Babies, Camels, and other Impossibilities

<p>Cultural Complexities:</p><ol><li>Jews thought riches are a sign of the blessing of God: referring back to Abraham who received the covenant from God: Gen. 12:1-3 and in 13 he is described as “very rich”. Issac inherits his father’s riches, is described in 26:12,13: “Now Isaac sowed in that land and reaped in the same year a hundred times as much. And the LORD blessed him, and the man became rich, and continued to grow richer until he became very wealthy;”. Wealth was interpreted as the blessing of God missing entirely the true purpose of God being redemption and reconciliation which are the true blessings of His Kingdom. The riches of this world cannot be compared to the riches of eternity.</li><li>If we misunderstand the purpose of God, and the power of God and the love of God, then we will attempt to find a way to rationalize what Jesus says in order to make things more acceptable to our way of thinking. So here is this strange saying of Jesus about rich people entering the Kingdom of God: in the fifth century, some scribe changed the word camel to rope to make the task easier.  In the 15th century, an idea began to be shared about a camels gate in Jerusalem where the burdens had to be laid down in order for the camel to enter.  Great way to make money off of tourists! Issues of war, issues of camels, issues of misinterpretation of the scriptures are all ignored with this idea.</li></ol><p>Contextual considerations:</p><ol><li>The constant back and forth between Pharisees, lawyers, scribes and rulers to disciples and Kingdom principles.  Jesus is constantly comparing Kingdom values to the misrepresentations of the ruling leaders: in chapter 11 Jesus points out the flaws in the leaders approach showing they like what is going on on the outside but their inside is totally corrupt. In 16 he points out that the Pharisees were lovers of money, and in 18 he has just nailed their prayer life as being based on pride and arrogance. His dialogue here with the ruler varies from Matthew’s account as he is not young, no