2021年11月14日日曜日

Rich man cannot enter the kingdom of God

1 If I were to say that the reason why Ishii Clinic's profits are low is because of Christianity, I'd actually only be half joking. I first began hearing about the story of Christ when I entered preschool at the age of 4, and after attending mass I would read bible stories in the form of picture books. At the time the only doubt that my naive young self had was that I couldn't understand how someone that was executed 2000 years ago could be the savior. There's a saying in the bible: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." From 4 years old and through elementary and middle school I heard that saying many times. "I see, if I become rich then I won't get to heaven." That's what I'd become indoctrinated to believe. The thing about indoctrination during childhood is that it's hard to break even as an adult, so after opening my business I felt that being greedy and saving every penny would catch god's attention and lead to misfortune in the future, so I didn't focus much attention on profits. Plus there was also the fact that I just straight up didn't have much in the way of business sense, which was probably the main cause of my financial misfortune. 2 While there is a passage in the bible about a camel passing through the eye of a needle, some bible scholars are of the opinion that this passage is a mistranslation. Society during the time of Jesus Christ was multilingual, so in addition to ancient Hebrew, the ancient Syriac (Aramaic) language was also spoken in Christ's hometown of Nazareth, and it's possible this was the language he spoke. Since then, the bible has been translated into Greek & Latin, and now in the present day we find ourselves at the point that the bible has been translated and retranslated so many times now that it's only natural that mistranslated phrases would show up. Some scholars are of the opinion that the phrase isn't referring to a camel, but rather a camel's rope. This theory makes sense to me. A rope that pulls a camel sounds more like something that would pass through the eye of a needle, and the story seems to make sense on the whole. If it's supposed to be a camel's rope, then maybe with a little effort someone heading for hell can make the changes needed to be heaven bound.

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