Turning Our World Upside Down

It’s sort of unfortunate that we’ve learned our version of the Gospel in an affluent, over-accumulated society that has to look for stimuli to stay focused enough to avoid boredom. According to a book I’m now reading, our understanding of the Gospel of Jesus Christ could be upside down.

The book, Jesus’ Plan For A New World, is written by Franciscan priest Richard Rohr and is based on the Sermon on the Mount. A while back I posted on another of Fr Rohr’s books, Simplicity.

In the book I’m now reading, Rohr points out that the culture in which Jesus lived out the Good News was quite different from ours. Jesus lived in an agrarian (primarily agricultural) society, commonplace in the world at that time. Such cultures consisted of a relatively small group at the top, consisting of a ruler or rulers, along with their consorts, who controlled the wealth, and a bottom-heavy, vastly larger group of peasant farmers and artisans who worked to support the hierarchy.

The ruler(s) absorbed up to 50% of the gross national product and took another 25% or so to support the several levels of bureaucrats and officials that kept the society functioning. At the bottom were the farmers (often tilling rented land) and artisans who actually produced the goods; they comprised more than 75% of the population but shared a very small proportion of the wealth. In fact, after taxes, tolls, and fees, they were often left with nothing that could be considered discretionary income.

Similarities exist between Christ’s culture and that of much of the third world today. Further, about 10% of that peasant class was considered to be “unclean”. They were the destitute, the diseased, the people of color, gays and lesbians, the aged and the disabled. How ironic (and enlightening) that these were the people with whom Jesus spent a lot of time.

It was this lowest of low classes to which Jesus referred when he said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven” (bold italics mine).

For two millennia, we’ve been trying to understand what Jesus was actually saying in this initial Beatitude. It’s enough to turn our thinking completely upside down.