Thoughts and Prayers: The Religion Thread

I don't lament them. I'd like to see universal health care, for example.

I'm highly skeptical of using four nations whose population roughly equals that of Texas as a template of happiness and purpose just because they have some good social programs, and then somehow saying those nations have ameliorated want in a way that makes churches irrelevant.

 

1) Thou shalt not covet.


2) For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?


3) The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed -- for lack of a better word -- is good.

Greed is right. Greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.

Greed, in all of its forms -- greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge -- has marked the upward surge of mankind.

 

Or maybe people are more broadly aware of awfulness thanks to social media.

Also not sure how any of this activism differs in any way from the Clean Air / Clean Water protests of the late 1960s and early 70s.

The result of which was . . . cleaner air and cleaner water.

 

Few things are stranger than me than people who have stumbled onto a variant of Christianity that largely serves to validate the life choices of the believer and the people most like them.

 

see also desire creates suffering

 

Thanks to that goddamned hippie Nixon.

 

I think I laid out how I think it differs. I could be wrong tho

 

“Variant Christianity” has been an issue since the beginning.

Prosperity gospel is nonsense. Total nonsense. But I know why it exists. Hard to sell people on “suffering with integrity” when that doesn’t come with community.

If there’s something insidious about capitalism/western individualism it’s that poverty can often equal loneliness. And that often doesn’t change when you take the poor person and put them in wealthy places like universities.

 

Raises an interesting question, especially in light of your reference to Acts 2 churches upthread:

Assuming community - even a small one, like, say, a dozen dudes - is Christianity in its original and most essential form a vow of poverty?

 

I wanna suffer too.

8 Richest Pastors in America

 

After passing laws that the Supremes are busy undermining. Sigh.