The Weapons of the Poor
January 11, 2014
Many on the American Right define themselves as Christians and angrily defend the religion’s symbols and myths, but this Christian Right ignores a core reality about Jesus, that he spoke to and for the poor, decried the rich, and demanded social justice for all, as Rev. Howard Bess recounts.
By Rev. Howard Bess
Jesus spent nearly all his life with poor people, and these were the truly poor, eking out a subsistence living, struggling just to survive. In Nazareth where Jesus grew up, there were no people of wealth; there was no middle class; the people were rural and illiterate.
These people of Galilee were not simply poor, they were expendable as far as the ruling elites were concerned. As such, they were not a happy, contented lot. They lived at wits end, which is why Galilee gave rise to the Zealot movement of violent rebellion.
It was from this population that Jesus drew his disciples and found the audiences for his sermons. His relationship with the poor people of rural Galilee became the context in which he advocated for justice or what he called the kingdom of God on earth.
Somewhere in my theological/religious journey, I found a truth in reading and interpreting the Bible. It was that a text without context is a pretext. As applied to Jesus, that means that if the reader does not understand the context in which Jesus taught, his stories can be twisted to mean whatever the reader wants.
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http://consortiumnews.com/2014/01/11/the-weapons-of-the-poor/
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