"Why Was Poor Lazarus 'worthy' of Heaven?"

 

I was asked by a conservative Christian (who was referencing the parable of Lazarus and the rich man):

Why is poor Lazarus worthy of heaven?

It's that sort of presumption and arrogance, I'd suggest, that is most of the point of this parable. By way of reminder, here is the parable:

There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and 
lived in luxury every day. 

At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores 
and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. 
Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

Note: This is an exceedingly wealthy man who lived in his privilege, which privilege allowed him to either not know or not care (or know and not care) about Lazarus and his misery.

BUT, whatever the rich man thought or cared, God loved Lazarus.

Continuing:

“The time came when the beggar died and 
the angels carried him to Abraham’s side.

Why? Because God loves us all and that begins with the poor and marginalized. God is the great welcome-r and grace-giver to humanity, and especially the poor and marginalized.

The rich man also died and was buried. 
In Hades, where he was in torment, 
he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. 
So he called to him, 
‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and 
send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water 
and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

The rich man, in his presumption, ONLY thinks of Lazarus finally as someone who could be ordered around. He didn't care about Lazarus (or about God, if you take Jesus' teachings seriously) in life and he still didn't care about Lazarus even in his deathly precarious, painful position. Lazarus is a tool, nothing else.

WHY is Lazarus "worthy" of heaven? is missing the point entirely. Of course, Lazarus is included in the great welcoming arms of God and the beloved community of Jesus. That's just a given, for Jesus, throughout his teachings. It's a message of God so loved the whole world... it's Jesus' message of good news of grace and welcome. Of course, Lazarus was welcome.

The point then is, 
Why DIDN'T Dives consider Lazarus worthy of grace and welcome or even simple respect?

It's an attitude of rejecting the Beloved Community of God - and that attitude is a deliberate choice to separate one's self from God because, as Jesus makes clear, God is found in the beloved community. You can't love God if you don't love, ally with, befriend, lend support to and welcome Lazarus and the other poor and marginalized. Taken with the Sheep and the Goats parable and in the context of the One who came to proclaim good news to the poor and marginalized, it's rather hard to miss that point or fail to reach that conclusion.

A Curse, to the Fourth Generation

"You shall not bow down to them [false idols] or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, 
punishing the children for the sin of the parents 
to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, 
but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments..."

As always, I'm engaged with conversations with conservatives who believe the best of the white privileged male protesters on days of infamy like the January 6th uprising or nearly every Pride Parade, and one thing that I believe these people are missing is the context of oppressor and oppressed.  

If these conversations and protests were just between two privileged white guys who were very opinionated about their sports ball teams or favorite pizza and THAT conversation got heated and went back and forth, both from an equal footing position, no big deal. Team one, team two, you're wrong, you're right, okay, whatever. 

This is not that. 

In one recent conversation, the conservative posted a video where there was a white guy protesting against abortion rights and health rights for women. In that example, the white anti-abortionist (in THAT example) remained fairly calm and low-key. In another example, I had offered the story of the interaction (cited in a previous recent post here) of the six white nationalist men protesting at this year's Louisville Gay Pride Day. In one, we're talking about rights for women, in the other, we're talking about equal rights and opportunities for LGBTQ folks and their allies. In still other instances we might be talking about the rights of folks with disabilities or the rights of people of color or immigrants. 

In each of those cases it is vital to remember that we are talking about 
groups who have been historically abused, 
oppressed, 
maligned, 
demonized, 
harmed, and 
killed 
on the one hand and the oppressors on the other. In such cases, even if an abortion opponent manages to be calm in delivering his message calmly in a public protest, and even if the oppressed and their allies were to get loud and yell, we must remember there is a historic memory of abuses towards women and denying the rights to women. That makes it a charged situation for those on the side of the oppressed. Trauma is a real thing caused by the real world history of abusive oppressors. 

And in each of these cases, the oppression is not ancient history. It's still a fresh, recent thing, in our lifetimes only - and truly into our children's lifetimes - has it started to get a little bit better. If LGBTQ folks and their allies or women or others get their ire up and respond a bit frantically in the face of oppression rising back up, that's understandable. We're talking about human rights and people are rightly, strongly and righteously emotionally defending human rights and warning against returning to days of oppression. 

In other words, even if the supporters of historic oppression remain relatively calm (and often, they don't), that's not to their credit. It doesn't win them any points.

Picture Jesus pulling together a whip to drive out the money changers from the temple. Righteous burning active anger against oppression. God and reasonable people are rightfully outraged at oppression. 

And so the trauma lives on, the curse from our repressive fathers into the third and fourth and fifth generations. It's not like you can flip  a switch and turn slavery off on one day, for instance, and say, "Okay you're free. All is forgiven. Everybody's cool now." Oppression, harm and genocide don't just "go away" that way. There was and continues to be active harm, ongoing harm caused by that oppression and it doesn't go away in a day.

Likewise the trauma experienced by all these other groups: women, LGBTQ folks, those with disabilities, immigrants. That trauma is a curse in their and all of our lives, including the lives of the oppressors and their descendants. Those who would downplay the trauma from that oppression need to understand what they're asking when they're asking people to be calm in the face of oppression rising back up.