"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
Commodifying Compassion
"Religious progressives are often quick to condemn those who extol the virtues of market economies for focusing too much on material concerns. This charge of materialism is, in fact, a core and valid insight contained in most critiques of consumerism, a phenomenon in which people tend to equate their own value and meaning with the things they can buy or possess. But consumerism is just one manifestation of the problems with a materialistic mindset, and the commodification of compassion at work in the assumptions of many progressives is equally troubling."
(1 vote)
- Login to post comments
User Login
Search This Site
Recent comments
Root Strikers
Non-Voting
Civil Disobedience
Reprint Rights
Comments
I really got a kick out of the "What would Jesus cut" reference. This alone should send up a red flag for Chistians. After all, Jesus told Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world." Personally, I do not need government telling me how to show charity. Government charity is earthly charity and is now as it always has been, doomed to fail. Why? Because real charity is freely given and not taken from one to be redistributed to another.
(My comments do not necessarily reflect ideas and opinions of STR or the readers of STR, but my last sentence speaks volumes, regardless of one's beliefs.)
G'day jd-in-georgia,
Some things that some individuals may not know about that verse you quoted.
First, according to Noah Webster (c.1828) the etymology of the word "kingdom" is, [king and dom, jurisdiction.]
Secondly, the VERY FIRST definition Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament gives for the Paleo-Greek word, kosmos, translated "world" in that verse is "1) an apt and harmonious arrangement or constitution, order, government".
Thus, Jesus [sic], in my opinion, was telling Pilate, the Roman procurators of Judea, that his authority was not of[1] Pilate's "jurisdiction", in other words, that his authority did not come from the Roman "government".
And, for the record, my authority does not come from the United States Government or any of its franchises.
__________________________________________________________________________
OF, prep. 1. From or out of; proceeding from, as the cause, source, means, author or agent bestowing ~ Webster's 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language