TWISTING CHRIST FOR MAMMON
I left the following comment over on awretchlikeme, "someone explain to me..."
Hello Gary,
This will be a long comment to counter Nate and Greg. I hope it will be all right with you.
There is communism and then there is Communism. There is the voluntary giving-and-sharing all religion that is Christianity (as Jesus lived it, as you said correctly). Then there is the one-party, totalitarian, police-state, coercive, dictatorship of the proletariat (industrial workers) whose dictatorship invariably turned into cults of personality for instance as in the cases of Stalin and Mao.
Jesus is a communist (is; he's alive). He is not a Marxist though. He is opposed to all coercion.
Down through the ages, the monied interests have always sought to keep the common people from having and retaining their Commons. The Commons was community property. It was the shared inheritance of all. Greedy souls stole it by violent means. They are the "might makes right" crowd (very hardhearted).
Now, whenever anyone advocates the communism Jesus and his disciples lived, all sorts of capitalist hirelings come out of the woodwork and echo all the lines they have perfected in their laissez-faire think tanks paid for by the billionaires who definitely don't want the common people getting any ideas that they could live as Jesus and his disciples did (warts and all to start but which warts would fade). Why is that? Well, if the people turn to giving and sharing all, the billionaires won't be lording it over them anymore. The billionaires won't be controlling. They won't be in a position to have excessively.
Anyway, Marx's followers (namely Lenin) who advocated violent revolution (something Jesus denounced) and who didn't follow Marx's later writings, carried out their violent plans and threw out the capitalists. It meant war until the USSR fell. However, Russia certainly still has its eye on reconstituting Empire. It is also not a laissez-faire capitalist economy. It is moving to state-capitalism again.
Anyway, your heart seems to be headed here in the right direction. Don't let the false Christians throw you off. Real Christians aren't going to force anyone to be communist.
Your post suggests that you are simply searching for the best and most meaningful philosophy of life or religion.
The other comments above don't call anyone to rise. They advocate being resigned to the fallen condition. Well, surely Jesus spoke the truth and people rejected him. However, he was gathering his own. The other commentators are discussing that which has no part in Jesus and in which he has no part.
Furthermore, we pray the Lord's Prayer that calls for God's will to be done on Earth. We pray for God's Kingdom, his government, his political economy, to come to the Earth. How can we hold with the views of the other two commentators and be consistent when we pray for that right now for the here and now? It's hypocrisy.
What does all the death associated with the fight between Godless capitalism and Godless false-Communism have to do with Jesus? The answer is nothing. Those two systems are dead of the Holy Spirit.
In addition, you will notice that there is no mention of all the death directly attributable to capitalism. Also, the figures cited about Communism are estimates that many people believe are severely inflated by capitalists.
Capitalism has been responsible for over a million deaths of Iraqis now alone since the last invasion. Add to that the estimated 500,000 children who starved under the economic sanctions put on Iraq by the Clinton administration. Let's not forget all the Afghanis who have died even though the Taliban had said they would negotiate turning over Osama bin Laden. The greedy oil executives who planned much of the affair with Dick Cheney didn't want bin Laden. They want the Iraqi oil and the pipelines that are to run through Afghanistan. Look at Somalia, where oil has been discovered. The U.S. has caused a war and a refugee crisis. And if anyone thinks the threats to bomb Iran are about nuclear weapons rather than taking over the Iranian oil fields again, he or she just isn't thinking.
The list of military actions by capitalism is very, very long. The numbers killed is huge. Let us not forget the capitalist Empire often uses proxies to do its dirty work. It has installed and propped up numerous ruthless dictators. Is still does that.
Nate wrote, "I wouldn't go so far as to call Jesus, the disciples and the early church living a 'communistic' lifestyle. Instead, I would describe it as Christian, holy, communal living amongst believers." Well, the truth is obvious. The believers were living a communistic lifestyle without doubt. Communal living is communism. Why play word games about it other than to obfuscate for the sake of selfishness that is the basis of capitalism?
The point for Christians is that they are to evangelize the teaching of Jesus. They are to call people to Christlikeness. How can we do that but not call them to share all as Jesus called? No, those who don't want Heaven to come to Earth are those who propagandize for capitalism. They don't have it within them to give and share all as Jesus instructed, so they try in vain to reinterpret what Jesus clearly meant.
Nate is talking apples and oranges. He saying Christianity won't work because atheists couldn't make forced giving and sharing work. Well, of course they couldn't make it work. That's why we aren't to be proselytizing for Marxism-Leninism but rather for Christianity. Nate and Greg though are proselytizing for mammon. They can't eat the real food, and they won't suffer anyone else to go in to eat. That's unChristian. It's antichrist.
Nate is calling people not to overcome jealousy. That's not Jesus talking through him. That's Satan talking. Nate is worried about his material possessions, and then he turns around at the end and says we aren't to be that way. He flips and flops right in one posted comment.
This isn't something he's doing unwittingly. He knows exactly what he's doing. He knows exactly who he is working for. He knows full well that what he's putting forth is no where near Christianity. One prays he turns all the way.
He's deliberately misleading people into believing that if they share, they'll have nothing. He's a minion for the plutocrats. However, there are many sharing communities right now. I often refer to the Hutterites, since one can look them up on the Internet to see they are successful. Their children are not unhappy. They aren't deprived. I don't subscribe to all of the Hutterites' tenets, but they certainly are a living example of community property working out.
There are numerous communes in the world. People in them have computers, iPods, cars, books, beds, etc. Not that those things are all necessary or even desirable. Jesus owned none of them. Yet, everywhere he went once his ministry caught on, he was welcomed. To those who loved his teaching, their possessions were his. Their homes were his. It's why he said we would have "an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life." Mark 10:30. That's not what Nate and Greg are selling though.
Nate is a Libertarian Capitalist. That's his ideology. He's hung up on private property. Sharing all with the brethren is the last thing he's interested in doing. He's also pushing the "incentive" point. What incentive did Jesus have or the disciples? Was it for money and material possessions?
Nate is arguing against Jesus's teaching by pointing to what is wrong with something else that has nothing to do with Jesus. He's arguing against Jesus by saying how wrong Marx was. It's pointless. It's deceptive. It's confused.
Christianity isn't going to take (abscond with) anyone's money, because in the real communist economy of Christ, there is no money to take. There are no taxes to pay either. Everyone serves everyone. It's pure love, and that's what we are to be spreading, not this materialism and crediting mammon for provisioning or creating wealth or bringing forth bounty. It's God who created the world were food used to grows for free. It's capitalism that is raping the planet and constantly creating artificial scarcity. It's the capitalist who have lied to take the nation to war for oil (covetousness).
Nate and Greg appeal directly to selfishness. That's what they're promoting here. It's temptation that one must overcome. Don't fall to it. Unselfishness is what Jesus preached. When did Jesus complain about someone not working while he, Jesus, was washing his disciples' feet? If Nate and Greg are going to be Christians, then let them be as Jesus was and stop thinking about how others are going to take advantage of them. That's a self-defeating attitude before even putting forth any Spirit.
If Nate and Greg don't want to give and share, then they can stay out. No one's forcing them. However, they are working overtime to convince others not to follow Jesus. Why? Who are they? What spirit are they of, doing that? Sheep's clothing is what I see here.
Jesus's incentive is unselfish. What incentive of the type Nate puts forth did Jesus have in going to the cross? Do you hear any Christianity in what Nate and Greg have written? I don't. I hear the opposite. I hear half-truths. Christianity isn't half-truths.
In order to have God's government come to the Earth, Jesus is not going to rule by fear and intimidation and force and death. Jesus advocates love of one another. If we do that, it will work. The real problem is with those who would rather murder Jesus than allow people to continue hearing the truth of how it could and will be.
The philosophy Nate is quoting comes from non-Christians. The greatest enemies of Christ are the usurers (the bankers, the moneychangers). They are the ones who shouted the loudest for Jesus to be crucified.
I don't know which Heaven or level of Heaven Nate is going, but I don't want to go where he's going. He's not going where all serve as the least and is therefore the first. He doesn't see it. In my Heaven, it's the feeding of the five thousand eternally.
Greg wrote that giving all for the sake of the poor was not the same thing as giving to Jesus's ministry. That's wrong. It was Jesus's ministry. Jesus called souls to return to the fold where there is giving and sharing all and each serves all the others unselfishly, to be incentivized by that righteousness. What did Jesus ask anyone to do that wasn't his ministry?
These two, Nate and Greg, didn't also ask you to find out about the people who hate living under capitalism. Oh, Nate and Greg will say that without the sweatshops those people would be starving. Well, they weren't all starving before that. Many places were just fine before capitalism horned in and ruined the system the people had lived for thousands of years (family).
These two don't believe that the problems of the world stem directly from the evil selfishness in people's hearts. I do. The hardness in people's hearts, their unwillingness to share all as one family of humanity is why everything goes wrong goes wrong. It's why the environment is souring on humanity. It's why the Earth is going to go into upheaval if humanity doesn't turn.
Selfishness is the curse. Nate's self-interest is apart from God. The real self is one, one with God and one with the spiritual family that is the real Church.
May God bless you, Gary. May God bless Nate and Greg with the whole truth to stop spewing the laissez-faire mammon worshipping.
Tom Usher
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Tom Usher
Standing Comment, all posts and pages:
To all homosexuals and their supporters, condoners, promoters, accepters, confirmers, and the like:
Unless you have something completely new that hasn't already been refuted, don't bother. It won't show up.
Rehashing what has already been refuted is a waste of everyone's time.
I'm not interested in casting pearls before swine, giving the children's bread to the dogs, or rebuking a forever scorner.
Learn or go away: There is zero wisdom in homosexuality. Homosexuality is wrong. Nothing any homosexual or anyone else can say or do will alter it. No one needs the Bible to know it either. It's prima facie. There's no such thing as an unrepentant-homosexual Christian. There never has been and never will be. That's the way of it. If you don't like it, change.
Do site searches on the various topics concerning homosexuality to determine if your "point" has already been handled. Currently, I provide three different search methods. The "WordPress" search is still the most thorough.
The same can be done regarding militarism, capitalism, coercion, and many other main issues and themes.
TREATMENT, RUDENESS, POLITENESS, OFFENSE, TRUTH
Many times over the course of this website's existence, I've had commentators complain about how I've treated them and/or others. Much less frequently has anyone taken exception to those commentator's comments. I assume that's because for one, I appear to be holding my own.
Often, I have raised the fact that Jesus called certain people "serpents." I've often also mentioned how he cleaned the temple with whip in hand, not that he used it on anyone. It certainly doesn't say that he did, and neither was he charged with it in the kangaroo court of the serpents who ended up murdering him by proxy just for, among other wonderful things, speaking out and speaking truth.
If I say that those who are engaged in serpentine behavior are the New Testament "serpents," then why take offense at my saying it rather than standing with Jesus and me about it?
If others don't like it that I treat others or them the way I have in this regard, why don't they take it up with the serpents and/or their own consciences and God?
If I wanted to catch flies, I'd use honey. I don't want flies on this level. Human beings aren't to be on the level of flies. If the truth is bitter as vinegar, then ask yourself why and learn to taste it as sweet but not sickeningly so. Why attack the message and messenger, as the serpents did, and become a serpent by so doing?
The issue is not "name calling" on some bratty, childish level. When Jesus said "serpents," he was not being as a brat. His level was completely adult to adults and children. He dared say that the children understood the clear and plain truth before the adults who, afterall, had been abused and socialized by the serpents. He still calls adults back. Those who hear him and know his voice (truth) turn around and do the other required things together as well.
What is it for a human being to be more serpentine or reptilian than what God initially gave? What was and remains Jesus's point? What is the reptilian brain versus the vastly higher human brain with its cerebral cortex and frontal and temporal lobes and specific areas of altruistic sentiments and abilities? What are those higher areas before they are damaged, before the communication pathways to them and between them are diminished by evil that is always some form of abuse? How are those pathways reestablished or created where they never were in this fleshly life?
The snake lays its eggs. The eggs hatch. The snake parent doesn't nurture or raise the offspring. It's every snake for itself. Human parents and family are not designed to be that way. Humans hand down the learning of nurturing. Many people get better training than do others, and many people have a greater aptitude for learning and predisposition for the higher and highest virtues. Many are less abused. People can change for the better and best though, no matter where the starting point. They only can't if they don't — if they reject it.
Snakes, of course, also come in venomous varieties and in strangling varieties, etc., such that they have been attackers and even devourers of humans for eons, guilty and innocent alike.
Now, Jesus knew that most people could relate to what were, and still are, largely considered "good" parenting skills and "good" "family" relations. He regularly used those concepts to get people to consider the wider implications for the whole of humanity. He did know that many would refuse. He let them go. He didn't demand secular or false-religion legislation to rein them in with threats of violence and imprisonment. He was not and is not coercive. Even his Church is a voluntary place to be.
What he still teaches (through the written words in the New Testament and as those connect with the Old and also teaches through the Holy Spirit he definitely sent as he said he would) is, among many other things, that "good" is vastly better than has been commonly accepted and that real "family" is everyone left after all the rest have rejected the higher and highest good. He raised the standards far above the Old Testament and far above the "modern" standard.
The American Empire and the American people in general aren't even touching the hem of his garment, let alone even attempting to stand upright and side-by-side with him.
I point out that Jesus was, and is, a Real Liberal Christian. He is the one who brought back this censored truth that is the light. After he had spoken it and lived it and was murdered for doing so, the censors set about to re-censor it and did. They couldn't put it out though — couldn't completely extinguish the truth. I wouldn't be saying it now again with all credit to God, just as Jesus, if they had been able to completely block it.
I point out that each of those terms ("real," "liberal," and "Christian," along with "Church") are actually redundant terms — synonyms that are so close that they become one. The term "liberal" here is not the common usage, which common usage is a deliberate corruption of the term. There is no harm in real liberalism. There is no vileness in it. There is only beneficence. "Real" may be understood as the opposite of false-hearted, dark side, and dead of the Holy Spirit. Christian is both real and liberal in those senses. To arrive at living, doing, being those full senses requires what Jesus lives, does, and is in the highest. Finally, the Church is the whole.
Who are they who want to drag it down, censor it, work against it, lessen it, ignore it, etc.? Well, who sides with Jesus and who sides against him? Did the serpents side with him then? Do they now?
We call war-mongers "hawks." We call "peacemakers" blessed and "doves." Why do the hawks not take offense at "hawks" but do take offense at "serpents"? "Hawks" is not yet as telling to the general public, but I must tell you that all hawks are serpents. Why do some say, "Greed is good" but take offense at "serpents"? I tell you there is no difference between the selfish and the serpents. Why do people take offense at serpents when they do not take offense at homosexuality? I tell you the homosexual spirit also comes out from the dark side. It is a choice. It is harmful. Many are abused with it. Many never overcome it. Their very brain matter is transformed by it. Then they claim it is good when it remains confusion and definitely wrong and harmful.
Many arguments were put forth in support of tolerance. I understood that Jesus "tolerated," as in he did not execute wrath but rather told the truth and let the blind follow the blind (blind to the truth) into the ditch of their own making. I have watched while the movement has been corrupted into condoning what was once only to be tolerated. I have watched further while it has moved from condoning to promoting even to the youngest children to get to them before the truth does. I have seen evil at work, and I sound the alarm. I face censorship and other negative reactions for it.
As the American Empire claims to be a light to the world, it murders innocent babies by Hellfire missiles fired from predator drones controlled by armchair, video-gaming serpents in uniform. It tortures those who are not even suspects. It spies on its own without even probable cause or reasonable suspicion. It lies its way into wars for spoils and control. It neglects its poor, whom it treads down for the sakes of the superrich — for the sake of the massive flow of mammon from the bottom up (no trickledown — trickledown is a farce and always has been). All is claimed to be okay in America though — that America is headed in the right direction — because soon, even "don't tell, don't ask" will be a thing of the quaint past and homosexuals may be able to sleep together and have sex in the barracks with the "blessing" of the Empire while they practice murdering the innocent for the sake of homosexual, greedy plutocrats who own them and who, in turn, are owned by the dark-side spirit named by God and Jesus as Satan.
Whose side are you on? I speak truth to warn. I don't tell the secular government what to do other than occasionally to say what at least would be less hypocritical within their fallen, unenlightened system. I do so for spiritual reasons. What I want is the Christian Commons.
Now, if you submit a comment:
What you write here against the Real Liberal Christian Church founded by Jesus Christ will mark you in the Biblical sense unless you show that you have turned and are repenting in time to escape the damnation of your own choosing. That's the way of it. Don't be tempted by the devil to stand opposed to the call of righteousness. Overcome such evil temptation. Help others to help yet others to come to righteous behavior through-and-through.
Check out how even after reading this, people will still take it out of context and twist it to an evil end.