The Poor Don’t Need Medicine?

I just posted a video defining Christianity how Jesus seems to insist we live beyond our religion and find Christ beyond Christianity. You will see there the demand of Jesus to forget eternal life by living eternally through care for the sick. Jesus will insist we find Christ in a person the church has excluded.

The next day, this is in the news – a Republican Senator telling us that the poor don’t need medicine, they need Jesus. In this article you will see this was as a result of the taxation issues facing us which I recently discussed.

Like it or not, this is the face of modern Christianity despite the fact that Jesus said, what you have NOT done to the least of these (care for the poor and the sick) you have NOT done for me. The poor don’t need Jesus – they ARE Jesus. Don’t believe me? Read it for yourself (Matthew 25).

Living Beyond Religion: Saying “I love Jesus” vs “loving Jesus”

Here’s another video I posted to YouTube on Peter’s calling. Jesus warns that simply vocalizing a love for Jesus is not enough – we must care for the least of this. If we don’t love them, we don’t love him. How this is not evident to those professing to follow Jesus, I have no idea. Exposing this has become the basis of my upcoming book.

What does all this have to do with shame? Shame demands we find someone to be against. It’s easy to be against those who can’t fight back. It’s easy to demonize those who take what we’ve earned. To those of us doing this, myself included, Jesus simply says this: woe to you (Matthew 23).

In order to be living beyond what our religion seems to demand, we often have to find Christ beyond Christianity. This is the picture of Jesus that will find us in the book of Matthew. This Jesus will force us to confront the shame in our lives that demands we denigrate others. The Jesus in Matthew will force us to simply live humbly through a radical inclusion of those the church has often cast aside.

The post The Poor Don’t Need Medicine? appeared first on Rick Patterson.

 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on June 01, 2025 05:09
No comments have been added yet.