200 years before Jesus arrived on the scene, the Roman Emperor Aurelian initiated something called the "bread dole." This meant that grain could be supplied to the poor for half price. The dole quickly became a political tool to be used by tribunes to buy voters. If Jesus were not careful, this whole thing of giving bread could quickly degenerate into a tool to win friends and influence people. He would become as just another demagogue.

Bread can be used as a weapon. Indeed, there are those in our own government that have advocated that very thing. If nations withhold oil from us, then we withhold bread from them. On the surface feeding the world's hungry sounds like such an ideal thing, but when this whole issue is examined it becomes much more complex.

In the novel The Brothers Karamazov, we read a fictionalized scene that takes place between an old church Cardinal who is engaged in the Spanish Inquisition with Jesus, who supposedly has now come back to earth. The crooked old cardinal chastises Jesus for missing his golden opportunity in the desert when he did not give bread to the people. "Mankind would have run after you, grateful and obedient, though forever trembling with fear that you might withdraw your hand and they would no longer have loaves. You did not want to make men slaves but here too your judgment was too high for all men are slaves."

I have always thought that the temptation to give bread to the world was the greatest that Jesus ever experienced, because I am certain that his great compassionate heart melted at the sight of those who were hungry, so many of whom were children. With the snap of a finger it could have been done. But Jesus understood the ramifications of this and did what he had to do by refusing to fall into that tempting trap.