I don’t know how you applied the golden rule to Christian economics other than what shouldn’t be included…
It’s in my first reply to this thread.
Well I suppose each person gets their basic needs met then everyone else argues it out as far as being infringed upon, but its very vague and so is the bible as far as governmental rule goes.
Where does it seem too vague to you? In what way is it lacking clarity for you?
Do you prefer to be micromanaged in general, or is there some nuance I’m missing?
Christianity is an inkblot, people see what they want to see.
The bible is far from a treatise or collection of essays, that came afterwards as Christian philosophers, theologians and writers struggled to make sense of it, it’s a work of art, literature and poetry.
The bible isn’t a set of consistent, systematic, detailed instructions for how to live one’s life or interpret the divine, it’s a jumble of stories, insights and intuitions innumerable authors living in vastly different times and places had.
Christians used the bible to justify everything from anarchism to totalitarianism and everything in between.
Many Christians believe we should avoid politics, many believe the contrary.
Many obey authority, some don’t.
Many Christians are absolutists, many are graded absolutists and there’s even some consequentialists (see the situational ethics of Paul Tillich and others) and antinomians.
Actually that’s really the great thing about Christianity, it gives you a lot of freedom to make it your own according to your tastes, personality, perspectives, preferences.
I mean were Jesus and his apostles economists and political theorists?
No they were beggars, mystics, poets, prophets & street preachers.
So what you draw from them politically and economically is strictly a matter of interpretation.
Very little, if anything can be drawn politically and economically, what you take from them is your art.
They were living in a world where the idea Christians would someday go onto become economists, political theorists, bureaucrats, kings and emperors would’ve seemed totally absurd, laughable.
Well it just seems like a general overview, did I not recap it accurately?
Deriving your political economy from reading the NT is a bit like getting your ideas about botany from listening to Beethoven’s 9th or examining pig entrails to ascertain the future.
1 John 2:15-16 “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in them. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not from the Father but from the world.”
With the advent of the Christianity today piece hitting the news it seems fitting to reflect on the state of Christianity and how the religious in the United States has deviated from its core principles from the aberration we see today in mainstream Christianity. Decades ago, with the Bible passage above in mind, the most caring Christians had no choice but to turn away from the mainstream sources of news, television and so forth in order to get Christian based perspectives that were more fulfilling to their religious world view. The media was filled with the impact of the sexual revolution. Scantily clad women, sex, immorality being glorified on television for the sake of entertainment was all something to be shunned and not partake in. Irreligious dialogue, pornography, cursing, swearwords, was fought against by the Christian right via censorship, FCC regulation, and attempting to get offenders kicked off the air waves through boycotts or writing to your congressman. This desire of the flesh was to be shunned, this worldly entertainment was a scourge on society.
There were radio talk show hosts to guide Christians for everything else beside what the church would preach every Sunday. It was a reprieve from the irreligious nature of mainstream society. This was a way world information and guidance was provided that could satisfy this disconnection that was caused from the rest of the world. This disconnection, was caused by the incoming decadence in the mind of the sanctimonious, judgment backed by their moral law derived from God. With this, the beginning of moral outrage was ignited. People could get information outside of biblical passages from these talk shows and apply it to the real world in cause and purpose with what was going on in the media, government, schools and various other institutions. But ultimately, society progressed without any inkling of respect towards Christian ideology and their resistance towards it. The president himself, committed adultery in the highest office of the land. Pornography was now available to everyone with the click of a button from your home computer. The disgust reverberated through the right, exponentially increasing to hatred as time went on, in which the echo chamber agreed, the world is a putrid immoral place.
But somehow, there seemed to be enough, an acceptance of sorts, to this unwinnable fight. For Jesus was surely going to fix it all anyway, but there was also a yearning for making this world more tolerable in the eyes of a Christian. When Charlie Brown and leave it to beaver were good, not the day time soap operas and sex on TV. So what happened? Hatred set in, feelings can’t be controlled and religious doctrine is an attempt to control those feelings, but ultimately it is not more powerful than human nature. Christianity has succumbed to the world, still feeding from being overly proud from decades of sanctimonious indoctrination. The loss of the world in their eyes had led them astray from their faith in some way to attempt to save their faith, a paradoxical stance ultimately, in which the Christian right would begin to forsake their own morality, their own teachings, to feel empowered by the teachings of politically motivated do-gooders. These do-gooders through righteous indignation were also entangled and fomenting in the hatred of those judged immoral, a faith based judgment upon society that has become sick and twisted.
Instead of taking cues from the bible, they took cues from the political messiahs who proclaimed to fight for their religion. This entanglement and marriage of the two has progressed to a point where politics became and over took their religion. To a point where all you need to do is proclaim to fight for Christianity became the only thing that matters. How you do it, why you do it, and how you lead became irrelevant, because the faith ultimately became irrelevant.
Or from listening to Vivaldi’s 4 seasons. 
Jesus and his disciples taught mostly about (inter)personal, spiritual ethics and renouncing worldliness, they had very little to say about politics and economics, so it’s all up in the air.
And yea in the absence of politics and economics in the NT, many Christians turned to the OT, which has a bit more to say about them, but the OT is far more eye for an eye than the lovey dovey NT, so how much, if any of that is still applicable is conjecture.
Not that there’s anything necessarily wrong with conjecture, knock yourself out.
Christianity has more to do with detachment from the world, which they believed was doomed anyway, with waiting for the kingdom of heaven to be built solely by God alone for man.
It’s a doomsday religion, not a religion about building, but waiting for this world to be destroyed and replaced with a better one.
I think Christians who’re heavily engaged in politics are missing the whole point, that the kingdom of man is doomed because man and this world are fatally flawed.
It’s not a religion about what man can achieve, but what God can achieve for man when man fully relies on God instead of his own efforts.
Ichthus77 wrote:
According to the Scriptures, Jesus constantly pointed out that he would die a violent death and accepted this as a prediction of ancient biblical prophecies and a divine plan.
Wait, good/positive/discipline?
Bad/negative/judgment?
Did you get this from the bible, or are you making it up?
And it uses the word judgment right here:
Romans 13:
Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong. Do you want to be free from fear of the one in authority? Then do what is right and you will be commended. 4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience.
Again, in one breath the bible says God forgives man and man should forgive man, in another it says God uses government (man) to judge man, this is an inconsistency.
It’s quite a stretch to go from Romans 13 (obey government full stop) to obey government insofar as it’s just and disobey it insofar as it’s unjust.
And can you cite the NT, since NT ethics often differ greatly from OT ethics?
Where in the NT does it say it’s okay to disobey government sometimes?
Not that I’m against disobeying government, I’m all for it, but we’re talking about Christian ethics, not my ethics.
You may be able to find exceptions, but to me, the main thrust behind the NT is radical egalitarianism.
All men are created equal (as in they all have equal value, not that they’re all the same).
And all men are equally damned without Christ and saved in Christ, by accepting God’s supreme display of mercy at the cross.
They can’t add to their salvation by being righteous, altho they oughta try to do good anyway as good is intrinsically, good.
So man ought to follow Christ’s example and forgive all men, not punish them, not even resist them when they try to do evil to him.
The emphasis is not on wealth, power (governing) or family in Christianity, on being worldly, but on living a life of voluntary poverty and communalism, pacifism and celibacy.
Again this is radical egalitarianism, in Judaism it’s better or at least not worse to be rich, powerful and have a family, in Christianity it’s better to be poor, powerless (in the worldly sense) and celibate.
The emphasis is not on building in this world, which is doomed, but waiting for the better world to come, a world built and maintained essentially by God, not by man.
The emphasis is all on God’s work, not on man’s.
Christianity is fatalistic about man and this world, but optimistic about God and the next.
Christianity, in addition to being a radical form of egalitarianism, is a form of fatalism.
Christians stop short of committing suicide, but emphasizing poverty, pacifism and celibacy over wealth, power and family, makes it a kind of half suicide, like the Buddha’s ‘middle path’ between worldliness, and suicide, which for Buddha meant minimalism, having enough to get by, make do, but not much else.
Christianity is sort of a half life.
Now do Christians follow this?
No of course the vast majority of them do not, with a few exceptions like monks.
Christianity is a doomsday religion, so it had to be moderated by Romanism and subsequent denominations in order to make it sustainable.
After centuries of being conquered by every empire in and around the Mediterranean, you might say this radical egalitarianism and fatalism in Christianity and other forgotten revolutions in Judaism was the natural reaction many Jews had to such a predicament.
Drop & run for now:
Making full-time employed people use public assistance without negotiating higher pay, and paying landlords rent relief without negotiating lower rates, and corporate subsidies for any profitable company that has employees on public assistance (and more than say 20% of employees kept part time), is subsidized slavery.
Drive-by…
Marx was an antisemite who wanted to expunge Judeo-Christianity. That’s why his language never switches from alienated labor to social labor. He wants to switch out one kind of practical civics for another kind (pretending civic & social are different things) while pretending not to use abstraction/theory, and elsewhere calling the actuality of his vision inevitable…because it’s rhetoric and propaganda. He started out with seemingly okay impulses (acknowledging we are social creatures), but he tried to do it without God (Feuerbach understood that’s where alienation starts, because it is after God’s triune, social image we are patterned)… and this is what happens when you misuse the mind God gave you:
gotquestions.org/God-gave-them-over.html
Nutha drive-by.
More important than your physical body or clothes (or food, water, labor) is that you don’t just claim Jesus as Lord, but you do the Father’s will (share love with others as he shared his love with you) in treating everyone as if they are Jesus hungry, thirsty, lonely, naked, and in prison. Reject all cognitive distortions to the contrary.
copy. copy copy copy. paste.
I’m not sure who you’re talking to, Pedro, but that bit about doin stuff as a society… well. The first time I encountered the idea was in response to conversations regarding systemic racism and communal responsibility. Because it’s kind of like unwritten social contract theory where we all kinda bought into it and kept it going by not challenging it or whatever.
That starts at macro so it sort of boggles the mind how it works. Makes you feel like a bunch of ants acting as a mindless collective.
But unless you’re a hermit in a cave who is abandoned at birth and fed on the drippings of bats or something, then basically every decision you’ve made has been in community.
Societies didn’t used to be as big as they are now, but a natural way of forming social units gets digitized. It’s like we are running an efficient program.
It all goes back to a natural capacity for empathy.
When that gets exploited it causes alienation. When it functions well everyone does their part as far as they are able and nobody takes advantage of anybody else. If it pivots on the Golden Rule, nobody lets anybody else get away with exploiting anybody else. You can start calling things social labor and social wages and social yada yada.
Otherwise you’re stuck with alienated everything on steroids. Completely and efficiently digitized. We’re like almost there.
There’s no getting out from under that. I keep waiting for the moment we study that part but it never happens. It’s not possible. It would take an act of God - a worldwide revival where those at the top become those at the bottom by choice and everything sort of balances out. Pretty sure that’s not the revolution Marx envisioned. And from what I’ve read so far he did not think very highly of the proletariat. He seems to be thinking how best to exploit them or manipulate them to self-destruct. But like I said we still haven’t got to his end goal. Did he have one other than my assumptions… because it just seems like rumors to me so far. Point me in the right direction and I will “stand corrected” if I am incorrect.
…because he was confronting the leadership and did not back down.
Marx tries to invert/neutralize “grace not works” (Gospel) with his thoughts on value/labor, and use it as the mediator of human life independent of all forms of society (even used the word “eternal”).
It’s so weird how much thinkers like this “borrow” biblical phraseology so heavily… despite wanting to overturn it and replace it.
Two Kinds of Life
First one: There’s laboring & producing tools that aid being alive/surviving.
Second one: Then there’s living as loved & sowing seeds that cultivate more ways to enjoy love/life. If you cannot prosper in this kind of life because you’re working your butt off just to barely survive in the first kind - God will make you prosper in His time.
The first one should not suck the life out of the second one. If you are overworking or underpaying your people, or price gouging, God is gonna make you pay for it. He disciplines those he loves.
edit: sowing heh!!
The reality comes out of the mouths of baby’s- zilansky not heeding mediation - I want it and I want it now.