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Yes, another top level comment about The Origins of Woke from me, in the same thread on the same week. But this is about something else. I had an epiphany while reading the book.
I've wondered for many years why Marxism is more socially acceptable than racism when it's responsible for even more deaths than the Holocaust. It's because companies are (de facto) legally required to fire racists, but they're not required to fire Marxists. In fact, firing a Marxist for merely being Marxist would be illegal in California.
California has a state law against firing people for their political beliefs, but it didn't protect James Damore, who was fired in compliance with the law against creating a hostile work environment for protected groups.
It all adds up.
I believe it's because Marxism better comports with Christian egalitarianism.
Yep this hits the nail on the head, in my view. Christians will tend to argue otherwise but Jesus did very explicitly argue for a sort of Saturnalian reversal quite often. The last shall be first, and all that.
I'm sure there are reasons why Christianity is more nuanced than Marxism, but they do have similar themes. Capitalists could easily be this wicked and corrupt generation.
Thank you for this post with a completely alien perspective of my faith. It shows me where the real battle for understanding is.
I have worked for a Christian businessman before, and were it not for that job, I would have found less professional success in my life, and less freedom from my emotional turmoil. It was the job with the healthiest emotional environment I’ve ever been in. Yet his small business, his petit bourgeois success, is exactly the kind that Marxists would make impossible.
C.S. Lewis would have said that the Saturnalian reversal was an echo in pagan thought of the later true divine reversal in which the Son of God washed his followers’ dusty feet and, instead of taking over the world and ruling it, willingly dying for the sins of all. Satan the rebel wanted God brought low, but not like this.
The purported words of Jesus seem pretty unambiguous to me. I don't see how the following can be interpreted to mean anything other than that a "Christian businessman" is like a "communist businessman". You can be a Christian or communist businessman, but only with the understanding that this is a temporary state that is inferior to the ideal one and if you were more virtuous, you would not be a businessman.
I’ll point out that in apostolic Christianity, this story is taken as laying out requirements of monasticism, not as a universal command on the faithful.
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Just got back from bible study where we happened to discuss a similar story that makes it obvious Jesus here was yanking the guys chain and having a laugh with his buddies. "All these I have kept" is obviously not true - the dude tried to tell God to His face that he had never told a fib or disrespected his parents. So Jesus tells him "well if you're so perfect, drop everything and come along with me." Jesus is calling his bluff.
"Easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle" is a joke. It's funny. Jesus is pretty clearly saying "rich people tend to be so consumed by their wealth they have no room in their heart for Me."
One of the things we discussed in fellowship this morning was the story of Zacchaeus (https://www.bibleref.com/Luke/19/Luke-chapter-19.html), a rich tax collector who told Jesus he had given away half his possessions to the poor. Jesus told him he was good to go, clear for takeoff. So obviously the camel thing was a joke.
Do you understand how, to somebody who is not a Christian and who is not invested in believing in the most favorable possible interpretation of your faith, this just seems like extra-special pleading? Surely there are a great many things which Jesus is recorded has having said which you consider deeply profound insights and statements of Jesus’ - and, by extension, God’s - true beliefs. Why, then, should we take seriously your contention that this particular statement - one which just happens to present an extremely inconvenient dilemma for your other non-religious philosophical and material commitments if taken literally and seriously - is just obviously a joke and Jesus didn’t really mean it, unlike all the other stuff he said that you agree with?
Sure, I understand completely. I used to be a fairly militant atheist and used to sometimes bring up the camel quip myself.
That said, I'm not interested in 'the most favorable possible interpretation' of the scriptures, I'm interested in using my mind to test and discern what interpretation is most pleasing to God (Romans 12:2).
Funny enough, not really. The first time I sat down and really read the gospels, most of the stuff was kind of nod along, "yeah that makes sense," but there's no earth-shattering revelations on the surface level. You have to study for those insights.
This is the question I just answered, tho. You're never going to understand the gestalt of a man/God's philosophy from isolating a single sentence. You have to look at all the parts in conjunction to get a sense of the whole. In this case, Jesus spoke more than once about rich people and getting into heaven. Yes, he did say the camel thing. He also told Zacchaeus - another rich guy - that he was going to heaven. Therefore, since it is impossible for a camel to go through the eye of the needle, but demonstrably possible for a rich guy (Zacchaeus) to get into heaven, Jesus was obviously not being literal or completely serious when he said the camel thing.
And again let's remember the context in which he said it: He had just called out some rich poser. The guy was skulking away with his tail between his legs. "Then Jesus said to his disciples" aka he turned away from the crowd to make an aside to his buddies (Matthew 19:23). Sometimes when people say things to their friends that are not completely serious, it is called a joke.
Finally let's look at the disciple's response: "The disciples were astounded. “Then who in the world can be saved?” they asked." Clearly they did not get the joke. But Jesus lets them off the hook, "look[ing] at them intently and say[ing], "Humanly speaking, it is impossible. But with God everything is possible.” Clarifying that 1) He was not being literal about the camel thing 2) rich people can indeed go to heaven 3) He had a playful sense of humor.
Okay, but there are tons of examples of Jesus telling those same people that he is God incarnate, that eternal salvation is only possible through following him and taking seriously his commandments and proclamations. Given this, don’t you think that if he really had been God incarnate and really was intent on leading his followers to salvation, he would have, I dunno, been a bit more responsible about speaking clearly and not making muddled and seemingly-contradictory statements?
Joking around and making statements which seem to be literal imprecations about the correct way to live - with, again, the stakes having previously been established as whether or not you will receive eternal salvation, or suffer eternally - but which are actually jokes, or flippant statements, or intentional obfuscations… this seems much more like the behavior of a normal mortal human man, a charismatic but narcissistic cult leader with both the standard human failings and additionally the failure modes particular to that specific personality type.
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I don't think the response above is a particularly good way of phrasing things, but a verse was presented and a claim was made that the verse is a general rule. He provided another verse that contradicts that supposed general rule. Nothing in the text of the first verse actually establishes a general rule, the existence of such a rule is an inference, and the second verse shows that the inference is false.
Maybe the text is completely contradictory, and it's all gobbledegook. Maybe it's actually a bit more complex, and grabbing single sentences out of a massive text loses important context. What it isn't, is true that Jesus taught, or Christians believe, that material wealth precludes salvation. That is a misconception fostered by people looking for easy dismissals.
For the record, I do not think Jesus is joking in that passage. What that guy actually needed to do was give everything away and follow Jesus. That was the thing he was not willing to do.
I love my wife and would do anything for her. I do not actually have to do everything for her, but I am willing to do whatever she needs me to do. That commitment is made without limit, and yet I can continue to live a life that is, in many ways, still mine, so long as it does not conflict with my commitment to her. What I cannot do is to put some thing before that commitment, choose some other thing over her should a conflict arise. Zaccheus' money doesn't come between him and God; he voluntarily pays back those he's wronged and gives to the poor because he wants to do the right thing, and Jesus approves. The Rich Young Ruler wants to be seen as righteous, but his money is more precious to him than actually being righteous, and that's why he goes away. There's numerous other examples throughout the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament that drive the point home, but this would require actually reading the thing or listening seriously to someone who has, and who has time for that, when one can mine pull-quotes out of context for a political agenda?
I actually agree with you here. I think making it a joke, is probably tonally not in line with how Jesus speaks. But likewise it isn't a global stricture. Some rich people can get into Heaven, some can't. I think that is the most consistent reading.
But some Christians apparently believe He was joking, and some believe He meant that all rich people were barred from Heaven. Can people with all three interpretations all still be Christian? Probably I'd imagine.
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Jesus was also preaching under the assumption that the end of the world was right around the corner; give away all your shit and give no thought to the morrow, love your neighbor and turn the other cheek are all way more reasonable if worldly things like providing for your family, planning for the future, taking care of yourself, and not being punched on both sides of your face are about to not matter. Early Christians also thought that the apocalypse was right around the corner, until the world kept inconveniently persistently existing and they had to re-think their expectations.
Then the protestant reformation happened and some people started taking literalist readings of the original text, and came to the same conclusion of early Christians; the end of the world is right around the corner. And thus we have that marvelous work of human literature, Left Behind.
IIRC, some of the Great Awakening utopian cults were explicitly abstinent; not "no sex before marriage" abstinent, absolute abstinence. Sex is sinful, and the end of the world is right around the corner, so having children isn't important compared to being right with Jesus. They aren't around anymore, for mysterious reasons.
Believe you are thinking of The United Society of Believers in Christ's Second Appearing aka The Shakers. I also thought they were fully extinct, but it seems they're merely functionally extinct, with either 2 or 3 (seeing conflicting reports) remaining in Sabbathday Lake, Maine.
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What is the basis for this assertion
I suspect:
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There isn't one. He's basing the statement on a misinterpretation, albeit one that some Christians have also fallen for from time to time.
The difference between a misinterpretation and the correct and true meaning of the text seems to be kinda fuzzy. Earlier in the thread, it was claimed that one Jesus quote is a joke, the other is totes super-profound.
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You and I know that but others might not, it'd be more cool if people didn't make baseless assertions, but so it goes
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