So, I posted a MLK quote on a Republican website....it went something like this:

...And one day we must ask the question, Why are there forty million poor people in America? And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I'm simply saying that more and more, we've got to begin to ask questions about the whole society... MLK

I got it off DU earlier today.

One person said "there will always be poor. define poor."

Another said 'these "poor" people have microwaves, TV's, air conditioning, cell phones, they live off the government, etc."... I was accused of making an "emotional argument" instead of a factual one (we'd been discussing how 1% of the country owns 60% or more of the wealth, etc.)


These "Christian values" people sure think differently than I do, that's for sure. :puke:

...for they know not what they do." ~Jesus

I was at a Church this morning that talked about Forgiveness... always a hard one for me. The minister reminded us that the sentence begins with "Father." (I always forget that part.) That it was hard for Jesus to forgive, so he asked God to do it for him. Then, the minister said, "Happy Easter."

He knew he had given us - & certainly, me - a gift.

When I read your posting, it immediately came back to me.

If you are praying for a forgiving heart there is a simple trick (for lack of a better word). The trick is to pray for the ability to forgive for just the next 10 minutes (or even just the next two minutes if forgiving is really difficult.) Don’t try to think in terms of “once and forever” forgiving; think in terms of just for this short period of time. Of course that means that you will be nearly constantly praying for that forgiving heart but moment to moment forgiving is easier than life time forgiving.

I do like what your minister said about God doing it

Another technique, one that I have used many times, is based on Vipassana meditation. When I feel angry, I first center my awareness on my breathing and then try to step back into a sort of disinterested perspective, from where I observe myself feeling the anger, sort of clinically studying myself, noticing which parts of my body are holding the anger, etc. The cloud of anger then sort of dissipates, like when you "bust a cloud" by gazing at it.

thank you for posting
i try to be as christian as possible and what your pastor said has cast a new light on that whole passage and what it actually meant
thank you and god bless

i am serious as a heart attack this is not a snark in any way shape of form

..you forgive us and we'll forgive you.
We'll forgive each other till we both turn blue,
then we'll whistle and go fishin in heaven." ~ John Prine :-)

... that's always fun, listening to them to try and explain that one away. (Acts 2:44-45 and Acts 4:32-35)

who controlled things, incl. everyone's actions (if they chose correctly). The others had their jobs to do.

It was like a rock tour. Jesus was, if you'll pardon the steal from Andrew Lloyd Weber, the Superstar. And the disciples were the band and stage hands.

There was no share and share alike, we all get a say in how things are done. No no no. If there was one mug of drink, guess who got it? If there was one drop of oil to rub on the feet, guess who got it?

First off, the poster was speaking about the time after the death of Jesus, when his followers sold all and put it into a collective, and lived as a community. To each as they need, from each as they have, that comes from the book of Acts, and I fully agree with that poster's view on how they lived.
For that matter, the Weber-Rice version you reference also does not portray a dictatorship or controlling relationship other than the relationship between the people and the ruling Romans. If anything, the disciples are shown as having self interests in mind, their own legacies, and as taking great pride in their positions. "when I retire, I'll write a gospel and they'll all talk about Me when I die." Heaven on their minds? Nope.
And of course in the end of that story, a dictatorship executes an extremely innocent man. That is the power dynamic in that show.

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...to dismiss a moral argument is to call it "emotional".

Bullshit, I call it.

on the 'poverty industry'. I opened it with this: 'Jesus said, "The poor you will have with you always..." His simple observation was taken by some to be the eleventh commandment.'

There are, sadly, far too many christians for whom real Christian teachings don't apply when it comes to business.


-

http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/36103.Shane_Claiborne

"We do need to be born again, since Jesus said that to a guy named Nicodemus. But if you tell me I have to be born again to enter the Kingdom of God, I can tell you that you have to sell everything you have and give it to the poor, because Jesus said that to one guy, too. But I guess that's why God invented highlighters, so we can highlight the parts we like and ignore the rest."

— Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical)

"I asked participants who claimed to be "strong followers of Jesus" whether Jesus spent time with the poor. Nearly 80 percent said yes. Later in the survey, I sneaked in another question, I asked this same group of strong followers whether they spent time with the poor, and less than 2 percent said they did. I learned a powerful lesson: We can admire and worship Jesus without doing what he did. We can applaud what he preached and stood for without caring about the same things. We can adore his cross without taking up ours. I had come to see that the great tragedy of the church is not that rich Christians do not care about the poor but that rich Christians do not know the poor."

***

"Only Jesus would be crazy enough to suggest that if you want to become the greatest, you should become the least. Only Jesus would declare God's blessing on the po0r rather than on the rich and would insist that it's not enough to just love your friends. I just began to wonder if anybody still believed Jesus meant those things he said."

***

"When the church takes affairs of the state more seriously than they do Jesus, Pax Romana becomes its gospel and the president becomes the Son of God."

***

"I wondered if there were other restless people asking the question with me: What if Jesus meant the stuff he said?."

— Shane Claiborne
— Shane Claiborne (Jesus for President: Politics for Ordinary Radicals)

thank you for informing me of this guy he sounds great
happy easter and god bless

Not only that, they'll commensurate with others of their ilk that "these people" always whine and how "these people" need to get a job.

It only amounts to one thing: those false Christians are "Pharisees" who think they know about the Bible, and show that they've only heard what their far right televangelists have been pontificating about at their mega-Churches

And you are surprised by the negative responses you got? I'm surprised that all you got were those meek, mild negative responses.

You would find people here on DU that don't agree with the substance of that quote.

mutual "masturbation" societies.

and people just shrug at that.... :eyes: you just can't talk to stupid.