Michelle having to work today and Alex's bible class starting this Sunday presented us with an interesting quandary. Should we not take him(and risk his disappointment) or should Michelle swallow her pride and ask her heathen husband to take him? Of course, I had no problem taking him but I felt like making her squirm a little bit. After all, I could use my taking him to church as a future bargaining tool. If I was religious, that might have been a moral or ethical issue, but I was thankfully unencumbered (just kidding). And what's the worse that could happen to me inside a church? Get struck by lightning? lol
I actually like Michelle's church and I greatly admire and enjoy the company of her pastor (whom I've written of before here). So I took Alex, dropped him off in his room and found a place to sit and read. The Pastor had actually graciously offered me his office but the library was nearer Alex's room and was unoccupied. But, I felt a little guilty that the book that I brought to read did not exactly cast religion, or at least one flavor of it, in a good light. I didn't do it intentionally, though. It's just what I'm reading right now. And it's subject matter, Mormon Fundamentalism, could not be further from the religion of my wife's church.
The book, Under the Banner of Heaven, is a great book by an author that I've read before (Into Thin Air, about Mt. Everest). Mormon fundamentalism has been thrust back into the news recently because the capture of Warren Jeffs, one of the FBI's most wanted and the leader of a polygamist sect here in Arizona. The book was written a few years ago but does talk about Jeffs and his father and the other leaders.
I'm all for religious freedom, but marrying multiple 13 year-olds against their will, raping, kidnapping, incest, etc. are not my idea of how you would exert that freedom. On top of that, they hate the U.S. government and claim it has no jurisdiction over them yet they have no problem taking millions in welfare checks from the government. Some very screwed-up stuff in the name of religion. And the story of how the Book of Mormon came to be is priceless. It's so odd that even a South Park lampoon of it is not really stretching the truth: South Park Mormons
My last little religious tidbit is on an upcoming Time magazine piece on Prosperity Theology or Name It and Claim It. This is a segment of Pentecostal Christianity but is also holding a large sway over a growing number of evangelicals. It basically says that God wants you to be rich and prosperous. Now, I'm no biblical scholar but I have read the Bible and have had my share of bible classes and nowhere do I remember it saying that God wanted me to have bling. Maybe I was gone that day. Are megachurches and this brand of Christianity getting just a wee bit away from the teaching of Jesus? Methinks so.
Does God want you to be rich?
Eskimo: "If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?"
Priest: "No, not if you did not know."
Eskimo: "Then why did you tell me?"
-- American author Annie Dillard
6 comments:
RE: the Prosperiety Theology. I saw this too and I nearly threw up. This is nothing more than a rationalization for those Christians who are too selfish or too weak to be real Christians. It's no different than teaching the poor that they're poor because God is testing them and the real rewards are in Heaven (sometimes called pie-in-the-sky theology). It's just a way to rationalize the current state of society rather than work to change it. It's sickening. Thankfully it's a minority - but I wonder how many people will jump on this bandwagon.
I saw the south park episode too... DumbDumbDumbDumbDumb! ;)
Hello Dbackdad and all,
RE: "Does God want you to be rich?"
How about, does the Creator want some people to suffer and starve while some wallow in luxury and ignore the plight of others? What about "serving mammon" (money and materialism) instead of truth, justice, and your fellow souls? How about the rich man and the eye of a needle? Talking about the blind leading the blind...
Here's some pivotal knowledge (wisdom) so people can stop focusing on symptoms and obfuscatory details and home in like a laser on the root causes of and solutions to humanity's seemingly never-ending struggles.
Money is the lifeblood of the powerful and the chains and key to human enslavement
There is a radical and highly effective solution to all of our economic problems that will dramatically simplify, streamline, and revitalize human civilization. It will eliminate all poverty, debt, and the vast majority of crime, material inequality, deception, and injustice. It will also eliminate the underlying causes of most conflicts, while preventing evil scoundrels and their cabals from deceiving, deluding, and bedeviling humanity, ever again. It will likewise eliminate the primary barriers to solving global warming, pollution, and the many evils that result from corporate greed and their control of natural and societal resources. That solution is to simply eliminate money from the human equation, thereby replacing the current system of greed, exploitation, and institutionalized coercion with freewill cooperation, just laws based on verifiable wisdom , and societal goals targeted at benefiting all, not just a self-chosen and abominably greedy few.
We can now thank millennia of political, monetary, and religious leaders for proving, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that top-down, hierarchical governance is absolute folly and foolishness. Even representative democracy, that great promise of the past, was easily and readily subverted to enslave us all, thanks to money and those that secretly control and deceptively manipulate all currencies and economies. Is there any doubt anymore that entrusting politics and money to solve humanity's problems is delusion of the highest order? Is there any doubt that permitting political and corporate leaders to control the lives of billions has resulted in great evil?
Here's a real hot potato! Eat it up, digest it, and then feed it's bones to the hungry...
Most people have no idea that the common-denominator math of all the world's currencies forms an endless loop that generates debt faster than we can ever generate the value to pay for it. This obscured and purposeful math-logic trap at the center of all banking, currencies, and economies is the root cause of poverty. Those who rule this world through fear and deception strive constantly to hide this fact, while pretending to seek solutions to poverty and human struggle. Any who would scoff at this analysis have simply failed to do the math, even though it is based on a simple common-denominator ratio.
Here is Wisdom
Doctrine of Two Spirits...
Peace...
Ooookkkayyyy.
RE: "Does God want you to be rich?"
How about, does the Creator want some people to suffer and starve while some wallow in luxury and ignore the plight of others? What about "serving mammon" (money and materialism) instead of truth, justice, and your fellow souls? How about the rich man and the eye of a needle? Talking about the blind leading the blind...
Here's some pivotal knowledge (wisdom) so people can stop focusing on symptoms and obfuscatory details and home in like a laser on the root causes of and solutions to humanity's seemingly never-ending struggles.
Money is the lifeblood of the powerful and the chains and key to human enslavement
There is a radical and highly effective solution to all of our economic problems that will dramatically simplify, streamline, and revitalize human civilization. It will eliminate all poverty, debt, and the vast majority of crime, material inequality, deception, and injustice. It will also eliminate the underlying causes of most conflicts, while preventing evil scoundrels and their cabals from deceiving, deluding, and bedeviling humanity, ever again. It will likewise eliminate the primary barriers to solving global warming, pollution, and the many evils that result from corporate greed and their control of natural and societal resources. That solution is to simply eliminate money from the human equation, thereby replacing the current system of greed, exploitation, and institutionalized coercion with freewill cooperation, just laws based on verifiable wisdom , and societal goals targeted at benefiting all, not just a self-chosen and abominably greedy few.
We can now thank millennia of political, monetary, and religious leaders for proving, beyond any shadow of a doubt, that top-down, hierarchical governance is absolute folly and foolishness. Even representative democracy, that great promise of the past, was easily and readily subverted to enslave us all, thanks to money and those that secretly control and deceptively manipulate all currencies and economies. Is there any doubt anymore that entrusting politics and money to solve humanity's problems is delusion of the highest order? Is there any doubt that permitting political and corporate leaders to control the lives of billions has resulted in great evil?
Here's a real hot potato! Eat it up, digest it, and then feed it's bones to the hungry...
Most people have no idea that the common-denominator math of all the world's currencies forms an endless loop that generates debt faster than we can ever generate the value to pay for it. This obscured and purposeful math-logic trap at the center of all banking, currencies, and economies is the root cause of poverty. Those who rule this world through fear and deception strive constantly to hide this fact, while pretending to seek solutions to poverty and human struggle. Any who would scoff at this analysis have simply failed to do the math, even though it is based on a simple common-denominator ratio.
Here is Wisdom
Doctrine of Two Spirits...
Peace...
I disagree.
I'm not even sure I understand enough of what Seven Star Hand is saying to decide if I agree or not. I think he/she would have been better off if they had a few less cups of coffee before writing that post. lol
That's an interesting perspective. There's a lot there to gnaw on to simply say "agree or disagree".
I do tend to agree that hierarchical power structures serve to disempower the masses by making us think that only "experts" have the right to lead. As for all the economic stuff - that made my head spin.
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