Deus Est Deus Pauperum

[poliphilo]

Of course there's something I left out of the post I wrote yesterday- and that's the ideological underpinnings of my position. I suppose I was afraid of seeming pious.

Most people, it seems, can be exposed to the New Testament in childhood without it turning them into angry little socialists. I was different.

Here was God talking to me- in splendid, pompous, Jacobean English-  and what He was saying was, I don't care for those rich people. If You want to get to heaven you've got to choose between us: Me or them- which is it going to be?

Alright,  I'm not really a Christian anymore- but I've never been able to shake myself out of that world view. Actually, I haven't wanted to. It's stark, it's magnificent, it appeals to my imagination. Also, it happens to be true.  There's a war going on between those who embrace money and power and those who reject them for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven.

On the one side Milton, Bunyan, William Morris- all those righteous dudes. On the other- well- no-one I'd want to be seen hanging around with. 

Peter Mandelson, perhaps.

Simplistic? Yes, of course. And it all got a bit preachy a couple of paragraphs back. I used to be a preacher and that's something I slip back into very easily. 

So- sorry if raised my voice. That was a lapse. I'm not trying to win souls *coughs politely into sleeve*. I'm just trying to tell you who I am.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've never understood that either. It seems to me they're betraying the Gospel they pretend to preach.

I've got a weakness for St Francis too. He was a very wild and contrary person.

Gospel economics

[margaretarts.livejournal.com]

Beautiful post, and I agree, Francis was wild and contrary. See Rossellini's Flowers of St Francis (1950) now on DVD for joyful simple difficult living in action. All the monks in the film are real monks from an Italian monastery, which makes it all the more wonderful and authentic.


Gospel economics

A bird in a bush
is worth
a mustard seed
is worth
the kingdom of heaven.


--mds 2005

Re: Gospel economics

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I saw that movie a long time ago. I really need to watch it again.

That's a marvellous little poem.