December 25, 2009 4:12 a.m. EST
CNN) -- Each Christmas, Christians tell stories about the poor baby
Jesus born in a lowly manger because there was no room in the inn.
But the Rev. C. Thomas Anderson, senior pastor of the Living Word
Bible Church in Mesa, Arizona, preaches a version of the Christmas
story that says baby Jesus wasn't so poor after all.
Anderson says Jesus couldn't have been poor because he received
lucrative gifts -- gold, frankincense and myrrh -- at birth. Jesus had
to be wealthy because the Roman soldiers who crucified him gambled for
his expensive undergarments. Even Jesus' parents, Mary and Joseph,
lived and traveled in style, he says.
"Mary and Joseph took a Cadillac to get to Bethlehem because the
finest transportation of their day was a donkey," says Anderson. "Poor
people ate their donkey. Only the wealthy used it as transportation."
Many Christians see Jesus as the poor, itinerant preacher who had "no
place to lay his head." But as Christians gather around the globe this
year to celebrate the birth of Jesus, another group of Christians are
insisting that Jesus' beginnings weren't so humble.
They say that Jesus was never poor -- and neither should his followers
be. Their claim is embedded in the doctrine known as the prosperity
gospel, which holds that God rewards the faithful with financial
prosperity and spiritual gifts.
A clash of gospels?
The prosperity gospel has attracted plenty of critics. But popular
televangelists such as the late Oral Roberts, Kenneth Hagin and,
today, Creflo Dollar have built megachurches and a global audience by
equating piety with prosperity.
The prosperity gospel, however, clashes with the traditional
depictions of Jesus as poor. That's because the traditional image of
Jesus as destitute is wrong, says the Rev. Tom Brown, senior pastor of
the Word of Life Church in El Paso, Texas.
The proof, he says, is scattered throughout the New Testament. One
example: The 12th chapter of the Gospel of John says that Jesus had a
treasurer, or a "keeper of the money bag."
"The last time I checked, poor people don't have treasurers to take
care their money," says Brown, author of "Devil, Demons and Spiritual
Warfare."
A debate over the economic status of Jesus may seem nonsensical to
some. Does it really matter whether Jesus was rich or poor?
It matters to people like Luke Timothy Johnson, a prominent New
Testament scholar and author. He says that a rich Jesus is a
distortion of history and a threat to one of Christianity's core
teachings: God's identification with the poor.
"If Jesus reveals God, there is something powerful about God appearing
and working among the poor," says Johnson, a New Testament professor
at Emory University's Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia.
"Jesus' lifestyle is not of one in a gated community or a corporate
office," says Johnson, a former Benedictine monk. "You don't have to
go through a security gate to get to Jesus. People touch him. He
reached out and touched children. His accessibility is one of the most
powerful messages of Christianity. In Jesus, God is with us, and the
majority of us are poor."
'The poor won't follow the poor'
Some prosperity preachers extract a different message from the same
biblical texts. Brown, the El Paso minister, says he doesn't say that
Jesus was rich because he wants to give people an excuse to live
self-indulgent lives. He wants people to understand that Jesus used
his material and spiritual riches to help people -- and so should
they.
Brown says Jesus' own words prove that he wasn't poor.
"Jesus said you will always have the poor, but you will not always
have me," Brown says. "Jesus did not affirm himself as being part of
the poor class...
"I believe he was the richest man on the face of the earth because he
had God as his source," Brown says.
Jesus' wealth is evident even in the Gospel accounts of his execution,
some pastors say.
The New Testament reports that Roman soldiers gambled for Jesus'
clothing while he hung on the cross. They wouldn't gamble for Jesus'
clothing unless it was expensive, Anderson says.
"I don't know anybody -- even Pamela Anderson -- that would have
people gambling for his underwear," Anderson says. "That was some fine
stuff he wore."
Anderson says Jesus never would have had disciples or a large
following if he was poor. He would not have been able to command their
respect.
"The poor will follow the rich, the rich will follow the rich, but the
rich will never follow the poor," Anderson says.
Twisting scripture for personal gain?
Johnson, the Emory University New Testament professor, calls
Anderson's argument "completely illogical."
"So Martin Luther King must have been a millionaire," he says. "Crowds
followed Siddhartha Buddha and he was poor. And mobs followed Mahatma
Gandhi, and Gandhi wore a diaper, for God's sake."
The argument that Jesus was wealthy because the soldiers gambled for
his clothes at his crucifixion doesn't makes historical sense, either,
says Johnson, author of "Among the Gentiles: Greco-Roman Religion and
Christianity."
"Crucifixion was the sort of execution carried out for slaves and for
rebels," Johnson says. "It wasn't an execution for wealthy people."
A Baylor University religion professor who specializes in the study of
the poor in the Greco-Roman world also says there is "no way" that
Jesus could be considered wealthy.
Bruce W. Longenecker says life in Jesus' world was brutal. About 90
percent of people lived in poverty. A famine or a bad crop could ruin
a family. There was no middle class.
"In the ancient world, you were relatively poor or filthy rich,
there's very little in-between," says Longenecker, author of "Engaging
Economics: New Testament Scenarios and Early Christian Reception."
The New Testament is full of parables where Jesus actually condemns
the rich and praises the poor, Longenecker says. In the sixth chapter
of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus actually curses the rich, he says.
"The only way you can make Jesus into a rich man is by advocating
torturous interpretations and by being wholly naive historically,"
Longenecker says.
Anderson, the Arizona pastor, doesn't buy that argument. He says the
church has actually been damaged by teaching that Jesus was poor. God
wants his followers to be rich, not for selfish gain, but to help
others in need and spread the gospel.
When he first preached that Jesus wasn't poor to his church, Anderson
says he "ruffled some feathers."
Now, he says, his church has 9,000 members and a global ministry.
"That's so pathetic, to say that Jesus was struggling alone in the
dust and dirt," Anderson says. "That just makes no sense whatsoever.
He was constantly in a state of wealth."
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