Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, professor of theology at Chicago Theological Seminary believes that Jesus had an economic plan. She’s written a book, #Occupy the Bible: What Jesus Really Said (and Did) About Money and Power, and claims that Jesus came to reverse economic inequality.
When Jesus announced his ministry as “good news to the poor” and to “proclaim the Year of the Lord’s favor” (Luke 4: 18-19), he meant that he wanted his society to have a year when economic inequality was reversed. That’s the “Year of the Lord’s favor” or the biblical “Jubilee” as I write in the Chapter 6: “The Jubilee, or, Jesus Had an Economic Plan” in #OccupytheBible.
Her recent article in the Huffington Post has some merit. She points out that Americans need to do a much better job at lifting people out of poverty, and that children in our country should not be hungry. However, the idea that Jesus came, not as a Savior for our sins, but as some sort of economic guru who started an Occupy the Roman Empire movement is not only absurd, it’s theological contortion.
Jesus’ economic plan was pretty simple: “repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God” (Mt. 22:21) Putting that Scripture in context, one notes that Jesus was replying to the Pharisees who were trying to trap him into speaking out against the Romans. He quietly turned the tables on them.
Nowhere in Scripture does Jesus condemn wealth in and of itself. He demands the same from both the poor and the wealthy: to store up treasure in Heaven, to love God and others, and to take up our crosses and follow Him. It’s not much of an economic plan, but then Jesus wasn’t an economist. He had bigger things on His mind.
