Can you explain the logic in the quote attributed to Jesus?

I think this verse is the logical conclusion of a verse earlier in Matthew: “You cannot serve both God and money”. Money and greed have a tendency to lead us away from God, to become another master that we serve in place of God. It’s something that holds us back from heaven and ties us to the earth. This line follows the story of the rich man who is told to give up all his wealth to follow Jesus but is dejected at this advice. Jesus is saying that it’s essentially impossible for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven without the intervention of God. The following verses clarify:

When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and asked, “Who then can be saved?” Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

I read that rich people are less likely to lend a hand to a poor person than poor people are.

Is the implication that a rich man is by definition unholy – that he became rich immoral ways? Assumed then, that the poor are (in contrast) holy and worth of heaven because they don’t display the immorality and ill spirit that a rich person does.

The logic on both sides is flawed. Poor people are not necessarily moral and rich people are not necessarily evil.

But that’s religion for you – they lie to make a point, not to be accurate.

It is very difficult for a rich man to enter heaven because of the very nature of being a rich man with all that wealth that so easily corrupts.
Jacob Marley, in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, may have said it best.

“Oh! captive bound and double ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know that ages of incessant labor, by immortal creatures, for this earth, must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed! Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find it’s mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness! Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!”
“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob, ” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
“Business! cried the Ghost, wringing his hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

There was no money in the Garden of Eden. Forbidden fruit had to be plucked in person from the tree, it wasn’t for sale at $3.00 a pound. And so Adam was held responsible for his actions in a way that we who use money aren’t.

There is no “kingdom of heaven”, and no one has tried to pass a camel through an eye of a needle, so there’s no logic to it.

What it is is convenient rhetoric for proselytising to the poor, who were and still are the vast majority of people.

If you’re dirt poor, and you’ve been convinced that there’s a “kingdom of heaven” that rich people won’t get into, you’re less likely to cooperate with the rest of your class to do something about your material conditions—and the rich will continue being rich, and you and most of everyone else will continue being poor.

I think a partial answer, or at least another version of this statement, is found in 1John2:15–16: “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For everything in the world…the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life…comes not from the Father, but from the world.”
What I believe Jesus was saying is that a rich man favors Earthly wealth over the spiritual wealth of a relationship with God. And it doesn’t matter how much wealth he has, that won’t buy him one ounce of favor with God.

Cyril of Alexandria (fragment 219) claimed that “camel” is a Greek misspelling and that kamêlos (camel) was written in place of kamilos, meaning “rope” or “cable More recently, George Lamsa, in his 1933 translation of the Bible into English from the Syriac, claimed the same.

Arthur Schopenhauer, in The World as Will and Representation, Volume 1, § 68, quoted Matthew 19:24. “Es ist leichter, daß ein Ankertau durch ein Nadelöhr gehe, denn daß ein Reicher ins Reich Gottes komme.” That is translated into English as “It is easier for an anchor cable to go through an eye of a needle than for a rich person to come to God’s kingdom.”

Or, maybe that’s just something rich people made up.

I think it means that camels are very flexible.

It’s always seemed to mean we can never be rich if we are doing God’s work properly. There is, and always will be, too much to be done and too many to help. That’s my interpretation anyway.

@cookieman…LOLL!!

A camel zygote has 32 cells and is the size of a poppy seed. No problem.

There has been speculation, albeit unproved, that the passage is referring to a particular gate into the city of Jerusalem called “The Eye of the Needle” which was the only way to enter the city at night (to avoid seige) —but you had to unload everything on the camel in order to get the camel into the gate, which was still very difficult.

It means that to enter the kingdom of God, you have to give up or leave behind all that treasure or baggage which some people, especially the wealthy, are very hesitant to give up.

I don’t think it’s ever been proved that there was such a gate. What I said above is probably the real answer but I like what @gondwanalon said !!!

^^I heard that explanation from my theology professor.

In scripture, Jesus often spoke in metaphor. I think the lesson being taught here is that you can’t take it with you. The Kingdom of Heaven is a spiritual realm, not a physical one. In order to enter that Kingdom one must renounce, or at least divest oneself of worldly possessions.

How about the simple fact that if you manage to die wealthy, the only way to achieve it is through ignoring the need around you.

That you can only serve one master. God or money. Not both.

@stanleybmanly Exactly.