1. People who either don't know or care what Jesus said about money.

2. The second group are the believers who care very much. What Jesus said about money becomes the foundation for what they think and feel about money.

3. The people who know what Jesus said about money-or at least they think they know-and wish they didn't.

If you want an example of the third type of person, consider the statement I overheard at a seminar about becoming a millionaire. As I was going back to my seat after a break, I passed by a man who was asking the speaker a question. He said: "How can you say it is good to be rich. Jesus said that a rich man can't get into Heaven."

This one comment about a rich man and the Kingdom of Heaven is probably the single most misunderstood verse about money among all of the words of Jesus. And it is my candidate for the Bible verse most likely to produce people who are afraid of becoming rich out of fear for their own salvation.

By identifying the "Kingdom of Heaven" with "Heaven," the questioner misquoted the story. He had missed the point that Jesus was making. All three biblical versions of the story agree that Jesus was speaking about a rich man and the Kingdom of Heaven or Kingdom of God, not about Heaven.

The Kingdom of Heaven concerns the economic reality of people alive on planet Earth. The Kingdom of Heaven is not the same as Heaven.

What is the best way to liberate people from such misunderstanding? The only way is to put the words of Jesus into context. What did the words mean in the context of the story? And what did the story mean in the context of the economic system?

The alternative is to live your life feeling guilty about wanting money and guilty about having it. This is what happened to the man at the seminar. He misunderstood the point of the story. As a result, he was stuck in the Eye of the Needle about money, without realizing that he had completely missed the point of the story.

Jesus was not saying that the rich cannot get into Heaven. Jesus was condemning an economic system that produced so much poverty. He was not insisting that people must be poor to get into Heaven.