Fully agree, as noted in the OP.
Again, I agree fully, theologically.
Dude’s an old hippie and a lapsed Catholic. Maybe I’ll point him to the ELCA church down the street, where the attitude is more aimed at helping him to grow spiritually, and maybe do some good works. As my wife describes it, “Full gospel, but not nuts about it.” He likes helping people, and at least he won’t get fleeced.
I really miss Polycarp right now. 
I watch him occasionally just out of idel curiosity and yeah, ew. He barely talks about God or Christ except to say that they are helping you get everything you want.
What happened to not having your heaven on earth, and having it in heaven?
I thought the idea was taking the gifts you’ve been given from God and bringing about more of His kingdom on earth, in terms of love, not money. (Don’t hide your light under a bushel.) That parable always makes me uncomfortable because I am so risk-averse that I totally identify with the third guy!
Well, there would be a wealth floor.
I just want to say, I’m a big old socialist, and get annoyed at Shodan when talking about modern economics, but I seem to agree with what he’s saying about Jesus’s teachings on wealth. Those are good posts.
IMHO that is what the parable is about: about what to do with the gifts from god.
But the very second one applies a literal meaning to it, like the prosperity gospel followers think, then one can not avoid the slavery and the money going back to the master parts of this tale. When one looks at a myth in a literal way one loses the metaphor, and then one gets a very horrible lesson from that parable.
Instead of a lesson of “investing” your good deeds and work and kindness or spreading knowledge that comes back to you in direct or indirect ways, one can see that many got a bad lesson from the parable, in the old south many just saw a justification of slavery; and nowadays some see a justification for the prosperity gospel.
At least the ones pushing slavery in the old south got more of a justification as the parable does deal with slaves that are not free in the end, but the ones thinking that the parable justifies a prosperity gospel are not even wrong IMO. Again, this is only if one looks at this literally, the tale is then about slaves just getting a slight improvement to a condition that does not end. Not a good item to use if the idea is to find a divine reason for a prosperity that free people may get nowadays.
Um, no. The Holiness movement is VERY different from the “Health and Wealth” teachings. John Wesley said, “Make all you can, save all you can, give all you can.” (emphasis added) He also said something to the effect that if he died with more than a small amount of money, he should be considered a fraud.
And you clearly didn’t do any real research about William Carey – the quote you gave was talking about missionary work, not money.
As a matter of fact, some Holiness people have considered saving ANY amount of money to be a sin – trusting in your own efforts to provide instead of trusting God.
Indeed, God murdered all his children, but he later gave him new better children, the new daughters were apparently even hotter.
So that’s all right then.
Personally I’ve always found that bit particularly horrible. Job ends up fine but his first wife and kids? Still dead. They’d got a better right to complain about their treatment than Job did (or they would have if they hadnt been, y’know, dead).
[QUOTE=DeptfordX]
Indeed, God murdered all his children, but he later gave him new better children, the new daughters were apparently even hotter.
So that’s all right then
[/QUOTE]
According to scripture "Everyone who knew Job before (his ordeal) returned to Job, this would include his children and wife:
[QUOTE= Job 42]
11 All his brothers and sisters and **everyone who had known him before **came and ate with him in his house…
[/QUOTE]
Bold mine
Everyone who had know him (Job) before (Job’s ordeal) would have to include his children and wife.
Simple answer, to accomplish this and not break scripture (especially God is Love), the wife and sons and daughters were taken up to heaven for a time then returned, which may be taken as died and raised from the dead, which God is apparently very able to do.
There will still be a large underclass of atheists, Muslims and so forth, to do the grunt work. You think Christians are going to polish their own yachts?
Jesus was quoted while needing money for his taxes that he told Peter to go and catch a fish and take the money from it’s mouth for his and Peter’s taxes. he also is quoted as saying: it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get to heaven. So he wasn’t meaning one needed a million dollars, just that what ever one needed it would get if his faith was strong enough. We now know that isn’t true. Many people believe if they pray hard or enough they will get what they ask for, when they don’t they just say, it wasn’t God’s will or God said No. It is all a matter of what one wishes to believe.
When he was quoted as saying to the Rich young man sell what you have, give it to the poor. then come and follow me. also praised the poor woman who gave out of her need over the rich who had a lot of money but didn’t give in proportion to their riches. People tend to use what ever quote that suits their own desires, not take the writings as a whole. nor pay attention to all the contradictions.
Once god drops a million on me I’ll be happy to dscuss kicking back 10%.
If God wants us all to be millionaires then God doesn’t understand basic economics.
Y’know, when you put it like that I’m actually kind of surprised that I’ve never seen the camel-and-the-eye-of-a-needle quote juxtaposed with the mustard-seed-and-mountain one; I wonder if Prosperity Gospel folks ever put 'em right next to each other?
It’s also to trust God to provide, not in what you can store up, which is trusting in what you have stored up, and has been shown to manufacture a god that you then will worship which we see in Is 44. And I have seen people actually store up years of wood and other things (preper mentality) and that is where they place their trust, thus creating their god that they worship and serve.
I think this is really it; there’s plenty of scriptural evidence for the idea that poverty is where it’s at for true closeness to God, and a couple thousand years of hermits monastic orders and other ascetics who tried to walk that walk.
These people are generally middle/upper middle class people who are doing well financially, or who want to do well financially, and who don’t want to be made to feel guilty about it.
So… some enterprising preacher schemed this whole thing up to get these folks to donate a bunch of money to his church, and in return he tells them what they want to hear.
I’d bet there’s a swingers church out there that works along the same lines, only not with wealth.
Is 44 seems like a stretch to cite, given that it seems to be about literally carving yourself up some graven images to worship. If those preppers you’ve seen have a carved idol in their basements, you’d have a point.
Well, that English translation says we should “prosper.” There’s more than one Hebrew word that can mean “prosper” and I don’t feel like looking up all the verses the OP listed in KJ, NKJ, NIV, RSV, etc. Basically, why does that have to mean “wealthy” and not just “successful?” Are middle-class people not successful?
I’m reminded of the conversation I had a few days ago about an ad for a pastor who (for the right price) would pray for a hundred angels to protect you. I wonder if they offered a warranty.
Could you get a discount for, say, 50 angels?
Makes himself a idol could be taken as some thing he idolizes (actually it must be by definition) which is the stacks of wood, a work of his hands. The carving here seems to be his profession which allows him to store up his idol which is the stored wood, not some carved work.
However they are related, the carvings he has done as a profession allow him to be independent of God, but that stored wood is now his god from the carvings he has made. Those carving is his motivation and passion, not God