So Simple a Caveman Could Understand It

I'm very interested in the original meaning of words and how meanings were derived, especially when studying the Bible.  I also use Wikipedia a lot and thus happened upon the Phoenician alphabet which is the root of the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek alphabets and ancestor to the modern English language.

What caught my eye and inspired me to write this post are two letters in the Phoenician alphabet which also carry a word meaning, Gaml (from which we get the word "camel"), and Qof (which meant "needle head" in the Phoenician hieroglyphic form, or "hole" in Hebrew).

Now if you give me a list of the 24 most basic words in the language, and tell me two of them are "camel" and "eye of a needle", my mind is going to jump to Matthew 19:24 where Jesus says "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."

This sheds a whole new light on what Jesus was saying.  It is as if He was saying "let me spell this out for you" or "let me put this in terms a caveman could understand."

To put this in a modern western context, think of a camel as a big pickup truck.  The audience is a group of poor Galilean fishermen who could no more afford a camel than they could buy a new truck today.  Jesus was saying something like "It would be easier to drive a truck through the hole in this fishing hook, than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God."

So how is the rich man going to enter the Kingdom of God?  The first step is to get out of the truck.  The next step is to become very small.  Well, actually it's impossible.  The only thing you can be holding when you pass through that very small opening is Jesus.  "With God all things are possible."

Eternal life and the Kingdom of Heaven are here and now.  But you may have to let go of everything  you hold dear to go there.  You will enter the Kingdom of God just as you entered this world - with nothing.  "Blessed are the poor in spirit" is the first and most fundamental attitude required to accept the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

Let me emphasize that Jesus did not imply that giving away your property will get you into the Kingdom, but to "come follow Me."  If our properties, jobs, families, etc. keep us from following Jesus, then we must let go.  That's part of what I am thinking when I talk about shrinking.