6 ms·
[flagged]
by jordanb 1y ago
[flagged]
- codr7 1y agoIt's not about the money but the ego. The two are very difficult to separate though, I've met very few who could handle a lot of money without becoming corrupted.
- phkahler 1y agoThis. There are a lot of biblical teaching about money and how to handle it, and to multiply it. Unfortunately people tend to make that an end unto itself and that was never the point.
- thinkingtoilet 1y ago[flagged]
- fhdjskdndbdjd 1y ago[dead]
- recursivedoubts 1y agoreligion (that is, an objective morality) has always been the only thing the masses have when confronted with the great pagan principle: "the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must"
- HexDecOctBin 1y agoSo pagans don't have a religion or morality? That is interesting to hear, as a Hindu. The more things change, the more they remain the same!
- recursivedoubts 1y agoI don't know anything about hinduism, but I assume there is a base morality that the strong may not take advantage of the weak, in contrast with the athenian dictum I quoted.
- HexDecOctBin 1y agoAnd Hinduism is a so-called pagan religion. Thus, there was no need to pretend that only Abrahamic faiths have a sense of morality.
- recursivedoubts 1y agoDid I say anything about abrahamic religions?
- HexDecOctBin 1y agoNo, but you did talk about pagans in a demeaning fashion.
- recursivedoubts 1y agoI did, and I included a greek pagan quote to give context to the philosophy to which I was contrasting the 'religion' that OP was criticizing. I think you are reading too much into a word and perhaps looking to be offended.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- cozyman 1y agowhat is hindu morality? where does it come from?
- kelseyfrog 1y ago> religion has always been the only thing the masses have This is broadly speaking true because religion is one example of a coping mechanism at cultural scale. If you trace the genealogy of morals, these precise beliefs - humility, temperance, kindness, patience - are all survival strategies of people being oppressed. At a large enough scale, it becomes embedded in moral reality itself ie: in religion.
- recursivedoubts 1y agoand, maybe, its also true
- kelseyfrog 1y agoIf you're a Therapeutae, yes. Sadly they were the only one's to get it right.
- recursivedoubts 1y agoi don't know what that means, but I still think the strong shouldn't take advantage of the weak, and I think all humans know that's true
- kelseyfrog 1y agoI can see how that's appealing. One of the most common human behaviors is creating rules or in this case moral rules, and then doing a mental switcheroo where they forget that they made the rules and attribute them to universal principles, reality, truth, etc. In general, the process of believing concepts are real objects - simply observations of reality - is called reification. Every society does it and the result is that human constructs feel as if they are inalienable truths about how reality works. The only problem is that it's culturally specific and as we know, each culture works differently and yet feels as if they've gotten it right - their concept of how things works happens to match reality. One of the downsides to this is that we often project our own ideas of reality onto strangers especially from other societies. "Of course they protect the weak," we tell ourselves, when in fact, they're operating on a completely different set of moral relations. When our projects override objectivity, we deny ourselves the beauty of seeing the world in a new way. We rob ourselves of appreciating the magnificence of the diversity of human experience.
- helpfulContrib 1y ago"Religion" literally means, 'the device which binds people into one', and is not the only form of this very same device. Latin religare ‘to bind’. We are all bound "in legion" (literally, by the strong, cured ligaments of a foot) here on HN, for example. Ligament and Legion and Religion are all based on the same common root: a way to bind people together, strongly. So forget about trying to make the human capability to become an egregore exclusive to those who organize around religion. We humans don't get anything done unless we are bound together, as one, around a common purpose.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- hatradiowigwam 1y ago"Religion" doesn't have the slightest thing to do with Jesus coming. Religion human thing. Jesus didn't say "go and spread religion to every man"...he said "go and spread the GOOD NEWS to every man". Religion is the word we use to describe how us human's have managed to twist and warp and misunderstand that good news. We use it for gate keeping: "sorry this event is for church members only". We use it to put down people based on their behavior: "He seems like he needs religion". We use it to interfere with the law of the land: "Sorry, that law doesn't apply because of religious freedoms". And so on.... I don't think the big man gives one fiddly flying fig leaf about "religion". His son said(over, and over, and over!) that "I desire mercy, not sacrifice.". That means NOT excluding people over religion, insulting or belittling them with religion, or creating an unfair situation with "religious freedoms" in law. He wants MERCY.... that means instead of telling the beggar that religion would help him get clothed, fed, and generally happy - you should be giving him or her your clothes, sharing your food or drink, and welcoming them to your home where they can be safe. Will they abuse your trust? Who knows - and it's not important - your mercy to them was the critical action. You don't get into heaven for being discerning and clever...there is no award for actions like "I didn't invite him home, because he looked like a criminal and I don't trust him...". That's not mercy, that's you finding a human excuse to ignore the least of your brethren.
- thinkingtoilet 1y agoI literally have no idea what you're talking about. I feel people like you pretend Europe's colonial era didn't exist or the American slave trade didn't exist or the holocaust didn't exist, etc... etc... etc... The only response to the millennia long list of atrocities Christians have committed, often times to other Christians, is the 'no true Scotsman' fallacy.
- hatradiowigwam 1y agoI think those were evil people doing evil things. Who calls the people who perpetrated these things "Christians"? If I am king, and direct my armies to slaughter another country's people because "<anything> cannot be tolerated by us, the Christians"....then I am a liar, and masquerading as something I am not. The people that did these things wanted to do them for one or more reasons, and none of those were because God told them to, or Christianity demanded it of them.
- cozyman 1y agoYou've never been manipulated though toilet, you're simply better than the majority of people living on earth. Congrats toilet.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoThere's nuance and interesting bits of history that are missing from the orthodox pov, but that get bulldozed by the absolutism of "Religion has always been a tool for the powerful to control the masses," which, while true, is as interesting as saying "stairs are often used to ascend buildings." Power does what it always does: it grabs whats lying around and sharpens it into a spear of control. If you know a little about the history of Christianity, you see a gradual centralization over a period of hundreds of years. Christianity obviously didn't start centralized. Religious orthodoxy burned a lot of manuscripts and rewrote history to appear to be a powerful unbroken lineage in order to justify their legitimacy. We have to remember that the concept of heresy was invented. Hellenic and pre-hellenic cultures didn't demand compliance to doctrinal orthodoxy. Instead they practiced ritual orthopraxy. Ritual orthopraxy's sphere of influence begins and ends at the ritual. The sphere of doctrinal orthodoxy on the other hand made belief itself the battleground. The Greeks didn't care if you believed Zeus was literally real or metaphorically useful, as long as you poured the libation and didn't piss off the city. Christianity became not just "do you love God," but "is your metaphysical model of the Trinity exactly consistent with the Nicene formulation from 325 CE." Anything but that became heresy. And that rejection of the pluralistic orthopraxis and the inability to live in harmony with Hellenic culture is exactly what made Christians so unlikable at the time and incidentally created a bunch or martyrs. What gets lost is the weirdness of those early centuries before doctrinal orthodoxy created heresy in order to monopolize plurality of belief. We can learn important lessons from this and extrapolate to how heresy and orthodoxy get used today and why matters of doctrine end up being so encompassing and totalizing. If anything it gives us an additional point of view on our own culture.
- pixl97 1y agoHence the Gospel of Supply Side Jesus, remade in the image of America. https://imgur.com/gallery/gospel-of-supply-side-jesus-bCqRp https://imgur.com/gallery/gospel-of-supply-side-jesus-bCqRp
- e40 1y agoBrilliant!!
- Boogie_Man 1y agoIt is important to contextualize this statement. It appears in three gospels, but in each it is in response to a rich man asking what he must do to inherit eternal life. Each instance of the story is told with slightly different emphasis (or they could be similar stories - i.e. this was his standard "line" for rich people), but Luke's account includes 18:27 He replied, "What is impossible for mere humans is possible for God" NET This does not mean it's okay to hoard wealth at the expense of others, of course. I think that Saint Basil the Great's sermon to the rich[1] is instructive for a historical and reasonable Christian instruction on the rich. Let me add an excerpt I really appreciate: But how do you make use of money? By dressing in expensive clothing? Won’t two yards of tunic suffice you, and the covering of one coat satisfy all your need of clothes? But is it for food’s sake that you have such a demand for wealth? One bread-loaf is enough to fill a belly. Why are you sad, then? What have you been deprived of? The status that comes from wealth? But if you would stop seeking earthly status, you should then find the true, resplendent kind that would conduct you into the kingdom of heaven. And one more because I can't help myself: Since, then, the wealth still overflows, it gets buried underground, stashed away in secret places.... A strange madness, that, when gold lies hidden with other metals, one ransacks the earth; but after it has seen the light of day, it disappears again beneath the ground. (The whole thing is worth a read, Basil just went hard non stop) 1. https://stjohngoc.org/st-basil-the-greats-sermon-to-the-rich/ https://stjohngoc.org/st-basil-the-greats-sermon-to-the-rich...
- kubb 1y agoYou just need to employ the right strategy to deal with it. Possible options include: 1. Claim that "camel" or "needle" are a mistranslation or symbolic. 2. Separate financial life from your spiritual beliefs to avoid inner conflict. 3. View wealth as a sign of God’s blessing or something used to do good, making it feel morally acceptable. 4. Emphasize other passages that support generosity or success. In general, it's easy to overcome cognitive dissonance in religion. You just accept additional beliefs that soften it.
- lapetitejort 1y agoIn the flavor of religion in which I grew up, it's easier to just quickly pray for forgiveness than to bother justifying anything. The most vile genocidal maniac could pray for thirty seconds right before death and get into heaven. Why bother following rules when someone already served the punishment?
- zahlman 1y ago5. Interpret that the passage, especially in the context of the subsequent verses, is about the need for God to get into heaven. That is; it's claiming that wealth cannot empower people to find their own route in, absent spirituality.
- recursivedoubts 1y agoThat is not true: with God all things are possible.
- kelseyfrog 1y agoCould God make a man so rich that even he wouldn't let him into heaven?
- victorbjorklund 1y agoWouldnt or couldnt?
- recursivedoubts 1y ago"I don’t know. When my bird was looking at my computer monitor I thought, ‘That bird has no idea what he’s looking at.’ And yet what does the bird do? Does he panic? No, he can’t really panic, he just does the best he can. Is he able to live in a world where he’s so ignorant? Well, he doesn’t really have a choice. The bird is okay even though he doesn’t understand the world. You’re that bird looking at the monitor, and you’re thinking to yourself, ‘I can figure this out.’ Maybe you have some bird ideas. Maybe that’s the best you can do.”
- lurk2 1y agoNo. Similarly, God cannot make a married bachelor, because this is nonsensical. The conversation then turns to questions about how we define God’s omnipotence: Doesn’t the existence of any sort of limitation placed upon God imply he is bound by higher principles and thus not omnipotent? Possibly; but this may just be a lack of imagination on our part. For example, can God abanlqhgfznsjks? Probably not, because that particular string was just a random assortment of keys that I pressed; it conveys nothing meaningful, so to ask if God could abanlqhgfznsjks might not really be asking anything at all.
- recursivedoubts 1y agothe human mind fails at infinities i don't know why we find this so obvious when discussing math and yet so difficult when discussing God
- arp242 1y agoWith modern technology you can probably liquefy a camel sufficiently that you force it through the needle. Jesus ain't said nothing 'bout no hydrochloric acid and pneumatic presses.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoProbably easier to just make a really big needle
- arp242 1y agoYes, but that would be less entertaining :-)
- ipython 1y agoThere’s a whole sect who believes the opposite- that you are more spiritual and blessed by God the wealthier you are. Somehow being material wealthy is now a signal of your spirituality. :shrug: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology
- hiatus 1y agoThis is the outcome when pearls are cast before swine.
- preachermon 1y agoWhat's missed is that the camel/needle thing is a joke. The "eye of the needle" was a (very small) gate into Jerusalem. To get a camel through that gate, it has to lower its head and crawl on its knees. So Jesus was calling rich people camels; camels can be very arrogant beasts so it fits.
- Yossarrian22 1y agoThere are no primary sources for this
- SketchySeaBeast 1y agoDan McClellan, a biblical scholar (a practising Mormon, but not an apologist) discusses that here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlzR39RVQKs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlzR39RVQKs
- i80and 1y agoThis is an incredibly common and frustrating bit of bad theology. There's no textual or archeological basis for it, and the really interesting mystery is where exactly this myth even came from. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studies/article/origin-of-the-needles-eye-gate-myth-theophylact-or-anselm/51F6B1FD504C36C42D6201F6D87F83C3 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/new-testament-studie...
- mikestew 1y agoI, too, used to be a “preachermon”. I never found evidence that this argument was anything but apocryphal. It would make a better argument to find a text describing how Jesus referred to a rich person (real or parable) and said, “this rich person gets it, be like him”. Direct, and without the mental backflips.
- reverendsteveii 1y agoit is, however, very easy to find other ways jesus has phrased the idea "the rich don't get into heaven". In matthew he says the last shall be first and the first shall be last, in acts he has his disciples sell all of their stuff and pool the money, and in several other places he tells the faithful to give all of their stuff away.
- victorbjorklund 1y agoIt is not that easy. If we look at historical context we can see that for example in judaism they have this midrash: "The Holy One said, open for me a door as big as a needle's eye and I will open for you a door through which may enter tents and camels." Sounds familiar? The meaning of that saying in jewish context is that we cant really understand Gods abilities. Could the christian saying mean something else? Sure. We dont even know if jesus even said that exact phrase. My point is more that there are often more than one interpretation of vague sayings from 2000 years that been through an oral tradition, translations and copying.
- michaelmrose 1y agoIn your example the saying suggests that a Camel going through the eye of a needle is an extraordinary event like a rich person going to heaven in the traditional Christian saying. It is incredibly clear and without nuance nor is there a reason to suppose it's an issue with translation. Its also consistent philosophically nor is it the sort of thing that the powerful would want inserted when they compiled works. If you disregard it then it makes more sense to disregard the entire bible.
- lurk2 1y ago> In your example the saying suggests that a Camel going through the eye of a needle is an extraordinary event So is the Son of God descending to earth and being nailed to a cross for the sins of man.
- victorbjorklund 1y agoNo, it is not "incredible" clear what ancient jews meant by that saying. Hence the wildly different interpretations. Are you really saying that it is incredible clear that the jewish understanding of the jewish saying is wrong and only your christian understanding is correct?
- michaelmrose 1y agoHalf the planet either explicitly or implicitly believes in the just world hypothesis and America especially valorizes, empathize s with, and seeks to emulate the rich even when they do nothing to earn their wealth and on average do enormous harm. It is therefore hardly shocking that some fail to see the plain meaning of the language and their confusion needn't imply actual credible controversy. It is pretty clear that the saying you provided and the Christian saying are different sayings with different meanings that share the metaphor about a Camel going through the eye of a needle. The surrounding context is Jesus telling a rich person to give his material wealth away because it is barrier to salvation. It is clear that focus on the temporal comforts privided by wealth stunts ones need for spirituality. The man cannot give up his attachment to wealth and gives up on salvation in the Christian sense. It is hard for me to get from this that the rich are especially virtuos and therefore the only lesson was intended to be taught is that not even the rich can be saved without god. It seems very clear that wealth was a direct impediment to salvation.
- bitbang 1y agoThat’s not what that means at all, your inserting modern values into the parable. In the culture of that time, the rich were viewed with high regard. The understanding was that if you were rich, then clearly you were in a favorable relationship to God because he was blessing you with wealth. With that understanding, the sentence that directly follows the parable makes a lot more sense: “When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, ‘Who then can be saved?’” A modern telling of the parable would replace the rich man with a monk who’s taken a vow of poverty to run an orphanage in a God-forsaken third world country. The parable was intended to portray an absurdly impossible standard to entry; the whole point being that human merit, status, or morality, regardless of however the cultural context may define that, does not afford one any distinctive advantage before God.
- michaelmrose 1y agoGot some links to support this interpretation?
- akomtu 1y agoThe rich is firmly attached to wordly things, they would rather sink with their gold than let it go. The monk that you've described is attached to his self by training it with sophisticated hardships. He hoards inner peace just like the rich hoards gold. Both are practicing the culture of personality. They need to leave that baggage behind, their self-centered life and their polished personas, and reorient their life around helping others. Once they do this, an enormous internal conflict will emerge - the struggle between their selfish and selfless sides, and at the end of this path they'll enter the kingdom of God. Those who want to climb to the mountain top need to leave everything behind. The higher they climb, the longer will be the fall if they look back for a moment and slip on this narrow path, longing for what they left behind.
- hatradiowigwam 1y agoThe message IS clear...but I don't see the same message as you. Solomon was /beyond/ rich. So was David. So were countless people that are destined for heaven(as in, Jesus describes them being in heaven in the new testament). Those people all did some things we can see and talk about - and possibly many things we did not see, do not know, and can not talk about. At the very least, those people we know are in/destined for heaven: followed God, feared God, obeyed God. I don't believe their being or not being rich is part of the calculus for "getting into heaven" as you said. Being rich may make you less likely to do those 3 things though, in which case you would correlate richness with not getting into heaven.
- tdb7893 1y ago'I don't believe their being or not being rich is part of the calculus for "getting into heaven" as you said' -> I think viewing that some rich people go to heaven as Jesus not explicitly condemning rich people (which he clearly does multiple times) and not him showing the unlimited power of God's grace is a misreading of the text. The subsequent verses are much less quoted but very explicit about this: And looking at them, Jesus said to them, “With people this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” This is supported by other text where Jesus says explicitly what people should do with money: Jesus said to him, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me" So anyway it's very clear that using money selfishly (which is what many Christians do) is clearly not what God wants from us, it's just that God can love us for our imperfections and sin, which in my view is sorta the main idea behind the New Testament. God wants us to love each other like he loves us, and he would certainly give up his money for us since he even gave up his own son, but accepts that we will be more selfish than that.
- hatradiowigwam 1y ago> God wants us to love each other like he loves us, and he would certainly give up his money for us since he even gave up his own son, but accepts that we will be more selfish than that. I love how you put that, and wholeheartedly agree.
- 1y ago
- lurk2 1y agoWealth is not universally maligned in the Biblical tradition. Job is afforded material rewards in this world after his tribulation. Prosperity gospel is plainly contradicted by the Bible (see again: The Book of Job), but so is the Redditor Christianity you are espousing.
- ImJamal 1y agoYou are just wrong. The Bible never says that rich people aren't getting into heaven. Only that it will be difficult.
- dragonwriter 1y agoThe whole invention of the “Eye of the Needle” gate fiction is an attempt to rewrite a Gospel statement by Jesus that it is difficult-to-the-point-of-impossibility into one that it is merely difficult-in-the-sense-of-mild-inconvenience.
- wavemode 1y agoHave you ever even read the passage? > 25 It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” > 26 And they were greatly astonished, saying among themselves, “Who then can be saved?” > 27 But Jesus looked at them and said, “With men it is impossible, but not with God; for with God all things are possible.”
- mrguyorama 1y agoThis sure doesn't look like ancient Hebrew to me.
- _--__--__ 1y agoWell yeah, the gospels were written in Koine Greek