Jesus Warns of the Consequences of Corporate Welfare

“What the Gospel accounts showed was a Jesus who was very concerned about economic exploitation, but whose economic denunciations were not broad, to-whom-it-may-concern condemnations of all wealth. Instead, He directed His denunciations in very specific geographical and socioeconomic ways, aiming His barbs at the exploitative members of the ruling class. A close and careful reading of the Gospels allows us to fully embrace and quote the “red letters” of a Jesus who said, “Woe unto you who are rich…,” without going on to confuse Him with Che Guevara or Fidel Castro. What you will see is Jesus confronting the takers of wealth, not the makers of it. He did this with such vigor and clarity, the ruling class who lived and worked in that nation’s capital saw Him as a threat to their system of economic extraction. That’s why they instigated His judicial execution by the Roman state. Elites failed to heed Jesus’s warnings about the ways in which the capital city and its ruling political/religious elite were courting disaster. Eventually, the economic problems Jesus warned about led to an economic collapse and the destruction of the capital city, Jerusalem. You are about to meet a Jesus who really does have something to say about social justice, but not the kind of social justice people have been selling in His name. That’s the theory. Now for the evidence.”

From The Maker Versus the Takers: What Jesus Really Said About Social Justice and Economics