Jesus didn't have to be a loser. He could have been a millionaire. If he would have just had enough sense, entrepreneurship, businessmanship, and a microscopical fraction of the greed that drives probably 99.9% percent of His professing modern followers, and would have charged a dime for each fish sandwich He so miraculously manufactured and doled out by the thousands, or if He would have had the brains to charge just a tiny percentage of the gain from the sales of the fishes He helped others to catch, or a small fee for His countless healing miracles.
But the Dude just didn't have it in Him.
You wouldn't call it 'dumb,' perhaps just a little ignorant.
After all, His kind - way back 2000 years ago hadn't evolved yet into the highly sophisticated specimen that know how to make a buck out of anything - even diminishing the population, instead of being so foolish as to heal anyone and thus slow down the process of eliminating one more superfluous eater and breather...
Talking about the Evolution of Christendom: Jesus didn't have a clue about the fact that you need a car you paid at least a five digit amount in dollars, Euros or Swiss Francs for, in order to be a half-way decent "sample" of His religion, or in order to be able to just stand to live with yourself, for that matter.
His policy of "freely ye have received, also freely give" was typically blue-eyed (and sickeningly idealistic) for His slightly post-Neanderthal stage in the Evolution of mankind.
He may have gotten the stone of Christianity rolling, but certainly His 21st century followers are smarter than to avail themselves of any of His suicidal tactics that just showed you were that sort of loser-streak lands you: up on a hill of shame with the outcasts and the doom of financial and social bankruptcy.
In fact, it's petty good He's not around anymore, since His antics of the sort like kicking out the decent folks with brains trying to properly market their religion from the temple would not really get us very far with the spreading of our type of gospel, in the 21st century.
Let’s face it: Jesus didn’t know anything about PR, and when it comes down to market assessment, His credentials equal near zero. I mean, the guy hung out with losers, when everybody knows that the rich are the most Gospel-neglected stratum of society. Well, they were, up until about 4 decades ago, when we stopped preaching to the poor and instead made it our vocation to bend over backwards to shove the gospel of prosperity for the umpteenth time down the throats of those who are perhaps not wildly willing, but at least able to pay for it what we demand in order to finance our 21st century Christian life-style.
Why preach to millions of strangers and foreigners who really need Jesus, when you can just drone on and on to the same old neighborhood forever that you can be sure have what you need, right?
The parable of the lost sheep in the 21st century sounds a little bit like this:
Forget about the 99 who don't have any money anyway and look for the one super rich dude who can really help you spread our gospel the proper way: with the proper kind of cars, the proper kind of laptops and all the ado that goes with preaching the gospel of our times, the gospel of the only true god the majority of Westerners ever served.
No wonder God is a jealous God. Because pretty much all His chicks are totally gaga about this other dude: the guy with the flashy Rolex, the perfect teeth and sparkling red Porsche, the sole and one true conqueror of all the hearts of what has the audacity to call itself Christendom far and wide: all hail, glory, honor and praise to our conquering hero, our one true lord and most sovereign ruler, Mammon!
How I can tell that that's your dude? Very simply, because Jesus said, "Out of the fullness of the heart, the mouth speaketh," and since just about everything in your life seems to be revolving around little colored papers with numbers on'em, and the acquisition of those little colored papers with numbers on'em, and all that you would and could do if only you had more of those little colored papers with numbers on'em, why, then you'd finally have the time to tell anybody about Jesus...
Maybe I'm exaggerating. But it should cause you to pause long enough to think if there's even the remote possibility that that's the impression one of your fellow humans gets of you from hearing you talk.
It's not that I mind you pursuing your passion. I used to be on the same trip for decades and wonder, whenever I met anyone, "How can this person be of service to me? How can they help me advance and further our 'good cause'?" - imagining plush villas and mansions with swimming pools we would all live happily ever after in until Jesus comes.
It's just that I do mind your treating me as less than human for having betrayed our former common goals, and for simply having stopped drooling at the sound of the word "Money!"
Hey, I can live with it, if that's your big kick. The big question is, can you live with it, that it's not mine?
I know I'm an embarrassment to you for driving onto your driveway in a 20 year old car that I scarcely had to eke out a four digit amount for, and if there's one thing in the world you don't understand it's how on earth I can have the audacity to even survive in a crummy little house like ours.
And what weirds you out the most is: how come we actually have friends that like to come over and be with us in that crummy little house?
Well, the secret is that same old five-letter name that you seem to have so grossly distorted in your mind: Jesus.
I mean, the real Jesus, not the, "C'mon and I'll show you how to get rich quick" Jesus made in Hollywood.
The One Who didn't charge anyone for His sermons, His healings, not even His fish sandwiches.
The One who didn't care about prestige or what the heck the rich, the fat and the pompous said.
The One Who was so real, so raw, so naked, that He didn't even mind being nailed to a cross for you, full-well knowing that You'd screw the other guy a million times behind His back.
The One Who was not ashamed of calling the poor, the outcasts, the little ones, the weirdos and losers His friends, because He couldn't have cared less about what the fancy hypocrites thought of Him...
The One Who can't wait for you to come back to your senses and love Him and see Him for Who He really is and has always been.
The One Who said, "In as much as you have done it unto the least (not the richest, fanciest, shiniest and most prestigious) of these My brethren, ye have done it unto Me." And of Whom it is written that He is not a respecter of persons.
When He looks at you, He looks at who you really are, and not that hollow shell you're artificially trying to beef up like a Christmas tree.
May God have mercy and call us all back to the reality of Who He really is!
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