Comment Re:Can someone explain to me .. (Score 1) 473
I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that "almost everything Jesus said was a general rule". Let's take a closer look at this particular conversation.
A rich guy comes to Jesus and asks what he has to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus walks him through the Ten Commandments. More specifically, the Ten Commandments has two parts: commandments 1-4, which deal with our relationship with God, and commandments 5-10, which deal with our relationships with people. Jesus dealt exclusively with the second section, but omitted commandment 10 (thou shalt not covet).
The rich guy said that he had done all that.
Then Jesus hit the guy with where his problem really was - his money. (This is tightly related to the covetousness that Jesus didn't mention in his first pass.) Jesus is saying, "This is your problem, you can't hold on to your money and still follow God." But that's because the money is what this guy is holding on to. If Jesus were talking to somebody else, he would go after what they were holding on to - maybe sex or pride of position.
See, you're either holding on to God, or to something else. If you're holding on to something else, that's what Jesus would go after - whatever it is for you. So it's not that having money is a problem, it's that holding on to the money (as the thing you put ahead of God) is a problem. Now, I will grant you that that problem is somewhat highly correlated with having lots of money, but not entirely so. (Poor people dream about the money they don't have instead of holding on to the money that they do have.)
Then, after the rich guy leaves, Jesus said that it's essentially impossible for the rich to get into heaven. Now, what made this such a bombshell is that the culture said that being rich was a sign of God's favor - so being rich meant that you were much more likely to get into heaven, right? But Jesus' point isn't that the rich have to give up their money to get into heaven, it's that you can't get into heaven any way but through him. So it's hard for EVERYBODY, not just for the rich. And, true, it may be especially hard for the rich, because it's really easy for them to grab onto something other than Jesus (money), and that means that they miss the only way.
But saying "Jesus clearly says in that passage that the only way for rich people to enter heaven is to drop their earthly possessions into the hands of the poor. All of it. For all of them. The passage can not be understood differently" is a bit much. No, Jesus didn't say that.
I refer you to Acts 5, where there were people selling their property and giving to those in need. And Ananias and Sapphira tried to fake it. Peter says, "When it was yours, did it not remain your own? And after you sold it, wasn't the money under your control?" The issue wasn't that they weren't giving it all, the issue was that they were trying to pretend that they had done more than they had. That means that Peter didn't understand Jesus the way you did. No offense, but my money's on Peter to be right.