{"id":1139,"date":"2012-08-15T13:03:01","date_gmt":"2012-08-15T17:03:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.dustoffthebible.com\/?p=1139"},"modified":"2015-09-21T21:22:11","modified_gmt":"2015-09-22T01:22:11","slug":"wealth-and-the-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/2012\/08\/15\/wealth-and-the-church\/","title":{"rendered":"Wealth and the Church"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><center><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/PTc_FoELt8s\" width=\"460\" height=\"342\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/center>One of the claims against Christians, and especially the church as a whole, is that they fail to heed Jesus&#8217; instructions to the rich young ruler in the gospels.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cOne thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have\u00a0treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.\u201d (Mark 10:21)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It seems that modern Americans bypass this instruction based on it&#8217;s contextual differences. The person who was instructed to do this was quite wealthy. He was in a high position of authority. It is implied that he loves his riches, and we are none of the above. Or at least it seems&#8230;..<\/p>\n<p>But whether or not we personally feel like we need to sell our wealth, does this or other NT principles apply to the church? After all, if the church is supposed to embody the kingdom message. That kingdom message, without a doubt, includes giving of itself. (Isaiah 1:17, Matt 6:19 etc.)<\/p>\n<p>The riches of the Vatican are often cited as one example. The gold encrusted\u00a0monstrances, tabernacle backdrops, cups, bowls, staffs, and other items all display the wealth of the Catholic church. But what about the protestants? Do we need to build giant mega churches? Pay pastors $200,000\/year salaries to manage the herd? Is it proper use to money to build Christian empires in the name of Jesus? Or should that money go to help those in need?<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1140,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,9,10,11],"tags":[35,58,483,492,488,144,491,493,222,490,489],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dustoffthebible.com\/Blog-archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}