"Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you."
I like to contextualize this in a modern form. I like to say, "there are no billionaires in Heaven. In the end, every last one of them burns." When I see Musk, Bezos, or Trump, I see men who are literally and inevitably headed for the very literal fires of Hell. Let them have their vanity here. In the end, they're all gonna fry.
I don't know what qualifies as "rich." But I don't think a modest 401k to support yourself in retirement is going to damn anyone. I don't know where the line is, but by the time you get the obscene level of a billionaire, you have been consumed by greed.
I like to imagine wealth and as an anchor. Would you die, your soul tries to ascend upward. But those with great wealth find themselves chained to a great golden weight, a spiritual manifestation of their wealth and greed on Earth. And as they try to fly upward, they instead are pulled down, down, and down. They see the surface of the Earth rise up above them like a diver descending beneath the ocean's surface. And they do not stop falling until they reach the Pit.
The context for the original quote is Jesus speaking to a "young ruler". The young ruler asks if he will be judged as a good person. He follows all the religious laws and is very pious. Jesus tells him to sell his possessions and give the money to the poor. Jesus promises the man that his reward will be great in heaven, but the young ruler cannot bring himself to do it.
I don't see this as Jesus telling everyone to live in poverty. This is Jesus testing the man's faith. Even though Jesus himself promises the man a reward for giving up his possessions, he doesn't trust Jesus. He doesn't have faith that his actions will be rewarded in heaven. The warning isn't that having possessions is inherently evil, but that one can be so tied to their Earthly possessions they can refuse a direct request by Jesus himself.
Edit: Yall hating on me, just like any mf from Tajikistan hates you. Yeah. That’s a real country and 1% of your income could change their lives but you've never thought about it because you're trying to keep up with the Joneses and thinking about Musk
comfortably rich in [pick whatever capital city you want] is a grain of sand compared to being a billionaire though, that is the level of disparity we are talking about
The discrepancy you're pointing out across different countries is at most 18x, according to your article.
Let's ignore, for a second, that "richness" needs to be considered in the context of COL. Yes, 1% of someone salary could make an impact in Tajikistan. But the cost of a meal for that potential donor could also bankrupt someone in Tajikistan. But let's ignore that for now.
18x an average persons salary is a fart in the wind when it comes to the rich. Take a look.
This animation is incredible. The best AI generated animation I think I've seen. The only weird thing I can detect is the excessive flopping of his sleeve. But to make up for it is the way his index finger is slightly bent because you can't tuck the rest of your fingers all the way in without doing so. Crazy stuff.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me that decision-makers all over the planet are absolutely horrified at the idea of making any sweeping changes whatsover to health care system, whatever it is. Because they fear the very real possibility that they will cause masses of deaths due to complications during the transition and then that will be their legacy.
If we take at face value that there exists a change that one can just simply make to the healthcare system, and then it will all be better, there's still going to be some kind of transition.
Yeah, Jersey is nicely blued, but beholden to big pharma, and I think messing with healthcare hits too close to home. Governor race is next year though and so hopefully this issue stays hot.
If you think it has nothing to do with the working class struggle you need to go back to square one and begin again. There isn't much that isn't impacted by the rise of AI.
It's incredible how successfully the AI topic has been hijacked by copyright propaganda.
Copyright is bad, period. Barking at AI for using copyrighted shit for training just makes it less accessible to train for anyone BUT the mega rich.
Let's say we do ban copyright data for training. Then only Google, Microsoft and Apple can releastically source data for training. That and countries that don't respect this like China and Iran right? Ok, so now they hired farms of people to produce training material and release their models that NOBODY can compete with. Everything is literally worse in every possible way now and AI is fully owned by corporate overlords.
I genuinely don't understand the though process of these people. We want information to be free and accessible to everyone, no?
Me catching up on historical Christian theology on YouTube to help contextualize the spirituality of my youth:
I'm loving this lecturer's depth of knowledge on this subject and he's right that literally every person who knows that religion exists has some kind of theological standpoint whether or not they even believe in a God at all-
-but I completely disagree that the specific question of divinity is worth even asking let alone debating or worst case scenario creating divisions between people over. This isn't even me saying I believe in it or not in fact I specifically refuse to engage with that question in any way.
Debates regarding the divinity of Jesus have been overwhelmingly used throughout history to provide cover for ideologies that both directly contradict the actual words of Jesus and which have caused the suffering and death of millions. "It's fine that we rape children because we believe in the divinity of Jesus!" The nicene creed ruined one of if not the greatest antiestablishment movements in history and was instrumental in its transformation into itself being the abusive establishment.
Now, I do understand that this makes me by default non-nicene, but it's the fact that that binary exists in the first place that I specifically object to. They're the ones making it an issue for no reason other than to have something to hold over other people's heads that requires no actual thought or effort. They don't have to actually debate theology, they've ended the discussion there by choosing a fundamentally unprovable premise to hinge their entire argument on. They've absolved themselves of expending any effort to better the world because by saying one passage out loud their labor is complete.
The nicene creed exists for no other reason than to wage ideological and literal wars over so that real good can be ignored or even fought against. It does not improve the world in any way. The nicene creed ruined Christianity.
I made the same journey during COVID, ultimately arriving at a similar place that the Nicene Creed was the first in a long line of obvious retconned political and human decisions. For what is worth, I also feel like it's in the same vein as most of what Paul did, codifying and standardizing to the detriment of the source material and to the benefit of anyone willing to take charge.
I'm still genuinely shocked that anyone can read the Gospels and then not see the record-scratch pivot in tone for everything else afterwards. Well, shocked in as far as to then be disappointed at how easily a mess of addenda created something antithetical to a bunch of nebulous good vibes with no clear avenue to monetize it all.
Which, oddly enough, Buddhism does as well, but owns it as part of the process.
Bruce Gore, specifically on church history. Seems to be a Presbyterian which imo are usually the biggest nerds but that was what I was looking for anyway ;)
The satanic temple recognizes that religion has a huge sphere of influence over humanity, and this sphere should not be conceded to theist religions alone. The satanic temple serves as a counter balance to theist religions, and their influence in the world.
PS: Here is a joke:
Question: What to do call people who believe that Satan exists?
Nah diehard atheism isn't really my jam. I'm leaning more towards gnosticism / esotericism. I'm actually fine with the whole Jesus thing I just wanna skip the misogyny and do more chasing capitalists out of churches with whips while getting drunk with hookers. Also I'm actually kinda vibing with the aesthetic of the weird pseudoscientific spiritual shit because I like my placebos to have pretty rocks and starry shit and as an added side bonus it makes mansplainers really irrationally angry and that's just funny asf. Also technically Christians and Satanists both believe in satanism the same way if you follow the original vein of satan just being the absence of god its just satanists think that's a good thing and / or the truer nature of the world which is valid they're just really edgy / pretentious about it and I'm not ready to buy a trilby just yet. I do admire their work in regards to abortion and reclaiming public and civic spaces from religious oppression. I guess that's the issue though; Satanism is a political stance, I'm more looking for a spiritual philosophy and religious rituals that connect me to a wider community and provide patterns for my mind and body to latch onto for stability and comfort. Satanism doesn't provide any of that which again, is fine, but not what I'm looking for.
Cool that the generationally rich guy who supported anti-woke messages and Elon Musk amongst other things is Lemmy's new hero. Perhaps there's some weird sort of hope in the air, that actions speak more than one's bank account or family, and more than whatever the fuck one does in social media.
You cannot choose your parents or your upbringing or your past. Only what you do in your present. And he chose to give up his future to do good in the now.