Blair's Retirement

[poliphilo]

What will Blair do with his retirement? He will pound the lecture circuit in the footsteps of Bill Clinton and Margaret Thatcher. There are lots of people out there with more money than sense (Lots more money) who get some sort of visceral thrill from paying through the nose to be in the presence of the formerly powerful.

It's a marriage made in heaven because Tony and Cherie get a similar thrill from being in the presence of the fabulously rich.

What I don't get- what I really don't get- is how people who are as noisy about their Christianity as the Blair's are can have managed- in a lifetime of reading and hearing Scripture- to somehow overlook that text about the rich man and the camel and the eye of the needle.

William Blake put it like this...

The Vision of Christ that thou dost see
Is my Vision's Greatest Enemy...
Both read the Bible day and night,
But thou read'st black where I read white.

Comments

[jfs.livejournal.com]

I am largely ignorant of Blake - where's that from?

In total agreement, by the way - one of the problems I have of self-identifying as a Christian is when others call on me to defend the actions and beliefs of other Christians, especially when I think those other Christians are morally bankrupt. (They'd probably think the same of me.)

The only worse thing is when I find myself doing it without prompting.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's from an unfinished poem called The Everlasting Gospel.

I read somewhere recently that a large number of fundamentalist Christians are shockingly ignorant of the Bible. It's weird. You'd think if you were going to base your whole life on something you'd at least go to the trouble of finding out what it is.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Ahh, but it's a lot easier to abrogate responsibility, no? Let the man at the front have the hotline to holiness and pass you just what you need.

What's annoying is that's exactly why the Reformation happened. Get the priest out of the way of your relationship with God.

It's a lot easier, I guess.

Thanks for the reference - I'll hunt it out.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

People are so lazy....

[airstrip.livejournal.com]

Because a rich man can afford a very large needle indeed.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Now there's a thought.

I read somewhere just the other day that the word usually translated "camel" ought really to be translated "rope".

[airstrip.livejournal.com]

*boggle*

[jfs.livejournal.com]

I remember RE classes many years ago where we were taught that 'the needle' was the small gate that individuals could get through when the main gate to the city was closed.

You could get a camel through the eye of the needle (ie through this man-sized Judas gate) but it took an awful lot of work.

I have no idea if this has any historical basis at all.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I remember being taught that too

I suspect it's nothing more than a guess.

[ibid.livejournal.com]

I remember my brother quoting someone saying that interpretation was added later - christ might have meant it literally, but that would mean our kings etc couldn't get there...

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's true of all the parables that the interpretation was worked out later. One of the reasons Jesus and the rabbis taught this way was that they wanted people to go away and think.

I've heard many sermons on the camel and the eye of the needle (and probably preached a few myself). I remember one guy pointing out that Christ said it wasn't easy; but not that it was impossible.

[saare-snowqueen.livejournal.com]

So, nuu..... they gotta make a living somehow; you'd rather they went on the dole?

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Blair gets a pension as a former Prime Minister- a very handsome pension.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

And still gets his backbencher salary until he actually steps down.

Of course, it's not that much when you've just paid £3.5 million for a house, and another £600K for the house next door.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Blair likes wealth- and the wealthy- rather too much. If he were a conservative I wouldn't mind- but I was brought up to believe that the Labour Party was on our side...