Best Bible Study topic yet.

I bet Joel Osteen, Mr. "Prosperity Gospel," isn't discussing that first one in his mega-millions church in Houston too much, if at all.

Reading this along with Jeramiah 22:13

Woe to him who is building his house by unrighteousness, And his upper chambers by injustice, On his neighbour he layeth service for nought, And his wage he doth not give to him.

Why aren't all Christians Unionists as well as Socialists? Gods work is helping a ripped off worker get what they are due.

I'll add another: "Doom to you who legislate evil, who make laws that make victims— Laws that make misery for the poor, that rob my destitute people of dignity, Exploiting defenseless widows, taking advantage of homeless children. " Isaiah 10:1-2, The Message Bible

What is 'rich'?

Possessing more than what one absolutely needs?

Anyone reading this blog is probably damned by that definition.

Damnit!

Here's one for the T-baggers, Romans 13:1-7. It tells those "Christians" to submit to authority, as in Obama, and to pay their taxes.

1 Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God; and the powers that be are ordained of God.

2 Therefore he that resisteth the power, withstandeth the ordinance of God: and they that withstand shall receive to themselves judgment.

3 For rulers are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil. And wouldest thou have no fear of the power? do that which is good, and thou shalt have praise from the same:

4 for he is a minister of God to thee for good. But if thou do that which is evil, be afraid; for he beareth not the sword in vain: for he is a minister of God, an avenger for wrath to him that doeth evil.

5 Wherefore ye must needs be in subjection, not only because of the wrath, but also for conscience' sake.

6 For this cause ye pay tribute also; for they are ministers of God's service, attending continually upon this very thing.

7 Render to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom; fear to whom fear; honor to whom honor

wl, some are socialist and unionist.

More were 30 years ago. I blame "Christian" media in part for coopting the message, and the progressives for being so caught up in their theological arguments and participation in social causes as "citizens" and not "Christians" they didn't notice when the Christian media message started defining the religion as a whole.

I keep telling my anti-health-care, Fox-news-loving, Focus-on-the-family-supporting quasi-friend of mine that Jesus never asked for a copy of your insurance card or demanded a co-pay before he healed someone and, btw, he was a socialist too.

He never responds to that.

With the right food processor, I could probably get a camel through the eye of the largest needle with a very few days. So there.

Ed Abbey turned me on to what he called the "the splendid wrath" of James 5:1-6:

"Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming upon you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workmen who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered innocent men, who were not opposing you."

I've listened to fascinating lectures on the focus of Christianity. The catholic, meaning universal, church especially within the US focuses upon the Pauline letters. The Pauline letters have a theme of expected end times. And careful reading will reveal that they really never talk about what Jesus was recorded as saying within the Gospels. There is mention of making collections to help the poor, but no real focus on solving the problems that lead to impoverishment. No need to challenge the domination system. The focus left the rather radical statements attributed to Jesus: don't judge; love your neighbor as yourself; turn your cheek; give away your wealth and follow, etc., instead the focus became about making sense of the fall of the Temple and the "heavenly reward". There is a theory that the church has moved from following the historical Jesus to the Pauline Jesus with its end times focus to the Constidine the Great's Jesus which focused on unifying with the Nicine Creed and conversion to Christanity a requirement for Roman citizenship.

In short, one could hypothesize that the End Times/Heavenly Reward focus and the demand of unity. That uniformity has caused the catholic church to loose the knowledge that Jesus lived near the Sea of Tiberius when ~90% of the population lives in desperate poverty, by present day standards, a large roving group of peasants whose land, and sometimes their children, were lost to pay their taxes both to the Roman government and to the Temple. The Lord's Prayer with its plea for forgiveness of debts, not sins but the taxes that can not be paid, and daily bread, enough food to make it possible to share crop or fish as a hired hand for a day, take on an entirely different meaning.

This thread is an absolute blessing. Better responses than I had even hoped for! This rules.

Evangelicals have a lie they use to get around the "eye of the needle" problem. They believe that there used to be a gate in the Jerusalem wall that was so low a camel had to get on its knees to enter -- difficult, but far from impossible. See, a rich man can get into heaven, he just has to get on his knees. American Christians visiting Israel ask bemused tour guides to see this gate every day.

There is of course no gate, and there never was. The story was invented by a mid-nineteenth-century con artist/evangelist. But the Jesus people believe it, and it's a common topic for sermons today. Dollars to doughnuts the story's been told in Mars Hill.

What @1 said. I try to explain the similarities between what Jesus tells us about how a just and godly society is supposed to work, and collectivism, but none of my conservative Christian friends ever seem to hear it. ...perhaps I'll find a way to work these juxtaposed quotes into my Christmas cards this year.

Nothing surprising there. Early Christian ideology and communism have always been linked. There were even some Christian sects preaching proto-communism in the Middle-Ages. Not surprising either that Christianity and Communism murdered so many people.

@11, thank you for sharing that. Where are you listening to these lectures? I've tried to take classes in this stuff but always ended up disappointed about how people, even scholars, are so willing to ignore parts of history or willfully interpret things that have little logical justification...

Thanks for avoiding the obvious Spider-Man reference.

@9 Would you call grinding a Camel, fur, bones and all, into a thin soup, and pouring it through even a sail-makers needle easy? I don't think so.

"Marxism is the opiate of the masses" - postmodern Karl Marx.

Oh please, like anyone actually cares much what the book says. Almost everyone religious from liberal to conservative goes in and picks out the parts they like and rationalizes away the rest. Wanna be rich, sure you can read it that way. Think God should be cool with the gays, whatever just ignore the parts that clearly reject that. The only people who take it 100% seriously tend to be crazy ass people. The nuts that show up with giant signs at UW or various gatherings are probably the most biblical people around.

With enough money, I can have a needle made large enough for a camel to fit through the eye.

@21 Or just get your hands on a camel embryo. After all its a life as worthy as the birthed on.

Malachi 3:10 - "Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this,' says the LORD of hosts, 'if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows."
Deuteronomy 8:18 - "But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day."
John 10: 10 - "I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly."
3 John 2 - "Beloved, I pray that you may prosper in all things and be in health, just as your soul prospers."

God wants us to be rich. By "us" I mean other grey haired white men.

It's probable the camel bit is a mis-translation, the Aramaic word "rope" and "camel" being the same spelling, and the meaning being found in the context.

I didn't remember that the Book of Karl Marx was part of the Bible. Is it canonical or just apocryphal?

@ 16,

Westar Institute. They have twice yearly meetings and a publication called "The Fourth R: An Advocate for Religious Literacy" which appears six times a year, www.westarinstitute.org.

@25... It's from the King Charles (Mudede) Bible.

In related news, kim_in_portland (see @11) still rocks.

@27: That made me giggle.

@18 They do it to cows every day. A cow isn't that much smaller than a camel.

@18 Easier than the life of a poor person, that's for sure!

Thanks, Kim!

@27 ha! Charles should do his own version of the Bible. I would read it just for the lols.

Great thread - thoughtful and funny in equal measure. I love Slog. (And Kim!)

Fnarf-- that argument originated in 18th C. England, where a preacher used it to mollify his rich constituency. Every church w/ a wealthy flock has used it ever since.

I'm glad you chose a positive passage from the Bible instead of the mosaic law crap, which is an easy target. The Christians wouldn't follow it if it was just a bunch of bland laws on how to eat & treat your slaves. Same thing w/ the Qu'ran. There is very powerful, positive stuff in there, and it's valuable to look at how it is written, to discover why people follow it.

It is interesting that there is a different between those who are given and those who are entrusted. Given suggests something received free & clear. A gift. Entrusted implies something that can not be owned, something the recipient is only responsible for.

The Marx quote is preposterous. It gives value to need, inspiring a race towards the most pathetic. It also has no relationship to the Bible passages.

“It is easier for this REAL THING to go through this other REAL THING than for this third REAL THING to enter this IMAGINARY THING.”

@24, wrong. The parable with the camel predates the Biblical version, and Aramaic has nothing to do with it.

@18, you obviously do not own a Vitamix blender. Piece of cake.

Fnarf, I was just trying to remember what that story was - thank you.

@38

We live in a society. There should be no need for charity.

Mark Driscoll will just fly his helicopter over the gates to heaven, problem solved.

#38: Jesus wept.

@41

From what I've read of the New Testament, he literally would weep.

@38:
Liberals and conservatives actually contribute at comparable levels to charities taking different ways of giving into account.

While it is true that the monetary value of personal charitable donations by conservatives is higher than that of liberals by most measures, a large percentage of such conservative giving goes toward church organizations rather than more general charitable works per se (e.g., building church complexes as opposed to soup kitchens).

In addition, people with liberal viewpoints are much more likely to be employed by or volunteer for charitable organizations than people with conservative viewpoints are and do.

States with conservative majorities tend to have weaker public assistance programs, and those with liberal majorities tend to have stronger public assistance programs; this is because conservatives tend to channel assistance through religious organizations (which then also serves a recruitment purpose), whereas liberals tend to channel assistance through public programs (which then tends to serve a wider population in need).

Everything pretty much balances out in the end. The fact is that the left and right are plenty generous in their own ways; they differ only *how* they prefer to give, not in how much.

Some of my favorite scripture verses. Turns out there's just as strong a case for Jesus as anarchocommunist as there is for ethereal defender of Divine Law.

@13, love the naked self-serving nature of that revision of the parable. Do we see Jesus making excuses for the rich? Or, for that matter, most of the Israelite prophets? Not so much.

Lovely quotes but it is perhaps an error to conflate Marx and the Bible. I am reminded of the great socioeconomic experiment of the Pilgrims of Plimoth Colony between 1620 and 1622, who believed fervently in a sharing of wealth, who at first attempted to survive by having all the colonists work together on commonly held fields and gave out food exactly as Marx would have liked, each according to their needs. But they quickly discovered that it is human nature to misperceive ones own efforts as greater than those of others (something that social scientists have proved) which resulted in a loss of motivation (another thing social scientists have proved). The solution was to keep the commons system as a safety net but to add a small privatized system as well. Each colonist, including every man woman and child, were given a small plot of land to work in their spare time. The amount of food grown under this new system resulted in the first good harvest which assured the colony's survival and was celebrated in the First Thanksgiving. As a practical matter, feeding the poor works best in a socialist system and not a communist one.

@45

The situation you described with the colonists is not as "Marx would have liked". Marx and Engels were very critical of primitive communism (as seen in hunter-gatherer societies), utopian socialism and other "non-scientific" forms of socialist theory.

The colonists were living in a pre-capitalist, pre-industrial world, a world without a working class, and so what we think of today as socialism and communism are as useful to discussions of that era as talking about train travel. Although Engels wrote excellently about utopian socialism in the Anti-Duhring.

43-- Good insight. The definition of 'conservative' is fairly easy to ascertain: they believe in the way things have been done before. "Tradition" is their watch-word. 'Liberal' is more difficult, in that so many different attitudes & beliefs are put under one hat, to the point where it's meaningless. Of course, there is one, single defining characteristic of the 'liberal,' in that they are all hated by the 'conservatives.'

48-- Lol.

This is an interesting Bible quote in part because it's such an absurd comparison. Why 'Camel through the eye of the needle'? Perhaps that was deliberate, and the point is that wealth and 'The Kindgdom of Heaven' (happiness, peace of mind) are not antithetical to each other so much as completely unrelated.

A rich man cannot find peace of mind because his mind is only focused on his wealth. If he looks outside himself, the sight of the poor will cost him his peace of mind unless he shares his wealth.

And, remaining focused inward the rich man's wealth consumes him with its need to be protected, guarded... Wealth has become his master.

@50 Why 'Camel through the eye of the needle'? Because a camel (unless liquefied as suggested in previous posts) CAN’T fit through the eye of a needle, like how a wealthy person CAN’T get into heaven (heaven being a real fucking place in the minds of believers, not some new age hippy state of mind bullshit).

I must at this time remind of Acts 4.32-35:

• Now the company of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet; and distribution was made to each as any had need.

I mean, since we also have mentioned Marx.

Of course, I Samuel 8:10-14 is an anti-government message.

And, unless the Lord specifically blessed a government and stated it no longer had to follow the commandments, then forceful taxation violates Exodus 20 ("Thou shalt not steal"). Is the American Government ruling by the Divine Right of Kings now?

These quotes also bring to mind this FDR quote:
"Here is my principle: Taxes shall be levied according to ability to pay. That is the only American principle."

The "rich man" one makes esoteric sense. If you've spent a lifetime focussed on "piling up treasure" (outer-directed) you're very unlikely to have the kind of (inner-directed) qualia essential to experience "the kingdom of heaven" which "is within you".

Very similar to the Buddha's relevant admonitions (found in the 8-fold way). It's all in Ouspensky somewhere.

@10 Ed Abbey turned me on

If they added a "Book of Abbey" to the Bible I'd probably steal a copy from the motel.

Thank you, Slog for highlighting one of my favorite teachings of Christianity.

@54:
Er... no. I Samuel 8 is anti-KING not anti-GOVNMINT, ya dufus!

(And I think we already solved that problem some 235 years back, thankyouanyway)

As an atheist Jew, I totally feel left out.

Me too kersy.

"Charity" is not a concept in Judaism. Instead, giving money to benefit others is called "tzedakah," which translates as "justice." Justice is a moral obligation, while charity is simply an expression of generosity.

Well, I guess it falls on me to educate the masses. The eye of the needle was a small opening the walls of ancient cities. Camels can go through them but they must do it on their knees. Honestly didn't anyone study history?!?! Not religion mind you, just plain ol history.

Heres a tip: Better to have people wonder if you are stupid than to open you mouth and remove all doubt...

Well, I guess it falls on me to educate the masses. The eye of the needle was a small opening the walls of ancient cities. Camels can go through them but they must do it on their knees. Honestly didn't anyone study history?!?! Not religion mind you, just plain ol history.

Heres a tip: Better to have people wonder if you are stupid than to open you mouth and remove all doubt...

Picture of an "eye of the needle" gate into Jerusalem: http://amazinggospelinsights.blogspot.co…

God, you're a fucking clueless moron. That must be painful.