No matter what, I always encounter ideas and behaviors that I can’t, for the life of me, wrap my head around. During college, chemistry was the discipline I just couldn’t understand, and my inability to grasp it led me to change my major, moving me towards education, a path I never thought I’d take. It’s one thing to have trouble understanding something like chemistry, a subject that has rules, formulas, and facts. It’s another thing to try and understand human behavior. I’m not talking about psychology or anthropology or even what I learn from reading literature and history. I learn a lot about human behavior from what I read and study, yet I can’t understand everything, specifically the ways that individuals can allow themselves to become so wrapped up in their own existence, including their financial gains, that they will do anything to maintain their positions or increase them.

During his dialogue with Nikki Giovanni, James Baldwin said, “The relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.” Money equals power. We know this, and we know that if one does not have “morality,” then they will base everything they do on the ability to maintain the power and they have and to acquire more because they do not care about those who suffer in their quest for it. When we place power above others, we lose our own selves, causing our very beings to succumb to a system that denies everyone the freedom to be themselves and to live their lives free of oppression.

Many evangelical leaders use 2 Thessalonians 3:10 as a Biblical mandate supporting the Protestant Work Ethic and the American Dream, the ideas that God blesses financially those he has chosen and the prospect of upward mobility respectively. The verse reads, “For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: Anyone unwilling to work shall not eat.” The context for these verses deals with the Christian community in Thessalonica, addressing the communal nature of the community. Some of the community members did not chip in with work and became idle, so Paul, Silvanius, and Timothy admonished them, telling them that they would not eat, in the community, if they did not work. However, in 1 Thessalonians 4, we get the admonition “to love one another” as God teaches.

The idea of loving one another and caring for others is one of the key tenants of Christianity. When a scribe approaches Jesus and asks him, “Which commandment is the first of all?”, Jesus responds by stating that the first is to “love the Lord your God” and the second is to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12: 28–31). He concludes by stating, “There is no other commandment greater than these.” Jesus places each of these commandments together, stating that they exist as the ultimate commandments from God and no other commandments exceed them. Now, the question becomes, what does “love your neighbor as yourself” mean? Does it mean to provide aid and support to those in need? The key here, of course, is how we define “love.”

In Romans 13, Paul lays out, in the first part of the chapter, that God has ordained those in power. This sections gets used, a lot, by individuals to justify unjust laws, as I have written about before. However, in the second part of the chapter, Paul undercuts this by reiterating Jesus’ words about the greatest two commandments. Paul summarizes the Ten Commandments and writes that they are summed up succinctly by Jesus’ words: “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Romans 13: 9). He goes on to state, “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore, love is fulfilling the law” (Romans 13:10).

So, if someone is hungry, does love require us to feed them or to tell them they must work for what they get? Recall that 2 Thessalonians addresses a community of belioevers, not the entirety of society. Within the confines of that Christian community we can see where 2 Thessalonians 3:10 makes sense because it becomes akin to the church in Acts where believers pooled their belongings and earnings together to exist. However, we cannot extend that logic outwards to those outside of an evangelical space that argues vehemently that if one does not work then they deserve nothing. This thinking perpetuates oppression because it does not, in any way take into account systematic problems that lead to poverty.

When I think about all of this, I always go back to Jesus’ first sermon in Luke 4. After retreating to the desert for forty days after being baptized by John the Baptist and tempted by Satan in the desert, Jesus returns to Nazareth and goes to the synagogue on the Sabbath. There, he reads from “the scroll of the prophet Isaiah.” He reads Isaiah 61:1–2,

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

These verses refer to the Jubilee, or “Year of Release,” that occurred every fifty years when prisoners and slaves would be freed, debts forgiven, and Gods’ mercies would become manifest. Jesus goes on to proclaim that he has come as a fulfillment of Isaiah’s messianic prophecy, and he also mentions Elijah raising Zarephath’s son from the dean and Elisha healing Naaman, a Syrian with leprosy. He mentions these to highlight that he has come for all, not just for some. Those gathered in “the synagogue were filled with rage” after he spoke, and they wanted to kill him (Luke 4:28).

Jesus’ first sermon goes back to “love your neighbor as yourself,” and he understood the ways that power and wealth impact an individual’s psyche. When the rich young ruler comes to Jesus and asks him what he must do to enter heaven, Jesus tells him, “Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (Luke 18:22). The man becomes dejected, and Jesus continues, “How hard it is for those who have riches to enter the kingdom of God!” (Luke 18:23). The man leaves downcast.

I understand the comfort of money, the ways it provides stability. On some level, as well, I understand how when one either enters the world with power or money or attains them over the course of their life that it impacts them. I understand that the fear of losing it holds sway over individuals. What I do not understand, though, is how decisions that individuals make which impact others become so easy. I wonder if people think about the impacts their decisions will have on others, the impact on their lives. I think abouth whether or not they even care or if they only think about their own existence and preseving their position. I wonder if, even when confronted with the impacts, they bat an eye.

I think about all of this and think about James 2, where the author calls upon believers to “show no partiality” to others who enter the fold. Do not treat the “man with gold rings” and designer clothes any different that “a poor man in shabby clothing.” When the community privileges the rich man over the poor man, the community has “become judges with evil thoughts” (James 2:4). James continues by asking his readers a series of questions in James 2:5–10,

Has not God chosen those who are poor in the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which he has promised to those who love him?
But you have dishonored the poor man. Is it not the rich who oppress you, is it not they who drag you into court?
Is it not they who blaspheme that honorable name which was invoked over you?
If you really fulfill the royal law, according to the scripture, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself,” you do well.
But if you show partiality, you commit sin, and are convicted by the law as transgressors.
For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become guilty of all of it.

James notes how wealth and power lead to oppression, and he highlights the ways that money causes individuals to become blind to the needs of others and to see wealth and power as success and the be all end all of existence. He shows what Baldwin does in The Fire Next Time when he points out that all of these things ae merely “chimeras,” mythological monsters that don’t really exist except for through the meanings we imbue them with. Baldwin writes that we must recognize this if we ever hope to be free: “But renewal becomes impossible if one supposes things to be constant that are not — safety, for example, or money, or power. One clings then to chimeras, by which one can only be betrayed, and the entire hope — the entire possibility of freedom disappears.”

I still cannot understand the mentality of harming individuals to protect power and wealth. I cannot understand a mentality that places oneself above others, leading to violence and oppression. I will never trult understand it, I guess, because it is not how I think. I question, every now and then, what might happen if I ever become wealthy or have a large amount of power. That thought sometimes scares me because I know that I am human and I can succumb to losing my moarlity in the process. Yet, whenever I think this, I always return to Jesus’ sermon, to James, to Isaiah, and others who remind me that I must love my neighbor as myself. I must remember that all of these things are fleeting, like the morning dew.