it, and leave her the crust; have I loved her as myself? If I love her as myself, I will desire pie for her as intensely as for myself, and I will try as hard to get it for her as for myself.

If I love you as myself, what I try to get for myself I will try to get for you, and what I try to get for my children I will try to get for your children, and I will no more rest under an injustice done to you or yours than if it had been done to me or mine.

And when we all desire for everybody all that we desire for ourselves, what is there for us to do but to stop competing for a part and turn to the abundance of the Great Whole, which is the Kingdom of God.

In the next chapter we will consider how the apostles went about solving the problems of supply, and why they failed.