Sure, from one perspective.
More than that I think Jesus taught that in order to continue to grow and progress , to know the truth and be set free, we had to make a real commitment to certain principles and not abandon them whenever it got too difficult. {as people tend to do} I think that’s what he meant in Mat 6:
What do you truly value when it comes down to making a choice? What do you truly want when it comes to choices reflecting our priorities? What is your true intent that moves your actions?
More than that I think Jesus taught that in order to continue to grow and progress , to know the truth and be set free, we had to make a real commitment to certain principles and not abandon them whenever it got too difficult. {as people tend to do} I think that’s what he meant in Mat 6:
Quote:
19"Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
22"The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are good, your whole body will be full of light. 23But if your eyes are bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!
24"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.
What do you truly value when it comes down to making a choice? What do you truly want when it comes to choices reflecting our priorities? What is your true intent that moves your actions?
A couple of years ago I took a Crown Ministries course through my parish. I was amazed at how much I learned about money and how much the bible talks about money. I wish I had taken it when I was younger. Jesus lays it out just how we should deal with money in our lives. Also the value of saving up treasure in heaven. If you are not a wise steward of your money it will be removed from you.
In 1 Timothy, 6 17-21 It says,
"Tell the rich in the present age not to be proud and not to rely on so uncertain thing as wealth but rather on God, who richly provides us with all things for our enjoyment. Tell them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous, ready to share, thus accumulating as treasure a good foundation for the future, so as to win the life that is true life. "
In retrospective though, that’s like walking up to a blind man and saying, “Well dude, see.” It’s both obvious and asinine. More importantly is that if you could just as easily have handed the blind guy a pair of artificial eyes, he’d actually be able to do what you told him to do, and probably would regardless of whether you told him to do so or not.
“Live in harmony and enjoy your lives!” Well, yeah, no shit. Telling them that if they continue to live as they have, they’re going to hell, doesn’t really help anything. If they could have lived in harmony, they would have already been doing it.
So people making an effort to improve the quality of their lives are wasting their time by making the effort because if they could improve they already would have?
You should tell the people who have done it. Evidently they didn’t get the memo.
No, and I don’t see how you got that from what I said, to the point that I can’t even think how I could possibly be more clear and not have you still misunderstand.
But here, let’s try another example.
You are bald. I walk up to you and tell you, “If you stop being bald within the next 30 seconds, I will buy you a beer. If you don’t you’re denying my greatness and I’ll punch you in the face.”
Why, in this example, would it be “you” who is at fault? That makes no sense, and I don’t see how you could think that it would have been my intent to portray it as such.
Now let’s also say, in the example, that “I” have magical powers to cure baldness. I could tell you the method by which you become full-haired, but instead I prefer to simply punch you in the face when you fail to accomplish it on your own.
In this case, can you really talk about free will? Do you really have a choice about your baldness within the next 30 seconds? No. Nor do people have any choice about the state of the world at the time they are born. There are methods that have been discovered within the last 2000 years to make it less likely for one person to treat another person poorly. To an all-knowing deity or his representative, those methods should have been recognized, 2000 years ago. He should have been able to hand them over.
If someone has the ability to become fully-haired within 30 seconds, and chooses not to when he should, punishing him makes sense. But punishing him when you know darned well that he has no choice given the realities of his genetic makeup and the realities of the world, is just dickish.
If you don’t have anything to teach beyond telling people to do what they’re already trying to do, is silly. Punishing them for failing when their failure is for reasons that are beyond their control, but that you could have taught them, is being a dick.
It strikes me as a little ridiculous. The point is to sincerely strive to do better and to alter priorities.
That said, having reread the post you responded to about going to heaven the meaning of your response changes.
Again, the point is to alter priorities and overall perception. Don’t value money and social position over compassion and the world will get better. Don’t see it as us versus them, even when we disagree, it’s all us. things like that. It’s not beyond our control. That’s the point.
Since I don’t agree with the concept of " you’ll go to hell if you don’t obey" I won’t comment on that. If that’s all you were talking about then my bad.
Except for that’s like telling someone who’s bald to stop being bald. a) He’d already be happy enough to do it, and b) regardless of whether he’d be happy enough to do it or not, he needs to be able to do it before you can yell at him about it. Humans are humans, with human foibles. Telling people to stop being human is silly. If you want them to behave well, you need to sit around and think up ways to circumvent human foibles or change the makeup of humans.
If you’ve created a planet where survival comes at the cost of trade offs of human life, and a species who will value survival in this world higher than redemption in the next, telling them to die rather than commit a sin is stupid. They’ll reject it, because that’s how you made them. They’ll commit the sin. If you give them plenty so that survival is no longer an issue, then maybe you have some room to complain.
Regardless of whether God sends people to Hell, they end up in Hell by rejecting God and his wisdom, or there simply is no thing as Hell, I think you would agree that a benevolent deity who went through the effort of telling people what they need to do to get into his good grace, would prefer that people succeed.
Regardless of whether God does or doesn’t punch you in the face, making an impossible request is still stupid by sheer definition. You can rewrite everything I said without the punch in the face and God still comes out a dick. “If you stop being bald in the next 30 seconds, I’ll give you beer. If you don’t, no beer for you!” How is that really benevolent? How is that statement useful in any way?
Paul said, “slaves obey your masters.” Paul claimed to have gotten his information from Jesus himself. Was Paul lying, or did Jesus think slaves should obey their masters?
I should say that, in a sense, Jesus did speak against slavery in that he spoke out against the whole class system in general, and a primary component of his message was that the world would see an imminent (within “this generation”) reversal of the entire social order. The “last will be first and the first will be last.” Jesus’ repeated condemnation of the rich and elevation of the poor was a de facto denunciation of slavery. He was living and teaching within a cultural context where classes were highly stratified, and without opportunity for social mobility for most people. There was a tiny, opulant overclass, and a massive, hand to mouth peasant and sub-peasant class. Jesus was telling those on the very bottom that, “congratulations, you will inherit the kingdom of God while all those rich cocksuckers get tossed into Gehenna. The Son of Man is coming and he’s going to turn everything upside down. You’ll be on top and those rich bastards will be on the bottom. Woe unto those motherfuckers. It would be easier for a camel to crawl through the eye of a needle than for those pricks to get into Heaven. You better give everything you own to the poor if you want a ticket to Paradise.”
When Paul took the Gospel to the gentiles, a large number of early converts were slaves who responded positively to the promise that Jesus was coming back in their lifetimes (so they believed for the first 50 years or so) to crush their dickwad masters and give them their reward.
I guess it could be said that Jesus is not recorded as explicitly condemning slavery because it went without saying. Most of the people he talked to were underclass, not overclass. Instead of saying, “slavery is bad, m’kay,” he was saying, “follow me and God will turn everything around.”
What a horribly inaccurate comparison. People can and do evaluate and change their priorities and focus. Can people decide to exercise and lose weight , change their diet, stop drinking or smoking? It’s the same with other personal priorities. It doesn’t usually happen instantly with a thought, but it is a process we can choose, a path to follow. Com’on, it’s so obvious. How can you honestly compare that to baldness.
Except nobody is saying stop being human. The lesson is, try to be a better human. That is something realistically within our grasp.
Agreed. I also think the tools to succeed are available.
where did you get the “next thirty seconds” routine?
So then why didn’t God’s words change anything? If it was realistic for the people of ancient times to accomplish within their life, why didn’t they? When they didn’t, why didn’t God come back with aid?
Who says it didn’t? We’re talking about it right now and a good case can be made that the teachings of Jesus have had a profound effect on the world.
Who gets to say how much they accomplished or how much they should have accomplished in their lifetime? The movement grew and the wheels were set in motion that are still turning today, 2000 years later.
I’ve come down from Heaven, only this one time until it’s all over. I know human kind has quite awhile left, I’m just not saying how long exactly. I could tell you all about the great advancements you’ll make in just the next 2000 years (Democracy, Habeas Corpus, Scientific Method etc.) but it would be to a scraggly bunch of close minded mostly illiterate herdsman. They’d fuck up the message anyway. In fact the more specific I get the more they’ll mess it up. I mean for fuck sake one sentence in Leviticus is enough to burn homosexuals for a couple of Millenia, those guys were alright. No, I’m going to go with the KISS principle here and tell them what they needed to know now, get the faith planted and have them sort it out all later. If you expected clarity you’ve obviously never played Chinese Whispers with nuclear launch code instructions.
I’d add that the clarity hoped for is there in it’s simplicity. The problem is that putting it into action, incorporating it into our daily lives, is a bitch of an internal and personal process.
It wasn’t wrong then; it was accepted, expected and the norm. Being intolerable is a very modern (and perhaps more civilized) concept.
That pretty much covers it, IMHO.
I know we are all slaves of work! I am with cosmosdan on this one. Jesus taught the bigger picture. He did not start wars to stop slavery. He instead preached to make people aware that slavery is wrong.
“If you hate then it’s the same as murder and such. If we as people seek to transform our hearts, minds and spirits to truly grasp and live the lessons he taught then societies ills will drop away on their own, as symptoms disappear when the disease is treated.”
I’m not a Christian, but isn’t the whole point of the story of the Good Samaritan to say that “love thy neighbor” extends further than that? Samaritans being a different group than the Jews, and I believe not one they were generally friendly with.