Is Christianity a Greedy Religion?

Quoted from Christian Questions:

Jesus loves you! This is a true, simple and potentially life-changing statement.

Once we accept what that three-word sentence actually means, it can become a steering mechanism for everyday of our lives, pointing us to righteousness, godliness and self-sacrifice.

Jesus loves you.

Pointed and refreshing, but what does it really mean?

Does Jesus’ love for us, guide us in our everyday experiences? Yes! Does his love for us mean that he wants the best for us? Of course! Okay, so if he wants the best for us does that refer to comfort and abundance in our lives? Does Jesus’ love for us bring us to better living conditions, more financial stability, a much better present and a brighter future? The answers to these questions will vary wildly depending on whose brand of Christianity (or Christendom) you look at and this just confuses the matter. Instead of asking different Christians about the role of comfort and abundance in a Christian’s life, let’s find the answer from Jesus’ own teachings and the Apostle’s own words.

First of all, let me be crystal clear … we believe Jesus wants his disciples to live full lives of great abundance! Now the really big question is what does “great abundance” mean? Once we establish its meaning, it stands to reason we can begin to settle in to find and apply that abundance in our everyday existence. To find the meaning we have to look at what Jesus stood for – not what we would like for him to have stood for, but what his ministry was actually about.

People should know that the essential meaning of abundance has essentially to do with a feeling of contentment or being happy with who we are and no external event or situation — whether good or bad — can add or subtract from that happiness.

In the previous article was shown the danger of the present generations who look for abundance in material wealth. Lots of people are convinced money is something which they should have more (and more) to make life easier. They often forget that it does not buy happiness. The obsessive pursuit of money can create an imbalance that stands in the way of the kind of abundance that is genuine. It also pulls them away from the Divine Creator and His creation. Lots of people trying to create more material wealth damage the environment so much in the end they are going to become the victim of it (see the impact of the global warming and climate change).

If you focus too narrowly on having more money, deeper love, or a wildly successful career and become convinced that those things will “fix” everything, you’ll lose sight of the bigger picture of abundance.

When you look at the body of what the prophet Jesus taught what you find is the vast majority of his teachings were in place to bring hope to the average person. He focused on love, on personal sacrifice and on putting God first. Jesus placed God even above his own will. Much of his ministry was spent building the foundations for his kingdom, and those foundations were revealed in the words

“Follow me.”

For years people came to hear they had to

“Follow the Church”

and many did that. But at the turn of the century it became more a love-hate relationship. And the adults of that period their children their eyes seemed to have opened and became disgusted by that so called “love” of the church, by which certain church leaders took it in a very strange unethical way, even having sex with minors. The attitude of the Church and the handling of the sexual abuses made lots of people leaving the church and looking for their spiritual health in something different.

Gallup found that for Protestants, ages 21-29, only 25% attend church once a week. For Catholics, that number was 12%.

“After stabilizing in the mid-2000s, weekly church attendance among U.S. Catholics has resumed its downward trajectory over the past decade,” said Gallup. “In particular, older Catholics have become less likely to report attending church in the past seven days — so that now, for the first time, a majority of Catholics in no generational group attend weekly.”

In the Northern sphere of the globe we can see that young Catholics are even less devout than there parents and often have no idea about God and His commandments. But it are not only the Roman Catholics who have to recognise that the decline in church attendance will only continue.

Whilst many Christian institutions called to follow them, they did not manage to give a good example, and certainly were not following Jesus. First of all they worshipped an other God than Jesus, who worshipped the God of Abraham, Who is a singular God and not a Trinity.

But for many Christians being One is not enough and by being Three one can do more and one gets more variation in following the one or the other and in worshipping the one and the other. It also looks like they have not enough with their one god who is also three. They created also saints which would be good to receive this or that, what they think their god would not provide to them straight away or which those saints would manage better to give them than their god. It looks they are also afraid that they would not receive something from their god, so love to ask those human beings who died, and according to them had enough experience and now have enough power to enrich them with what they want.

The majority of people who call themselves Christian, do not seem to trust the position of their Jesus as a mediator. This would be logical because when Jesus would be God then He can not be a mediator between God or himself and man. In a way lots of youngster also do not trust that god of their church, the church telling them it is an all knowing God Who does not tell lies, but find Jesus telling he does not know this or that or can not do this or that without God (which then would be without himself – though he is there himself).

When looking at that mysterious figure which lived in the first century of our common era, many wonder what he managed to do and what his real intentions were. Some people ask

Okay, “follow me” to where, through what kind of experiences and to what end result?

Again, looking at what Jesus stood for we see that he was an itinerant preacher – he had no real earthly possessions (was not interested in them) and no place that he called home (he went from one place to an other, crossing the whole Israeli-Palestinian region). Yet, this man who might be described in this light as a poverty-stricken soul by some, had the power to heal sickness in others, the power to talk down the religious leaders of his time and the power to speak godly hope and direction to the masses of people.

For many today this seems marvellous and is something they would dream of, not becoming sick any more, having no problems with health nor with finances. Therefore in our world we can find preacher who use that to attract people. Some even go do far that they claim to bring health again to people or to bring financial wealth to their followers. For many that sounds great, having a good health and gaining much more money in an easy way. The churches promising that are than the only ones which succeed to grow and even to become mega-churches.

Man got blinded by false teachers and false prophets. In several of the ancient books Allah warns us for such misleading people, but it is the greed or the lust for more that brings people to go so far to put the Elohim aside and to trust such preachers more than the Sacred writings.

So, is this not the “abundance” that Jesus wants for our lives?

Not exactly. The abundance Jesus wants for us is actually bigger, broader and eternal.

The majority of people have an other idea of abundance than Jesus has before his eyes. The abundance he wants for us stands in stark contrast with what we would consider abundance by worldly standards. This fact flies directly in the face of what so many preachers of Christianity talk about today. It truly exposes their money-based ministries as not being about the Gospel of Jesus Christ but being about their own personal worldly abundance. Spiritual abundance and worldly abundance are simply contrary and must be revealed as so.

You may check out the March 6th, 2017 podcast, “Is Christianity a Greedy Religion?” and follow along with them as they, according to Jesus’ own words, separate worldly abundance from spiritual abundance and learn how to seek that which is eternal. It just might make your life fuller and happier! {Ronald Day Senior
http://christianquestions.com/doctrine/960-is-christianity-a-greedy-religion/}

Allah with His Word warns mankind that the world shall be taken by greed and by an immoral way of life. Knowing this beforehand, we are told to be on our guard lest, being carried away by the error of unprincipled men, we would fall from our own steadfastness. (2 Peter 3:17-18) We should be able to see how the greed of many church-leaders made their ‘church’ rich, whilst they left their flock in poverty, and sometimes even dared to exert more pressure on them to give more money to their church. we also can see how the greed for power brought many so called religious people (priests, ministers, bishops and popes) to infiltrate in politics to make sure they could have more power. They better should reflect on the damage that a too-close association of religion and politics does to both.

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Preceding

Are people likely to turn less to a divine power for help when they have a big governement?

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Additional reading

1. Ideas about Religiosity
2. Souls and Religions with Nirvana and light
3. Position and power
4. Shariah and child abuse – Is there a connection?
5. Displeasures and Actions of the Almighty God
6. Patriarch Abraham, Muslims, Christians and the son of God
7. Teachings, prophets, wolves in sheep’s covering and a narrow gate
8. The false prophets in the present world
9. Matthew 7:13-23 – The Nazarene’s Commentary: The True Disciple #3 Matthew 7:21-23 The ones Jesus never knew
10. Matthew 7:15-20 – The Nazarene’s Commentary: The True Disciple #2 False prophets and fruitage
11. The Way of the LORD
12. Memorizing wonderfully 30 False prophets and false teachers
13. Signs of the Last Days
14. Signs of the the last days when difficult times will come

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