Jesus' Middle Class Life
I can't believe it. Here it is, Friday 13, January, and this guy is still sending me posts.
There was an article in the Sojourner's called "Fox's Real War on Christmas" last month and a couple of guys took offense in the comments sections from posters who'd said Jesus had been poor.
No, they said. He hadn't. He'd been born in a middle class family to a father who was a carpenter. Carpenters make decent pay; in fact, one said, carpenters built cities and subdivisions and made bundles. Jesus was flush.
We argued back and forth. These people just didn't seem to comprehend. A couple of the posters seemed to have scholarly degrees. They told them that Jesus lived in the Iron Age and that no middle class existed in that time, except for maybe the merchant class. Jesus' family were artesans. He lived in Nazareth, a community of maybe under 200, mostly tribal families. He wore homespun wool from sheep owned communally. His father was a carpenter who made furniture and homes made of mud, straw and crude stone. His "clients" were his relatives and other people in the town and their methods of payment were most certainly a barter system.
To begin with, I don't think Jesus even existed or if he did, he was a combination of philosopher, poet and con man. But, middle class or well-to-do? This guy today triumphantly told me that with the incense, gold and myrrh Jesus got from the wise men, the family was independently wealthy. *facepalm* It's all about their prosperity gospels. It's all about wanting to deny that their deity had been humble and poor, so that his priests and clerics could then say that he would bless his followers with wealth if they asked for it. And gave to their megachurch and it's pastor. They hate the stench of poverty that may have wafted from a poor savior.
How can they even compare a profession like carpentry to what it is today and what it was 2,000 years ago? The materials used like fine woods, manufactured stone, and transportation of materials wasn't there at that time. Even a doctor today, who makes a fantastic salary would have been struggling just 100 years ago. One of my older patients once told me about how doctors made house calls back in the country in the 1930s and would get paid by farm produce or by the patient's family members working for the doctor cleaning his office, chopping wood or, in her case, marrying him. How anyone could think that a middle class profession of today can equal that of one from two millenia ago just boggles my mind. Is it just so fired up important for them to believe that their earthbound diety was free of poverty? I can't wrap my head around it. Poverty is such a four letter word to these people, that they'll cut up their own theology to deny one of the main precepts of their founder's teachings: his radical elevation of the poor over the rich.
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