Gnats And Camels
Sep. 10th, 2005 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloJudy sent me an article about Pat Robertson's mining interests and how his charities stand to make money out of Katrina. I understand that the man's sailed pretty close to the wind in the past, mixing God's business with his own.
When I was studying the Bible the thing that really stood out for me (and made me feel extremely uncomfortable) was the bit about how hard it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I wasn't exactly rich back then, but I was comfortably middle-class and it gnawed at me that I wasn't poor enough to satisfy God. It was reading the Bible that made me a socialist (of sorts.) I didn't (and don't) see how a serious Christian can jump any other way.
You have to go through the Bible with a fine tooth-comb to find (debatable)texts condemning homosexuality, but the ones condemning the rich are lying about on the surface in plain view. The New Testament says that people who concentrate on obscure, fiddly bits of doctrine and miss the bleeding obvious, are "straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel." If Pat read the Bible as closely as he says he does he wouldn't be mining diamonds. He really wouldn't. A wealthy evangelist- it's a contradiction in terms.
When I was studying the Bible the thing that really stood out for me (and made me feel extremely uncomfortable) was the bit about how hard it is for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. I wasn't exactly rich back then, but I was comfortably middle-class and it gnawed at me that I wasn't poor enough to satisfy God. It was reading the Bible that made me a socialist (of sorts.) I didn't (and don't) see how a serious Christian can jump any other way.
You have to go through the Bible with a fine tooth-comb to find (debatable)texts condemning homosexuality, but the ones condemning the rich are lying about on the surface in plain view. The New Testament says that people who concentrate on obscure, fiddly bits of doctrine and miss the bleeding obvious, are "straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel." If Pat read the Bible as closely as he says he does he wouldn't be mining diamonds. He really wouldn't. A wealthy evangelist- it's a contradiction in terms.
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Date: 2005-09-10 04:44 am (UTC)The New Testament is a terrifyingly radical document, yet people sit there in their best Sunday clothes without flinching as all this fierce and violent stuff gets poured out over their heads.
"Seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear."
no subject
Date: 2005-09-10 04:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-09-10 05:52 am (UTC)One of the (many) reasons why I quit the church was that I felt the congregation and myself were on completely different wavelengths and, no matter what I said, no-one out there was paying me the slightest bit of notice.