Unlike Buddhism, which began as the beliefs of a prince (it seems to be involved with experiments in advanced states of relaxation), Christianity was started by a middle-class boy with a middle-class profession that he inherited from his father.
"In Mark 6:3 Jesus is called a tekton (τέκτων in Greek), usually understood to mean carpenter. Matthew 13:55 says he was the son of a tekton.[42]:170 Tekton has been traditionally translated into English as "carpenter", but it is a rather general word (from the same root that leads to "technical" and "technology") that could cover makers of objects in various materials, even builders.[159][160]
Beyond the New Testament accounts, the specific association of the profession of Jesus with woodworking is a constant in the traditions of the 1st and 2nd centuries and Justin Martyr (d. ca. 165) wrote that Jesus made yokes and ploughs.[161]"
From Jesus, Wikipedia.
Many cite Christ as so poor he was born in a manger. His parents however had the hotel rent but there were no available rooms to let due to the Census.
God Himself had a work ethic. He made the world in six days and on the seventh He rested. This was the beginning of the work week.
Christ's parables presume a middle-class. The Good Samaritan was a businessman who had enough money to put up another businessman in a hotel. Not only room but board was paid for. How do we know the victim was a businessman? We don't, but since he was robbed, he had money, which meant he wasn't just destitute. It was likely he would get on his feet again, and do business with the first businessman (the GS). The parable strikes me as instancing an early form of AAA.
The parable of the talents presumes a working population of middle-class educated people who are able to choose how to apply their talents. Don't hide your talent under a bushel. Get out and use it! Make some money!
All of Christ's disciples had professions. Some were fishermen. I assume they sold their surplus fish. Luke is said to have been a doctor. I assume he charged for his expertise. Matthew was a tax collector. They were all middle-class men. They were literate, and even eloquent, in print. This implies education, which in turn implies middle-class status.
What was the source of Christ's appeal, and why is it still so appealing today?
Christianity is the leaven in the lumpenproletariat. It calls out to the flotsam and jetsam -- prostitutes and criminals -- (Barabas was said to have been a thief), who have aspirations toward middle class values, but it says to ordinary business people that there is no longer an upper class consisting of the Roman elite and the Sadducees, but that everyone was made in the image of God.
When the Untouchables in India hear this, they convert. Hinduism posits five classes. The Hindu upper classes slaughter the Untouchables, just as Pilate killed Jesus. But it's too late: the message is out.
Christianity posits only one class.
Marxism posits two, with one wiping out the other. But there are still two. There are party faithful, and those they presume to speak for (who are otherwise silenced -- even in Cuba today only the government can print documents -- anyone else who does so is sentenced to multiple years in prison).
In Christianity, everyone can speak.
Christ Himself spoke, even when He was supposed to be silent, and He was silent when He was supposed to speak. He ran smack into the aristocracy of Rome. Pilate could never wash his hands sufficiently to clear his name. Nero, offended by the upstart Christians who refused to see him as divine, tried to expunge them. But as Tertullian said, "in the blood of the martyrs lie the seeds of the church."
Paul and the Gospel writers were destroyed, but the message got out. Hinduism has five classes. Buddhists have an aristocracy of priests with workers to support them. Marxism has a secret powerful class (often incidentally filled with former members of the aristocracy such as Pol Pot).
Christ said the super-rich would have trouble getting into heaven. He said it would be like a camel trying to get through the eye of a needle. But He was not poor. Even at the Last Supper, there was plenty of food. No one complained that there wasn't enough celery. When Christ said, "The poor will always be with us," He implies that We are not the poor. The poor are separate, even if they are equal (ultimately).
Who are the poor? In Christ's time, they were the mentally ill. In our time, the homeless are largely, also, mentally ill. In our town we get homeless vagrants from time to time. They are usually taken to asylums. They threaten people, and talk about UFOs. Mentally ill? Christ pulled demons out of a few of them. Is that a metaphor? The socialists say we should give the poor money, but money can't buy love, or the basic sanity that they need.
Did Jesus ever give the poor money? I think He realized the poor are beset by demons and need more than money. They need exorcism. He provided this. We should pray for the poor. Ask the angels to visit them and help them up.
In the OT Job is reduced to penury as an experiment by Satan (Satan is called the Adversary in some texts). Satan has clocked Job. But Job is quite rich, at the beginning, because he is a favorite of God's. Then Satan has at him. The implication is that Satan impoverishes people to test them. God gives Job everything back at the end of the text, plus some new and improved children and a longer lifespan, but first he has to endure a lecture.
My mind is now hopping all over the place.
Luther was from the Middle Class, like Jesus.
I haven't said anything about the purported socialism of the Christian community as it is described in ACTS 4:32: "...they had all things in common", nor anything about St. Paul going around to try to collect moolah for this community of socialists (who apparently couldn't get it together themselves because their community was another failed utopian experiment).
As I read the Bible, and am now on p. 900 of 1500 pages -- I see it as the slow but inexorable rise of the Middle Class. I think Jesus would prefer the company of Sarah Palin or Michelle Bachmann to that of John Kerry or John Edwards. The first two are salt of the earth. The second two? Not so much. Kerry and Edwards were Sadducees. Palin and Bachmann: are they the St. Pauls of our time?
35 comments:
Kirby,
Again, I'm simply astounded by both your incomprehension, and your willingness to bend scripture into a personal and partisan apology.
To describe Jesus as middle-class fits is at best an anachronistic confusion. "Middle class" was not a meaningful category in the ancient world. The principal distinction that mattered then was between people who owned productive land, and people who didn't. Jesus belonged to the dispossessed class. He was a laborer, albeit a labor with a relatively skilled trade, and some capital investment in his tools. Still, like all laborers, he would have been dependent on others for sustenance, e.g., landed farmers who needed the yokes and plows that he could made. At best, he stood near the top of a slippery slope that lead to ruin.
Fishermen, too, were part of the dispossessed, laboring class. They did not have productive land, and their work was hard and physical. Still, there were non-negligible capital barriers to being a fisherman -- you needed both a boat and nets. But they did not own land, and this was the critical distinction.
Note that Luke was an evangelist, not a disciple, and there's no evidence that he knew Jesus personally. Note too that being a tax collector was a profession of desperation not choice, since it made you into a social pariah. Rocky Balboa as hired muscle for loan sharks is a better analogy than anything that wears a suit in today's world. Matthew was hanging on to that slippery slope by his fingernails, and most folks would have been happy to give him a shove if they thought they could get away with it.
The worst part for the Jews was probably living under insane emperors from Rome. Nero was nuts, as was Caligula.
Today there are people living under the likes of Kim Jung-Il, or Colonel Qaddafi, Robert Mugabe or Fidel Castro. Obviously these folks are insane, including Chavez. It's very diffcult to live with mental illness, but if the president of your country has it (I don't know how else to characterize Kim Jung-Il!) then you're in all kinds of trouble.
The good thing is we can vote out our own incompetents and mentally ill. Presidents who for one reason or another can't face reality, or have some insane ideology or another, make life terribly difficult for their people.
I don't think Jesus ever complained about how hard his life was. Not even at the end. None of the disciples did, either.
Remember when the fishermen were complaining about a bad harvest and Christ said try the nets now? He could make the world abundant at any instant. Therefore, there was no real suffering for those people.
Of course, they did have to live with the Romans, many of whom appear to be mentally ill.
They had orgies, which probably makes you mentally ill, plus their might is right ideology is just too much. You've really read so much socialism in your accounts of Christianity! You're not seeing the bigger picture.
Kirby,
The worst part for the Jews was probably living under insane emperors from Rome. Nero was nuts, as was Caligula.
Generally speaking, the Jews liked the emperors we consider to be insane today (this was especially true of Nero). It was guys we think of as being relatively sane -- Trajan, Hadrian -- that they still curse. Here's a place where it's clear that classically educated English alternative rock bands know more than you do about ancient history, cf., Coldplay's, "I hear Jerusalem bells are ringing" on Viva la Vida, which is transparently a first person song about Nero.
You've really read so much socialism in your accounts of Christianity! You're not seeing the bigger picture.
Such might be so if I came to Christianity via socialism. But I didn't. My worldview is grounded, first and foremost, in my faith, and my political commitments reflect a working out of that faith. I would not describe those commitments as socialist. I would describe them as community and justice focussed, rather than as ego focussed. To that end, I'm willing to evaluate governmental and non-governmental approaches to problems of justice and community, and I don't come with an ideological commitment that one's necessarily better than the other.
Psalm 1 argues that if you're doing what God wants you to do, you will be prosperous. What then am I to conclude if someone is poor? It means that either they're not doing what they're supposed to do, and that this is why they haven't prospered, or else they've been beset by Satan (like Job).
To help someone who isn't doing what they are supposed to do is to enable them. This is bad.
If someone has been beset by Satan, then the best thing you can do is pray for their freedom from Satan by having other angels free the person from Satan.
In either case, the government sending a check won't help them.
In the one case it enables the person to continue to not do what they're supposed to do, and encourages others to follow the same path.
In the other case, it denies the true problem (they've been beset by Satan), and so the thing is to pray to God that He end their trial, and get Satan off his back.
Kirby,
Psalm 1 argues that if you're doing what God wants you to do, you will be prosperous.
Right, but common experience argues that this is not always so, at least not in this life alone. So does the Bible elsewhere, cf., Ecclesiasties 7:15, "In my vain life I have seen everything; there are righteous people who perish in their righteousness, and there are wicked people who prolong their life in their evil-doing." As, indeed, does the book of Job, which you've cited but evidently not understood.
You tell me, if someone were to murder your wife and children, to burn everything you own, and to reduce you to ruin, would you view yourself as being made whole if you got your wealth back, remarried, and had a second family as prosperous and beloved as the first? Or would you still mourn the first family?
What you are doing is extremely foolish proof-texting -- taking a single bible verse, and trying to read into it a justification for all your prior beliefs, rather than trying to understand the sense of scripture as a whole.
Consider the far more important Psalm 22, "My God, my God, why have you foresaken me?" And understand it well, because these were Jesus's last words according to Matthew.
Stu, Jesus is joking, even on the cross. He is, of course, God.
You have to think in large algorhythms!
Let me try to begin with a reference point on which we're both likely to agree, and the move toward situations in which we seemingly don't.
In a class (say Statistics) there are a variety of students. Some stay out all night smoking, drinking, sleeping with strangers, and then come to class and have never opened the book, and fail the quiz and fail the tests, and spend their time in class sleeping off the drunken binge of the night before.
Other students work hard, go to tutors, ask intelligent questions in class, receive As on the quizzes and As on the tests.
Should the first group receive the poor grade that they deserve, or should you have pity on them and give them As, so that the outcome is equal to the second group?
If you agree that the first group should receive Fs, and the second group should As, then let's apply this to other situations.
If one person eats fudge from morning until night, never exercises, spends their days slouched in front of Jerry Springer, smoking cigarettes, screwing their dog and shooting heroin in their eyeballs, and another
Follows a sensible diet, exercises for a few hours every day, doesn't smoke or drink and remains within the bounds of their marriage, and doesn't use illegal drugs,
Should they nevertheless have the exact same health?
If you agree that these should have different outcomes let's try another scenario.
If one person never gets to work on time, complains all day at work, doesn't do anything at work, steals supplies, gets in fights with coworkers, badmouths the boss, and can't manage to flush the toilet when they're done,
And another is always to work on time, always works when they are at work, are respectful toward others and to the boss, and is productive all day long, creative and follows all the rules, should they receive the same salary?
Kirby,
Stu, Jesus is joking, even on the cross. He is, of course, God.
So, you're a docetist? No. Jesus was fully God, and fully human. But again, you need to actually read and comprehend Ps 22 in its entirety. It begins in despair, but ends in triumph. And my point is that there are many who suffer injustice in this life, for whom heaven represents (cf., the Lazarus parable, Luke 16:19ff) the ultimate loci in which justice is fully realized.
As for your parable of the statistics students, it breaks down at the very beginning, in setting up a simple dichotomy between students who work hard, and students who don't, while neglecting all other sources of variation in student performance. It doesn't account for students who do well on the exam because they're brilliant despite being lazy. It doesn't account for students who do poorly because they lack the requisite skills, despite really working at it. It doesn't account for students of average ability and diligence who still do very well because their fathers can afford expensive tutoring. And finally, it doesn't account for the lazy students who get A's because they broke into your office the night before the exam, and stole a copy. And as you well know, the sphere of economic activity is much more complicated that the classroom.
Certainly, I do not deny that there are undeserving poor and deserving rich. What I do deny, emphatically, is that this is an exhaustive classification. By your argument, Nero was a much worthier man than Jesus, or Peter, or Paul, and much more worthy of emulation. By your argument, Bernie Madoff was much more worthy than you or me, or at least he was until he committed the unforgiveable sin of being caught. By your argument, the slaves deserved their slavery, the Jews who were murdered by the Nazis deserved their fate, as did the Ukranians who were killed by Stalin. None of them deserved to prosper, so their shame and suffering is upon their own heads, right?
By your argument, Barach Obama, who is tremendous temporal power through the office of the Presidency, is fully deserving of the power he holds, which he must have received directly from God, all your whining and snivelling about Obama is nothing more than a pathetic defiance of God's will.
OK, so that last part seems perfectly reasonable, but even bad arguments can yield correct conclusions.
Stu, there are always exceptions to every rule, but the rules still hold.
By your own account of Psalm 22, you must realize that Jesus was quoting the whole thing, even if he only referred to the opening lines. He realized that he too would triumph over death, so the lines were in fact his final victory song over the Roman Empire.
Which he must have regarded as a joke, in the same way he regarded the temple tax as a joke (it was after all a temple to him!), and so put the coin inside a fish's mouth.
Jesus was quite the witty feller.
In terms of the breakdown -- I did try to make a very striking and clear distinction between the worthy and the unworthy student. Aesop did more or less the same with the parable of the ant and the grasshopper.
But to make a judgement you have to begin with good and bad.
You get them all scrambled up and then can't decide.
In terms of grading the only criterion should be: did this student learn the material, and master it?
Some will cheat, and we have to do our best to catch them at it. But long-term algorithms will tell the tale. If they didn't master statistics, they will end up making enormous mistakes in other areas on which that knowledge should depend.
Yes, Obama got by on good looks and the reverse discrimination of the left, but he's now wrecked the country, and will not get another four years if the Republicans can get anyone with a brain into the nomination (I think there are a few who fit this category who are running!).
Truth catches up with people.
If someone eats fudge all day, then it will show on their frame after maybe not a week or two, but in ten years time, they will have to get into a mobile wheelchair when they shop at Wal-Mart.
If someone who wants to be a nurse cheats in statistics, or cheats in some other important class, their patients are going to pay the price.
If an idiot gets into office, we all pay the price.
If someone like Kim Jong-Il gets into office, and he rewards loyalty irrespective of merit, and punishes all the functional people who try to wake him up from his dogmatic slumber, then the functionality of the country will suffer.
Nero lasted a couple of years before his guards decided to kill him. He chose to commit suicide.
It's so easy for a person to go wrong and into the paths of poverty.
It's easy for a country to do this, too, particularly if they have a poor leader.
A leader with exquisite oratory but without any sense can demagogue their way into office. But ultimately the country will pay the price.
In Rome, the only way to get such a scoundrel out was to off him.
Fortunately, we have elections.
What is BO's favorable rating now? About 40%, and falling. The generic Republican beats him.
And the country hasn't yet reached its lowest point under this remarkable fool's term.
He may not even get the nomination to run next time. If I were you guys, I'd beg Hillary to run. Hillary has some sense, and more importantly, an experienced person in her family to guide her.
the middle class in america have the social worker unions to thank
i dreamed i saw joe hill last night
jh
Some would say "spank" instead of "thank."
Our jobs are now being outsourced.
Hamilton believed in protectionism for American industry.
Hamilton was an Episcopalian who died talking about Christ after having been shot by Aaron Burr.
Were the unions run by Christians?
Did Joe Hill get his impetus from the Sermon on the Mount?
Like president TR?
The churches aligned with the labor movement drew on Shelley for inspiration and that's part of what has made the study of the later Romantics so problematic. Shelley didn't live long enough to become a Marxist. Neither did Byron. Wordsworth and Coleridge were both still alive for a decade or two after Byron and Shelley were gone, but they were from the previous generation, early Romantics who lacked the visionary gleam that comes with a noble bloodline. Yeats was a mystery cult, but could have been more if Byron and Shelley hadn't been institutionalized for most of the 20th century.
Kirby, in a perfect, just society, your theory is true. Unfortunately, societies are rarely just, and never perfect. Yes, the Goal is a society where what you say is true. We can differ on how we get closer to it ( it is an unreachable destination ), but to judge people on their wealth is to commit the same error as the communists - that a perfect society is possible. Except you go one step further, by assuming the ridiculous idea that it is Already Here.
Craig, could you cite which poems or what it was that the labor movement drew upon from Shelley?
Wordsworth became disenchanted with the Fr. Revolution and became increasingly conservative.
Brett, you have a good point here, but I am drawing on Psalm 1 to make my point. Stu disputes Psalm 1's truthfulness, and cites Madoff and others to dispute its verification. However, Madoff will spend the rest of his life in prison, and everyone in America hates him.
So I think he got what's coming to him.
He also cites Nero. Nero, too, got what was coming to him.
The Nazis got what were coming to them.
I'm not saying that there can't be a temporary ascendancy for thieves and murderers like the Nazis or like the Roman empire, but ultimately they will get what's coming to them.
Agamemnon conquered Troy, even murdering his daughter Iphigenia to get a favorable wind. But he got what was coming to him on his return home.
Joe Hill was either a murderous thief or an adulterer (wiki).
Either one is bad.
He got what was coming to him.
perhaps the best illustration of the life of joe hill is to be read in wallace stegners novel by the same name
the wicked thrive and the innocent are discarded like so much trash
the middle class helps the rich feel good about themselves
that's the main purpose of the middle calss
to make the rich feel good
and it is important
to bear in mind the feelings of the rich
often time they are simply just very very sensitive well meaning people with too much money
so
we pray for them
give us your daily bread
is basically a request to the rich
or is the (our) i forget
spread it around
jesus did exalt the poor to noble status - the rich adn powerful became suspect and the middle class pooled all their money and siad we're rich now rich in our shared poverty
communities with a shared interest in all things is the most effecient way to live on the planet
we're basically tribal
!
Then weave the web of the mystic measure;
From the depths of the sky and the ends of the earth, 130
Come, swift Spirits of might and of pleasure,
Fill the dance and the music of mirth,
As the waves of a thousand streams rush by
To an ocean of splendour and harmony!
CHORUS OF SPIRITS:
Our spoil is won, 135
Our task is done,
We are free to dive, or soar, or run;
Beyond and around,
Or within the bound
Which clips the world with darkness round. 140
We’ll pass the eyes
Of the starry skies
Into the hoar deep to colonize;
Death, Chaos, and Night,
From the sound of our flight, 145
Shall flee, like mist from a tempest’s might.
And Earth, Air, and Light,
And the Spirit of Might,
Which drives round the stars in their fiery flight;
And Love, Thought, and Breath, 150
The powers that quell Death,
Wherever we soar shall assemble beneath.
And our singing shall build
In the void’s loose field
A world for the Spirit of Wisdom to wield; 155
We will take our plan
From the new world of man,
And our work shall be called the Promethean.
i think palin and bachman are both prostitutes
republican girls being used unceremoniously to propel an ideology of riches and dreams girl dreams but american dreams nontheless they are both whores really just out there streetwalking they both think that one day they will be pimps but they haven't figured out how girls can be pimps yet
but still
they're both really just ladies of the night you can tell
look at their faces
well meaning
gabby willing to do just about anything for money
they're like marymagdalenas
like the kind o' girls jesus wasn't afraid to hang around with
so i guess you could say
they are perfectly respectable whores
now i don't say this to be controversial
far be it from me
jh
If I am not mistaken, Jesus asked his followers to give up material goods, to abandon their life styles to follow him-- those were the folks he worked with, and it strikes me that neither Palin for Bachmann fall into that category--perhaps a few mystics do. As Stu points out you often bend things to your partisan view. The early Jewish Christians stressed community, had to in order to survive, imagine living in the cave community of Cappadocia-- a community and cooperation that resemble socialism more than anything else, but I would not claim Jesus was a socialist, although it would be a challenge to claim he was a capitalist--unless the needle to heaven were expanded.
Many in the early church thought the world was about to end and so they lived as if these were the last days. It seems increasingly important that we ought to live as if the world will be around for a while, possibly millions of years more. This implies sustainable ecology on the one hand, but also sustainable economics, as well, at least to my mind.
Many in the early Christian church seemed to wish to throw away all sense of this world as worthy of living in, and trying to improve.
I think we have to try to move toward an ecotheological framework that salvages the natural beauty of this world, but also allows for capitalism within a framework of rules that protect workers and owners, so that both can thrive.
Humanity is fallen, and therefore we have the ten commandments to help us to live together. They spell out that we shouldn't steal from others (redistribution is stealth via the governmental office, and is an abuse of governmental office). They also spell out other obligations and duties toward others, but redistribution isn't mentioned.
Socialism destroys liberty in the name of equality (but never delivers equality -- it only promises it -- but we are always left with Big Brother instead).
Capitalism sacrifices equality of income for liberty to pursue happiness through investments in work and education and investment. I think it builds stronger richer communities than the socialists know how to build.
Compare South and North Korea.
Kirby many people today feel the world is about to end- so your point ? The Christians in Cappadocia escaped the Roman empire in the 2nd cent at a time when the last days were not as pressing, and lived in a rather communal style as did many other Christians. While you mine the bible to justify your middle class pro-capitalist views, I was simply pointing out that to reach those conclusions you have to ignore a great deal of the historical record. Further it is presumptuous to suggest who Jesus would prefer to hang with; his love for mankind embraces all, but he did ask his followers to shed material things-- just the opposite of Palin and company. As far as socialist states, it seems to me that Denmark, which I have visited on serval occasions, offers a great deal of what you claim only capitalism can offer.
Denmark is a capitalist state. Private property is permitted.
A socialist state is one in which no private property is permitted.
The state owns and runs absolutely everything, and there is only one political party.
Denmark has right-wingers who are permitted to air their views. And citizens are allowed to relocate, or to leave Denmark altogether.
Denmark is largely Lutheran, and this implies an ethos of helping the poor and children. However, if you don't like this viewpoint, you can have a newspaper and say something about it. There are many different parties in Denmark. It's not purely a socialist country.
As I said, private property is permitted in Denmark.
Personal viewpoints are also permitted.
Therefore, Denmark is a liberal capitalist state.
Kirby I agree with your description of Denmark, but know of few other conservatives who would not describe it that way-- see comments on Althouse for example. I should have called it democratic/ socialist, because of their high tax rate, and concern for the general well being of its citizens, or liberal/ capitalist as you have it-- actually I think that I will from now on. As someone brought up a EVL, I find it interesting that you consider this behavior a Lutheran ethos as opposed to a general Christian one.
I don't really know anything about the Catholics, or the Orthodox, or how they run things. I've studied Luther (as an amateur) and lived in Finland for five years, and have a Finnish wife. I traveled through Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, and have visited Iceland.
I would say that these countries are profoundly different from Catholic countries, for example.
There is an enormous value placed on cleanliness, and on family life.
The aesthetics are far cleaner and plainer, and very few people are ostentatious about their wealth. There is no such thing in Finland as a cleaning woman, for instance.
At least I never heard of such a thing.
Everyone cleaned their own house.
It would almost be ridiculous to hire a house cleaner.
I found it all very much like the Lutheranism of my childhood, and like the people I knew in Iowa as a boy who were my parents' neighbors.
It's just so different from other groups. I can't imagine someone going on the dole, for instance, for the fun of it.
It wasn't thinkable.
Or deciding to live on the street. They didn't have any street people in Finland unless they were foreign.
No one thought about this as an option.
I think some of the branches of american Lutheranism especially in larger cities have been infiltrated by communists. It's the only way I have to explain the bizarre sensibility they exhibit.
I don't understand many things about other groups. Perhaps they have just lost this sense that you have to shoulder your own responsibilities. I grant that it's hard and that families have to stick together.
I don't understand the way people are now. I started the blog to see if there were other people in the arts communities who weren't nuts.
Thanks so much for writing, and for your gentle tone. I just finished reading the psalms, and then turned this on!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nm1g8FFRArc
I prefer the bob Marley version but couldn't find one with him actually singing it. His is much more held back, and is therefore tighter.
the final verse: a curse, is left out of this version. Amusez-vous bien!
At any rate, I'm not really a conservative. I'm a classical liberal along the lines of Hayek or Locke.
The Democratic party has lurched to the left -- it's now the party of redistribution of wealth, and reverse discrimination.
I'm only reluctantly for the conservatives, but do find that Hannity even has more tolerance for dissenting viewpoints than they have say on MSNBC CNN or even on the public stations, which are violently partisan, and rarely have anyone on who isn't.
hey i wrote a beautiful little satire on republican prostitution and it didn't make it to the big screne
i am depressed
:(
jh
o i guess it was i just missed it
michelle bachman owns iowa
my whore piece
sorry
it's been a very hot wet summer and most people
are thinking in terms of bushels of corn
and that's it
so michelle is a good bushel of corn
yeha we have a solid christian voice now
maybe she'll make it a law that every public highschool must have ten commandments on the lawn and bibles in the classrooms
if her husband would say to her
stay home and take care of the home and the kids
i think she should feel obliged to do so she's a bit of a hypocrit on that point
i don't think she's a good christian mother at all
you just wait
when the race starts she's going to be spending money on clothes like it's going out of style
but no she has gumption and some power now some home grown ethanol in her tank and she's out there
well girls you force the door open and scream and this is what you get
america deserves michelle bachman
all those happy fourth of july faces
you can just see 'em
anyone for some tea
jh
jh if you have a mean streak at all it's about women working outside of the home.
I find it worrisome, and wonder about it, but wish I knew its theological roots somewhat better.
I think Luther was already accepting that women could be mothers and yet work, too, in what, 1525 or so.
I don't know the history of women working outside the home. I think there's a split on this topic between Protestants and Catholics.
Finnish women fix broken tires, and are president of their country, and nobody blinks. It would not be thinkable in Rome.
I have no idea why.
Well, there was a woman politician in the Italian Senate -- it was a former prostitute whose name I can't recall. She was married briefly to a famous artist named Jeff Koons.
Cicciolina or something.
Another woman who would not be thinkable in Finnish terms. They don't have Finnish prostitutes.
No one in Finland would even think of being a prostitute. The concept is not an option.
That option is not available, as the dial tone would say.
yes i am adamant about this
more women should stay home it should not be economically necessary that people should have to work outside the home
fill the homes back up with real people real families
no more birth control
no more abortions
no more propelled illusions about the necessity of social importance that everyone has to do soemthing has to find who they are has to have a job i mean they're educating these young women to believe that having a career is more important than having a home and nurturing the basis of home
more men shoudl say srew it tot he protestant work ethic too
c'mon everybody get on board
this is the train where you can say
screw it
to the protestant work ethic
the fundamental problem in our country is the loss of a sense of home people do not eat meals at tables anymore and because of this we're going down the shithole
ok
i got that off my chest
government should hardly be noticed
it's like being a janitor nothing more
just do the job and shut up
i do think intelligence tests should be required to run for national office
and to qualify for free speech
speech is a responsibility not a given nor is it a freedom
there must be heavy fines for erroneous ideas
my argument is that women are going out there and assuming that they're bringing all this o so feminine stuff to the game that men invented and therefor making it better
in fact and i'm sure you'll all agree at some level
it has made it much more crazy
we oould deal with the relative stupidity of men in public office it is much harder to abide women who are stupid because at some level we all know they are out of they're league they've asserted themselves into the picture and if anyone but me would just tell the truth about it they are like walruses in a hotel lobby ( how's that for impromptu simile )
i even think hilary should have had more children it may have saved bill some hassle
i just want people to go home be at home stay at home live at home have gardens and home cooked meals
thanks for giving me the venue for making my free speech incomprehesible
MORE WOMEN AT HOME
that's my campaign slogan this year
get them off the streets
jh
jh I see you're trying to get women out of the home to vote for you.
Kirby, Although I have only visited Denmark, Norway, have friends in Finland but and have not lived there, I have noticed differences between the Scandinavian counties and Catholic countries. I thought it might have something to do with smaller populations, and a more democratically structured church and society. Also the weather makes one hardy--yes?
women can vote for me on line
if they can figure it out
i'm not going to give directions
i can't run for president but
i have created a new office
prince of sensibility control
that's the role
and i'm the first CEO
come
follow me
where i go
do the rhumba
jh
Kirby,
I did a adult study on the Psalms a couple of years ago, and was especially amused by the number of musical variations on the 137th Psalm, by the especially bloodthirsty last verse, and by the incongruity of the two.
There must be hundreds of versions of "The Rivers of Babylon" out there. There's a Marley version that I've read about, but haven't been able to track down. I have an a cappella version by the Gaithers that's really lovely. But there are other, distinctly different, musical adaptations. Let me point out a few that I think are especially notable:
"On the Willows," Godspell. (youtube)
"Babylon," by Don McLean, on "American Pie," a beautiful and practically unknown round. (youtube)
"Jerusalem," by Matisyahu, on "Youth." (youtube)
"Once we sang and danced," by Marty Haugen and Susan Briehl (ELW 701).
Good stuff.
Another famous version is by the Melodians, another Reggae group that is Youtubable.
I think online there is a confusion because that version has pictures of
Bob Marley.
But I think it's a tribute to him.
It's got a slower pace than the one by Boney M, and is I think better, but I liked it because of the film Harder they Fall, where I first heard it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tAb5rYRXvs
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