Can you be liberal and Christian at the same time?

lol! However, would Jesus work to block attempts to feed people who are in serious need?

Jesus spoke about helping the needy.

Did he also add a caveat that if people were needy too much we should not help?

In the OT, those with wealth were directed to loan money to those who were poor. If the poor couldn't pay it back, they were forgiven. However, the poor remained eligible for further loans.

When Jesus came, did he declare the OT was wrong about continuing to help the poor?

 

The fact that I'm sure people starved and died from disease while he was alive.

He didn't cure them all.

There is a Bible passage I sort of remember but I'm too lazy to look it up. I think Peter asked him to do something and He didn't.

And Jesus was in human form but he was never human, hence that whole miracle thing.

Last time I checked I couldn't walk on water.

And there is a glaring flaw in your argument here, which I thoroughly enjoy discussing with you Will, Jesus suffered tremendously and its that lesson that we should learn. Even through great suffering, as our King did, we should keep our sights set on our Lord.

Respectfully

 

Did He add a caveat that we should help them if they are too needy?

And you can capitalize He.

I would appreciate it.

 

Outside of a small number of miracles, Jesus behaved within the limits of human life.

You're trying to suggest that the fact that he didn't cure all hunger and disease is an excuse for us not helping those in need today. That's just plain nutty.

And, your suggestion that a life of suffering is a blessing is just as irrelevant. That does not excuse us from helping those in need within our capabilities as humans.

 

That was your argument sir.

You asked if Jesus would have allowed it to happen and I showed that He did.

You are correct, he didn't cure all hunger and disease.

 

Is THAT your excuse?

We shouldn't help the hungry because Jesus didn't stop hunger?

 

So you need permission tempting use of your subconscious to authenticate a signature ?

 

Taking your last point first:

At some point when the American people insist on rationality, a sufficient argument can be made that educating Americans not only has sufficient value but is critically important and thus warrants investment.

Unfortunately rationality is generally trumped by mindless self-interest, particularly evident on the Right (or rather, the effects of this mindless self-interest are more significant coming from the Right, because generally the Right has the money). And as you can see, Spooky manages to combine self-interest with faith in his God.

To your point that:

Right now, the right wing is enamoured with this idea that we can breathe life back into the businesses of a bygone era. We can try to make steel again. We can go back to coal for power. We can pretend there is no cost to the earth warming. We can pretend our economy can be separate from the world economy and that there is no international competition.​

All very true, but the present generation of displaced workers will not accept being forced to remain in poverty while waiting for the necessary long-term structural changes you correctly identify. That's why Trump is now president, yet all I see from Trump so far is doubling down on "trickle down", plus a mindless MAGA slogan that has potential to damage the world economy.

Which leads me to where you began:

you are searching for a way to buy stuff with our money without congress having a say in it. That is NOT something you should want. Having some other entity, inside or outside the USA, having control of what we buy is essentially a revolution or conquest.​

In short, BS.…(see below)

Now, I admit to a desire for well-functioning, prosperous communities at home and abroad, but the only way I will retract that BS remark is for you to go directly to my proposition:

"Can you demonstrate the significance or effect of the quantum of inflation that would result from universal (global) education (across all nations), funded by IMF money printing, given that education does not consume scarce physical resources?"

Yes it would certainly be revolutionary... but without the violence. I have already noted that any increase in consumption, as people move out of poverty, could be managed through one-off provision of public housing and public transport; food consumption would be about the same as now, (assuming large numbers of people are not presently actually starving to death).

In other words, can you step outside your orthodox, neoliberal money creation system for a moment, and explain why my proposition is irrational? (At least say that you don't have enough information to comment or something, like that...)

As for the US military: they, like all nations' militaries, are the very seat of the unconscious (instinctive) evil and irrationality in the human soul that Jesus warned us about:

"Love God and love one-another"

and

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth 39 But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well".



​

 

Perhaps it was when Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus, poured expensive perfumed oil on His feet, wiping with her hair. Judas was indignant, saying it could have been sold to feed the poor..
Jesus replied,

Mark 14:6 “Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. 7The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. 8She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. 9Truly I tell you, wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

Ironically, i have retold her story, now, to remember what she did, over 2000 years ago.

 

Must you always distort the simplest reasoning into some lame, anti-christian narrative?

 

You err, because you do not understand the mission of Jesus, nor the scriptures. People have suffered many things, before and after the Advent. It is a flawed view of the messiah , to think He came to end hunger, or bring peace. He came not for peace, but division...

 

Matthew 10:24

34Do not assume that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35For I have come to turn ‘A man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.…

 

I'm late to this party, but I'll toss my opinion into the mix:

No. Progressivism, equated with modern liberalism, is anti-christian at its root. They preach a marxist based religion, of elitism, atheistic naturalism, and anti-enlightenment ideology. Freedom of conscience gives way to mandated conformity to the official state religion. Human equality is scorned, as superior, more highly evolved humans use social engineering and totalitarian rule to create a "New Man'. Natural Law, rights to life, liberty, and property are trampled for a collectivist delusion of 'fairness'.

Liberalism, even though it has infected most, if not all, of the major denominations in christian labelled institutions, has nothing in common with biblical Christianity.

 

Funny that you should mention that, I am a Christian clergyman, and I don't get a salary, I am lucky to get my expenses back. I have to work at a job "worshiping the almighty dollar" as you say, for my daily bread. So what I do for the Body of Christ I do for free, that's what makes it a sacrifice.

 

Maybe you should find a position as a minister that actually pays a salary, though it may be modest.

 

Sorry, but at least Kerouac knew how to use that literary instrument whereas your's comes across as utter nonsense.

Stringing words together, well, it takes much more than that. There is an art to it, and you look like a 6 year old trying to paint a Picasso.

 

If you're going to employ literary devices, you should know what they are, and how they work... and, at least fit into the discussion, and make sense to somebody...


They should communicate something, or it is just verbal masturbations, that only gratify the writer.

 

I like your last point, very much. For IMO, you nailed it.

I think I know what the poster is attempting to do, but he is making a mockery of it. No doubt, he knows what he is trying to say, but cannot quite pull it off. For me, it amounts to little more than jejune gibberish. A creative writing course is sorely in order. A case of being half mis-educated, as I think G. B. Shaw once wrote? He was speaking of the English school system, but it looks to apply to the American educational system as well. IMO.

 

Marxism: "from each according to his ability, to each according to his need'

How is that "elitist"?

Re "anti-Christian", many reputable Christian theologians reject the mythology that accrued after Christ's death, such as the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection and the Trinity, in favour of drawing strength from Jesus actual words, such the Sermon on the Mount.

True, he apparently said " I came not to bring peace, but a sword"....but he also said "blessed are the peace makers, for they will be called the children of God", so beware of an ISIS-like interpretation of scripture, unless you fall into the trap of the notorious Inquisitor Torquemada, who at the end of his life, after torturing and executing thousands of innocent people, professedly to save their eternal souls, expressed doubts about the correctness of his (Torquemada's) mission.

You will need to explain "mandated conformity" , "official state religion" .

As for a "collectivist delusion of 'fairness", well I now understand where you are coming from, with your conviction that Christ will return to rule the world with his chosen few, after destroying most of humanity.

(Christ won't be returning to do that, though we are very capable of causing our own extinction.)

A "collectivist delusion of 'fairness'?

Certainly Libertarianism is delusional if the proposition is that individual liberty, not counterbalanced by the guiding regulation of a rules based system, can achieve well-ordered relations between self-interested individuals.

[But if you are looking for "armageddon " as fulfillment of your your exclusive, discord based religion, you are not interested in peaceful co-existence anyway)

And one wonders what relationship biblical Christianity has to Christ...

[Abraham (c.2000BC) knew nothing of the early part of the OT, written (presumably) by the warrior Moses (c1300BC), whose God (so we are told) authorised genocide on behalf of the survival of Moses' tribe, during the acquisition of the "Promised Land".

Judaism, biblical Christianity (OT +NT), and Islam all profess belief in the same God, ie the God of Abraham. Why are they mutually exclusive belief systems?] Certainly, there is only One Creator God/One Reality.

 

Ah, so you like literary devices! Me too..

Let's see.. was mine a metaphor, or an allegory...?


Hyperbole is my favorite.. you get to use all kinds of cool adjectives to make a point!

 

Always amused & bemused at the Christian Nation national religion churchstate diatribe where avoidance of having a Christiananality pedophile mentality with acceptance of Islam tautology as God is the standard for America education as far back as the 1950's as I can remember; where a supreme swastika up Uranus court deems it so for Nazington, Drugs of Christianity; formerly known as Washington, D.C..
Since never been outside the continental 48 & as one family member was an English teacher, looks as if asking permission instead of the atypical West Nazi Germany Virginia thieving US Constitution - old glory Kristallnacht tactics mockery could possibly end these superego sociopsychological human farming techniques.

 

Always a good tactic.. double down if someone calls your bluff!

 

You are asking for way too much explanations, that will probably just be dismissed, anyway.

I'll make a few points, though.
1. Christianity is defined by the Founder.. not some double millennial removed revisionist. It has specific tenets, with historical, exegetical, and scholarly meanings. It is not synonymous with 'Anything goes!', or feeling based interpretations.
2. Marxism is exactly elitist, with a history of trying to create a 'new man'.
3. I'm not interested in defending your strawmen, nor are your words mine. I can speak for myself, without your caricatures.
4. Official State religion? Why, Progressivism, of course. It is mandated in every institution, and indoctrinated with religious zeal into every citizen.
5. Debating, in a logical, classical manner is an exercise in madness and folly, in progressive dominated venues. I have years of experience that bears this out.
6. Anti-christian bigots in the progressive left should just own their hatred of Christianity, instead of pretending to be 'tolerant!' That facade comes off like a joke.

 

Almost Trumpian in draining the swamp with a clues clucks duh KKKlans double entendre since the Federal Lynching churchstate of hate did bring 9/11 to the US & has the most well known swamp.

 

NO!

I'm very clearly arguing that Jesus set a higher standard - a standard I AGREE with.