The “Che-ification” of Christ

JESUS AGAINST CAPITALISM

1 Timothy 6:10
For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.

Matthew 6:19-21;24
Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal:
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal:
For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.

Matthew 10:9
Do not acquire gold, or silver, or copper for your money belts.

Matthew 21:12-13
12 Jesus entered the temple area and drove out all who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves. 13"It is written," he said to them," 'My house will be called a house of prayer,' but you are making it a 'den of robbers.'"

Matthew 23:16-17
16 Woe to you, blind guides! You say, 'If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but if anyone swears by the gold of the temple, he is bound by his oath.' 17 You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred?

Luke 18: 22-25
22 "There is still one thing you lack," Jesus said. "Sell all you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me."
23 But when the man heard this, he became sad because he was very rich.
24 Jesus watched him go and then said to his disciples, "How hard it is for rich people to get into the Kingdom of God!
25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of God!"

From BBC - Religion and Ethics
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/history/whokilledjesus_1.shtml

Jesus threatened the Temple's income:

The Temple apparatus brought in huge revenues for simple matters like purification and the forgiveness of sins. Archaeologists have discovered 150 mikvehs around the Temple. Mikvehs are ritual baths which Jews use in order to purify themselves before any act of worship.

Jewish people could only enter the Temple if they were ritually pure and almost everyone arriving in Jerusalem for Passover was deemed ritually unclean. They had to use a mikveh before they could fulfil their religious obligations. The priests controlled the mikvehs and charged people to use them.

There were so many regulations requiring ritual purification that control of the mikvehs was a way of making money.

Jesus thought the whole thing was rubbish. He taught that the elaborate purity rituals were unnecessary - the Kingdom of God was available to everyone and they didn't have to go through these rituals or pay the money in order to get there.

From Jesus Against The Church--Part III--Chapter 9
http://portlandporcupine.com/jac/chap09.html

And what would be the priority rating of home ownership to followers of the Son of Man who had no place to lay his head (Matthew 8: 20) and Whose followers sometimes had to live "in deserts and mountains and caves and holes in the ground" (Hebrews 11: 38). The point is not that owning a home is some evil to be avoided, it is that our homes more often own us than the other way around.