Christians have long held to the belief the Jesus Christ, the person who they think came to save them, was born into and lived a life of poverty. There are a couple things that pretty much every biblical scholar seems to agree on: That he was poor, that he had washboard abs, and that he died for people’s sins. Some biblical scholars also believe that he had an alter ego named Clark Kent who wore glasses and worked at the Daily Planet, and that if you wore kryptonite gloves you could successfully punch Jesus. But those scholars later realized that they were reading Superman comics, and not the Bible.
Rev. C. Thomas Anderson, senior pastor of the Living Word Bible Church, is part of a growing movement of pastors who disagree with the idea that Jesus was poor. He, and they, follow a doctrine called the prosperity gospel, which states that Jesus was born into a rich family and a lived a life of luxury. Rev. Anderson states, “That’s so pathetic, to say that Jesus was struggling alone in the dust and dirt,” Anderson says. “That just makes no sense whatsoever. He was constantly in a state of wealth.”
Which makes sense, because usually when rich women are about to give birth to children they have to travel from town to town because no one will give them a place to stay, eventually being forced to stay in a barn where they then have to give birth into a pile of hay in front of a bunch of animals.
Anderson went on to say, “Mary and Joseph took a Cadillac to get to Bethlehem because the finest transportation of their day was a donkey. Poor people ate their donkey. Only the wealthy used it as transportation.”
Anderson apparently went on to say this because he prefers to say things having a complete lack of even the most basic understanding of the history or context.
As it turns out, in an unexpected twist of events, and by unexpected I mean exactly what you’d expect after taking almost no time to think about it, the vast majority of followers of the prosperity gospel are wealthy people. Now I’m not saying that wealthy people are simply looking for a loop hole or excuse so as not to have to feel guilty about their excessive materialistic lifestyle. Actually, I am saying that.
There is some evidence in the bible to support the claims made by mega-churches and their pastors that Jesus was indeed a rich man. For instance, there is an entire section in the Gospel of Paul detailing Jesus marketing his own brand of energy drink, which he called “Sho’ Nuff.” Jesus’ donkey was the only donkey not owned by a member of the Roman Senate that was outfitted with spinning rims. Which made the donkey basically unable to move, but it looked bangin’. Also, Jesus was the only person in the entire Bible to have his own episode of MTV Cribs, in which he showed off his pad, which had two guest houses, a private theater and three separate kitchens. An excerpt form the Gospel of Luke, in which the episode of MTV Cribs is described, quotes Jesus as saying, “I’m so mothafuckin rich my mothafuckin maid got her own refrigerator.” At which point he lit a Cuban cigar with a $100 bill and wrote Diane Sawyer fifty thousand dollar check to take off her top, just because he could.
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