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Religion
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Title: The Economics of God (Continued)
Source: [None]
URL Source: [None]
Published: Sep 26, 2015
Author: Vicomte13
Post Date: 2015-09-26 21:51:57 by Vicomte13
Keywords: None
Views: 1843
Comments: 9

Elsewhere, we have been discussing economics and taxation.

Poverty relief is one of our duties as Christians.

It is disheartening to read on so many threads the most vicious contempt leveled at the poor. That is to be expected of pagans and seculars, but Christians should know better.

Sometimes we forget ourselves, but this thread has been revived to remind us that poverty relief was the purpose of the largest of the taxes God imposed on ancient Israel, and it is a commandment to Christians from Jesus Christ.

Seculars will always be hateful towards anything that costs money and does not seem to benefit them, but they love and serve money, not God.

Christians should be reminded of God's views on poverty, and the best place to start with that is Scripture.

Invoking Scripture is a minefield, as disputes immediately arise over which translation, which canon, etc. As, to my knowledge, I am the only Catholic posting on this site, and all of the self-professed Christians are Protestants (many with an unveiled contempt for Catholicism), I will use Protestant sources. As A K A Stone has taken me to task for my use of a particular Protestant translation in the past (the Concordant Translation), and has insisted that the King James Version is the most reliable, I shall limit myself to the KJV.

One advantage of doing so, besides the fact that all Protestant conservatives will accept its authority, is that all of the greatest word study and categorization tools, such as Strong's Concordance and numbering system, were devised for the KJV.

A study of two words: the word "Poor" and the word "Rich" in the Holy Bible, KJV translation, is very revealing, and should serve to bring erring Christians back to their senses.

The word "poor" appears 205 times in the KJV, 170 times in the Old Testament (OT), and 35 times in the NT.

Of the 170 times that "poor" is referenced in the OT, 12 of them do not refer to human material poverty, but refer to the state of something, such as 'cattle of poor appearance', or is used in a neutral way, such as 'both rich and poor'.

152 times the word is used to refer to poor people, and presents them or their state in a sympathetic light.

Only 6 times are the poor presented in an unsympathetic light, and these occurrences are all in proverbs, describing the fact that neighbors find the poor burdensome and hate them, or in two or three instances, a description of character weaknesses that lead to poverty (such as drinking to excess). However, even in proverbs the (true) observations of some of the weaknesses that lead to proverbs does not suggest that there is a "worthy" poor and unworthy poor. Quite the opposite: the poor are the poor, and some get that way through personal errors, but the poor are to be pitied and helped.

In the New Testament, the situation is even starker. Jesus uses the word 16 times. 15 times the reference to the poor is in a sympathetic or very sympathetic light. 1 time there is a neutral reference.

The other 18 occurrences of the "poor" in the NT are all sympathetic or, in one case, neutral.

There is never a pejorative reference to the poor in the New Testament at all, There are 152 sympathetic references to the poor in the Old Testament, and even the handful of critical usages in Proverbs refer only to how some poor become poor. There is never one reference that suggests anything other than compassion and assistance for the poor. The Bible is overwhelmingly sympathetic to the plight of the poor, and is filled with nearly two hundred instances of commands and strong guidance to care for them as a duty, of Jew and Christians alike.

One will search in vain for any support for condemnation and refusal to help the poor because of "their own fault" in the Bible. The Bible commands the opposite. And Christians who think otherwise are in serious error (consider the repetitive nature of the commands in their regard, and quasi-total sympathetic reference to them - and negative references to those who spurn them).

So now let's look at the word "rich". Again, many seculars and pagans rise urgently to the defense of the rich "against the mob", or against any who would criticize them.

Christians do not have the luxury of following the logic of secular conservatism to that dark place.

For the word "Rich" also occurs in the Bible 41 times in the Old Testament, and 39 times in the New. Of the 41 usages in the Old Testament, 14 are neutral, such as in references to things that happen to "rich and poor". 17 uses are downright pejorative, harshly calling out and criticizing the rich, generally for their lack of compassion for or behavior towards the poor (the very reason that I am posting this word study: these sentiments against the poor are not new under the Sun, and God has been rejecting them for 4000 years - Christians need to realize that and change course if they are in error.) There are 10 positive references to the rich in the Old Testament, with several of them being cases where God rewarded a person, such as Abraham, for his loyalty.

In the New Testament, Jesus uses the word 16 times. 13 of those uses are highly condemnatory. Jesus warns the rich of damnation, preaches woe to them, calls on them to repent. He uses "rich" in a neutral sense one time. His two positive uses of the word "rich" are both in Revelation, and he is referring to those rich in spirit, not rich in material goods. Indeed, in one instance he refers to a church that is poor materially as being rich, because of its spiritual gifts. So, Jesus is utterly negative in this use of the word "rich", repeatedly, and urges them to repent and use their money to aid the poor.

When "rich" is used the other 23 times in the New Testament, 14 uses of that word are pejorative, and 3 are neutral. All of the remaining positive uses refer to being rich in spirit. The only positive reference to a rich person is a statement of fact about Joseph of Arimathea: that he was rich.

The God of the KJV is not balanced: being rich is presented as being highly problematic, and his Son is downright condemnatory: why have you amassed wealth for yourself when the poor are crying out all around you.

A handful of the proverbs do indeed describe the weaknesses that lead to poverty, and they are true. But nowhere does God or his Son ever suggest that that makes any difference. Yes, the poor are sometimes responsible, at least in part, for their own condition. And no, it is not for you to judge, Christian: it is for you to help, with money.

In the use of these words, the Bible is utterly lopsided. God's view is very clear. And if you're a Christian and are speaking harsh judgments towards the poor, you do so in ignorance and are standing against God's word, and his opinion made manifest throughout Scripture by every use of the word, in all contexts.

I thought it was important for you all to see this, so that if you are erring, you stop and come back to God.

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#1. To: A K A Stone, redleghunter (#0)

Ping

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-09-26   21:52:41 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: Vicomte13 (#0) (Edited)

In the use of these words, the Bible is utterly lopsided.

And uterly bereft of knowledge economic of basic economic principles. The only important thing is that there is a hypothetical God that will make you feel good about yourself if you follow Marxist principles. I suspect I'll need to write a piece comparing economic systems to crops in a field to clarify this.

rlk  posted on  2015-09-26   22:12:45 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: rlk (#2)

And uterly bereft of knowledge economic of basic economic principles.

Which is one of the many reasons, no doubt, that you are not a Christian and burn with contempt at the stupid Christians and their fairy-tale God, yes?

Actually, God's knowledge of economics is perfect.

Taken altogether, his economic plan is THE answer to poverty:

Everybody gets a free piece of land to farm and live on, which cannot be taken from him - not for debt, not for taxes, not for punishment for a crime. It is his no matter what, and when he dies, it is his heirs.

This means no homelessness: you can ALWAYS put up a tent and light a fire for warmth and cooking on your acre or two.

It means substantial relief from poverty also, for you can always grow food there too. Poverty relief through the Levitical tithe will tide you over.

Children were never to be cast aside and thrown to their own devices: they could always return to the farm (under the supervision of their elders), and in turn the children would always inherit the farm, and had a permanent duty of support and care for their parents.

Much reduced need for social security in this society.

A carefully circumscribed diet meant long healthy lives. If people ate like that, Medicare and Medicaid costs would be less.

To the extent that men needed money - for seed corn, or if a crop failed and they needed to tide over, or their house burnt and they needed to replace, or the wolves got the sheep, etc. - when there was a crisis, whomever had excess that they asked was obligated to lend at zero interest, and the borrower was obligated to pay back in seven years or less. If after seven years the borrower could not repay, the lender was to forgive the debt. The debt could continue, and be repaid over a longer period, if there was nobody poor in the land.

This was important: it was not enough that the parties not be poor - there had to be NO poor in the neighborhood, for if there WERE poor, then the loan and assistance was owed to THEM, to raise them up.

Follow God's law, and there would be very little poverty in a generation or two, because the capital built up all around would be robust.

A 10% tithe provided for support for the government administrators and poverty relief. The main role of the administrators was religious and providing judgment.

Houses in towns could be permanently sold, but returning to the land was always an option.

Money could never be loaned at interest among the faithful. When loaned to foreigners it SHOULD be loaned at interest, in part to diminish their competitivity however if there were poor of the faith, they had to be lent to first.

If Christians simply followed God's economic laws vis a vis each other, and each cultivated his own garden and ate right, the wealth of Christians as a sprawling clan would skyrocket. That is what I advocate Christians do. That really is the economics I try to get to, by showing the flaws and failings and impossibility of the standard secular model in which you so firmly believe.

If Christians preferentially lend to one another without interest and forgive debts in the seventh year, very soon there will be no indebted Christians, and the religion will become appealing for outsiders. God intended that too: for his people to stand above the others because of their cleanliness, heath, stability and prosperity, so that others would sojourn with them and come to believe in the one true God, and adopt His ways.

You never will, because you love your secular learning and believe God to be a fable.

But Christians shoiuld hearken to God on this and come together to do this, and leave the likes of you in the dust.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-09-26   22:27:43 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: Vicomte13 (#3) (Edited)

And uterly bereft of knowledge economic of basic economic principles.

Which is one of the many reasons, no doubt, that you are not a Christian and burn with contempt at the stupid Christians and their fairy-tale God, yes?

Yes!

Too many Christians deal exclusively in superficialities and circularity of reasoning capped off with threats of going to hell if these are not accepted to suit me. It makes them believe they are in command and big shots when suckers quake in fear and confusion.

rlk  posted on  2015-09-26   22:52:12 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: rlk (#4)

Too many Christians deal exclusively in superficialities and circularity of reasoning capped off with threats of going to hell if these are not accepted to suit me. It makes them believe they are in command and big shots when suckers quake in fear and confusion.

That's true. Too many do. Doesn't mean God's not real.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-09-27   1:57:45 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#6. To: Vicomte13 (#5)

Doesn't mean God's not real.

Intellectually soft fools who believe mythical beings feed them economic information enabling them to remain in a state of aloof childishness are also real.

rlk  posted on  2015-09-27   2:21:54 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: rlk (#6) (Edited)

I broke my neck in a lake alone and was drowning on the bottom, paralyzed. God healed my neck and saved me. He is real. I would be a fool to deny what I know for a fact.

You have never encountered God like that, so you do not know.

For you to deny it happened would be you making a fairy tale. It did, which is why I know that God is.

That doesn't therefore mean that you should believe it too. A miracle happening to me in private does not an argument for your conversion make.

But it does mean that when I hear "intellectual" arguments that call me a fool for believing in a God I have spoken too, and a Heaven I have seen, through eyes that are only here all of these decades because of an impossible miracle - what I see is a man who thinks he knows more than he does, and who is stamping his foot like a petulant child and casting insults at men for believing things that HE does not understand.

Just because you do not understand it, and cannot access the fact set, doesn't mean it is not true.

Of course, because I cannot prove it is true, I do not suggest you SHOULD believe because of me. I merely explain why it is impossible for us to ever see eye to eye: I have facts in my personal repertoire that you do not, and that you cannot access because even if they are not written in books, they are outside of your experience.

So I operate on my fact set, which is much superior to yours. That is why I do as a I do, and so lightly discard the childish sort of foot-stamping about mythical beings. God's not mythical - I am walking around and not silt-covered bones on a lake bottom because he is real.

You operate on yours, which is fine. Because I know that I know things you do not know, I have gone out into the world and done vast research to find those examples of concrete physical miracles left by God that anybody can study forensically, and see the obvious physics-defying miracle.

Experience has shown me that men like you, who insult that which you do not know and cannot understand, lack the will or patience to look at the objects and the data, and even if you did few have the depth of scientific training to understand just exactly WHY what they are looking at cannot be.

I stopped proffering this sort of information long ago, because the mockery wore out quickly. When I proffered, I was trying to help men understand, so that they could have a glimpse, in a medium they could understand, of what I know from direct experience. Getting spat on by the ignorant is not enjoyable, and if a pathway proves fruitless, one abandons it.

I have ceased trying to convince seculars such as yourself of anything. Your mind is closed, and you worship your god, such as it is. It is your affair. Obviously you have no part in the sort of things that I try to build with, for example, this thread.

Christians are divided and fight, all in violation of God's will, because they have erected many high places, sacred groves and false altars and lost sight of the truth. The Bible is, to you, a book of fairy tales or worse. To them, they claim, it is the Inspired Word of God. And the minority part of them (but the majority in America - and every other Christian on this site except one or two Orthodox) claim that it - Scripture Alone - is the only true and certain source of the words of God.

So, when I point out facts about what God said in the Bible to THEM, it OUGHT to move them. Specifically, it ought to make many of them here realize that their political positions, often stated so strongly, are in opposition to Jesus and his Father. My goal was to put something they do not believe in front of their faces, stark and clear, so that they realize that they HAVE to believe and accept what they do not currently believe, and what they do not like, because God demands it. That is what a true Christian must do: bend the knee and the neck, and give up all of his views that are opposed to God, and conform himself to God's will.

That was my target audience, and why I wrote what I wrote, and quoted the numbers I quoted. This was part of an intermural Christian discussion.

Sadly, the wayward Christians who should look at what God said in the book they claim is supreme and change their views, have remained silent.

Instead, the only person who responded was a secular pagan, you, who promptly attacked God.

Your hostility to God is clear - you are sure he doesn't exist, and you are sure that the Christian and Jewish Scriptures are fairy tales believed by soft-headed ignoramuses. You state that as strongly as you can.

And I know, because of my healed broken neck, that you're an ignoramus in the truest meaning of the word: you are IGNORANT of God - as in: you have no idea of that which you speak.

You have a strong opinion, based on your own experience, and amped up by emotion.

I commend you for that. It is good to be passionate about one's god. Yours isn't real, but you believe it is, and you strive for it.

It is a pity that Christians who DO assert God is real are so indifferent to his words, because when it comes to economics, they don't want to hear what he has to say.

They think by ignoring it, he will go away. He won't. I'm going to keep speaking for him, using his own words, and using the Scriptures they accept as supreme, in the only form they accept, until they either attack God like you did - or they realize their error and conform themselves to God.

First, they will attack me. That has been going on. Kill the messenger has always been the first resort of men. Then they will ignore what I write, as here. The pagan comments. The Christians are silent. The problem with actually coming onto the field of battle is that I have the Bible, and the words, and the numbers - I do not speak for myself, I speak using the very words of him who saved me, in the very form that the stubborn, sullen Christians in the ranks opposed demand.

Gutta cavat lapidem Dripping hollows out rock. Men who know God, the Christians, cannot help but be affected every time they hear God's words. That God is so uniformly sympathetic to the poor, and so uniformly unsympathetic to the rich, fits hand in glove with the laws he made and their enactment through the Levites and then through Christ and the Apostles. There is nowhere to turn except ad hominem, but I am not going away. I'm reminding Christians of their duty, from which the pied piper of politics has caused them to stray.

I'm not speaking to you or of you at all. You don't know God and don't care to. You don't accept the authority of the words I cite. You think that anybody who believes any of this is a soft-headed fool. And you have no comprehension that you're like a primitive native holding an i-Phone.

It is not your fault that you have no experience with God. It is your fault that you are so completely hard-hearted towards him and his people that you allow no doubt about your beliefs. But that's for you and him. It is not for me to change your mind. I've been insulted by you a few times, and I have no particular interest in being barked at over and over again.

I do appreciate the fact that you commented. It is a sorrowful thing when Christians, who should be learning from their God's words, ignore them utterly, and only a pagan rises to their discussion.

But that is why we have abortion in America. It is why we are engaged in endless foreign wars, and pump endless life support into a reanimated zombie of an ancient state that God himself killed. It is why we have a capricious death penalty, and a collapsed birth rate. It is why 16% of our people do not have work that will sustain them, and a fifth of our children are in poverty. It is why we had brutal slavery and segregation, and genocide in our past, and still have the overhangs thereof in our present.

It is why America, while it may have always thought of itself as majority Christian, was only majority "Christian". If the majority really were, or are, Christians, these ills would have melted away like the dew before the light of the Son, which would have radiated through all.

Instead, "Christians" here worship in the high places of their making, sacrificing pieces of their spirits on altars of money, power, sex, and false beliefs.

If some, seeing God's words, hear his voice and come out of the darkness and away from the high places, that is good.

If you, having been stopped short by an intellectual force as unyielding as your own, but possessing greater knowledge of the world than you, find yourself worrying about these things you do not know, but could - well, perhaps that will work away at you and, unable to find it elsewhere, perhaps you will ask.

And then I shall test your knowledge of the physical laws, to see if you are ready and able to comprehend. If not, I will teach you those first. Then I will show you the proof of God through physical things. And then you can still look askance at intellectually soft fools who believe mythical beings feed them information, but you will realize that those myths and fairy tales were ultimately inspired by something real. The images minted by by the myths and legends may be blurred, but there is a Lord unseen - by you - and once you see him, if only his back from afar, you will have greater sympathy for those who, while in error, at least recognize that their compass needle is pointing towards something real. Right now, you are without a compass.

Perhaps the seed will irritate, and your curiosity will get the best of your pride. But that will not be today.

Until that day, fair winds and following seas.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-09-27   11:40:36 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#8. To: Vicomte13 (#7)

I broke my neck in a lake alone and was drowning on the bottom, paralyzed. God healed my neck and saved me.

I don't believe it. At best, it was a transitory hallucination.

rlk  posted on  2015-09-27   13:58:40 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#9. To: rlk (#8)

I don't believe it. At best, it was a transitory hallucination.

Which is why I said in what I wrote that communication at a certain level across the gulf of experience is impossible.

I will tell you this: you do not believe it now. The day will come when you do. And in that day, one of the things you will remember is this very conversation.

Now, a door-knocking evangelist would tell you "Given the coming of that day, you must do thus and so (or else)..." Or, if he's less judgmental, will say "Imagine what you could accomplish if you knew for sure that day will come..."

O indeed.

But that's the thing: we CAN'T believe what we do not believe. This is why traditional evangelism is so worthless (and annoying). To stand before a man and tell him "You JUST have to believe [INSERT NONSENSE X]" is exactly the same thing as pointing to some random unappealing girl on a bus and saying "You must now be in love with her."

And how is this magical transformation to be accomplished in the mind? By casting spells? By going through some sort of ridiculous ritual?

No. It isn't going to be achieved AT ALL. Which is why it's so pointless to browbeat people over what they do and don't believe.

You believe as you do because of the experiences you have had. And I believe as I do because of the experiences I have had. If God wants you to know what I know, he will make it possible (He's God - He not only CAN do anything, but he DOES do everything that he wants done - because He's God, and that's a perk of being God.)

But what use is there talking about this? You don't believe it. It annoys you. It is wasting your time.

So let's stop. It is unfruitful. You have things to get on with, and so do I.

I will leave you with this only: do not be hasty to judge things you do not understand. If you don't believe what I said, that is fine. But you would be foolish indeed to build a foundation of unbelief in what other people say as the basis of your own. Because some of them, like me, are actually telling you the truth, though you cannot accept it at this time.

If the Christians annoy you - and they do, very much - avoid them and ignore them. Don't come chase them down to tell them why they're wrong. That's not different from what the knock-knockers do to you, is it?

Eventually you'll meet God. And then you'll believe. That will be on his schedule. Not mine, certainly. Not yours either. Nobody browbeats anybody else into belief or into love.

I'm going to leave it at that. There is nothing to fight over. So go in peace, as shall I.

Vicomte13  posted on  2015-09-27   16:57:07 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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