The natural disaster preparedness folks here recommend that everyone make themselves as ready for a crisis as possible. It isn’t recommended because they think people should be selfish, it’s recommended because everyone who is ready and doesn’t end up needing help from others is one who can help those who do need help!
If I can get my house reasonably earthquake-proof, so that I can recover in a few days, that frees me to help others – and there will be a lot of others since many houses on my side of town were built right after WW II and have the same issue mine does: they aren’t bolted to the foundation, which means that when the quake comes those that don’t get retrofitted will jiggle or lurch off the foundation and collapse.
Everyone who is prepared for disaster is one who isn’t going to be a burden to others.
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink,[k] or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by worrying can add a single hour to your span of life?[l] 28 And why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ 32 For it is the gentiles who seek all these things, and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God[m] and his[n] righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
34 “So do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today’s trouble is enough for today.
Sometimes I think we are so far removed from Jesus we don’t deserve to wear the title “Christian.”
Which is neither theology nor a start to theology.
I’m more interested in the text and letting it be what it is: ancient literature from an ancient context. When it comes to scripture I don’t care about science much, I care that it is read for itself. Where I do care about science is when it is used to lie about the text, which is what YEC is all about; it demands that the Holy Spirit had to force the ancient writers to speak in terms of a worldview they would have found alien, a modern scientific worldview that wants everything to be 100% scientifically and historically accurate. Yet that definition of “truth” cannot be found in the scriptures!
No – you read into the Bible what you with your modern worldview expect to see there. The scriptures are not a collection of newspaper reports, which is how you treat them.
You don’t even have a clue what “normal . . . use of language” is if you’re not reading in context, and that includes language, culture, literary type, and worldview. Yet you regularly ignore all of those, thinking that you can understand the author’s intent without the least bit of studying to understand the writer’s context. You follow the standard YEC approach of insulting both the inspired writer and the Holy Spirit Who chose him by effectively maintaining that the scriptures – Genesis in particular – weren’t really written to the people a few millennia ago but for you.
That you cannot see the arrogance in that is tragic.
Actually you supply a small amount of what you think is biblical evidence and you repeat that amount over and over even when you’ve been shown it doesn’t mean what you think it does.
“Relevant”? That’s putting words in people’s mouths; I don’t think anyone here has ever said it isn’t relevant. What people do say is that the Law no longer applies, and we say that because that’s what the Holy Spirit told the church in Acts 15.
You fail to understand that Jesus fulfilled the Law for us. “Fulfilled” indicates “filled full”, and when something is filled full you don’t keep pouring more into it; that is insulting to the one who filled it in the first place. So saying we have to follow the Law insults Christ Who filled it full on our behalf.
I see you still don’t know what that passage is about – it has pretty much nothing to do with Satan.
As evidence by the continual lies about people here.
It always bugs me that these graphs don’t reach back to 1500 when the “Age of Discovery” (or Age of Colonialism) kicked off. In university botany courses we found that global CO_2 started rising as European countries effectively deforested the entire continent, cutting down trees to build ships. Production of charcoal contributed heavily to deforestation as well.
I’m wondering about temperature in the L.A. area since the 1970s. I was in L.A. in 1976 and as we came out of the hills to the east we could barely tell there was a city due to the smog; when I visited again around 1990 the air was clear enough the smog was just a light haze.
Well I don’t think Jesus was against people saving money. After all, Paul and them gathered up money. You wash your hands instead of letting Jesus clean them with his blood right? You wear a seatbelt and you don’t walk under trees while people are cutting down trees. I mean, you may be dense enough but I doubt it.
And guess what. Let’s say Jesus does not want me to save up money. I don’t care. I’ll continue to do it because I’m not stupid. I am going to worry about tomorrow because I’m not planning on dying in my 30s and I have a kid and a fiancee. But if you don’t want to, I’ll send you a PayPal link and any extra money you get you can send my way.
Jesus is talking about unnecessary anxiety. Not about careful planning.
From the same Sermon on the Mount:
24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.”
(Matthew 7:24-27, NIV)
Jesus wouldn’t have told this story if he believed a person who builds a house on the rock is a fool.
Jesus knew his scripture:
6 Go to the ant, you sluggard; consider its ways and be wise! 7 It has no commander, no overseer or ruler, 8 yet it stores its provisions in summer and gathers its food at harvest. 9 How long will you lie there, you sluggard? When will you get up from your sleep? 10 A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest— 11 and poverty will come on you like a thief and scarcity like an armed man.
(Proverbs 6:6-11)
But he also told this story:
13 Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” 14 Jesus replied, “Man, who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between you?” 15 Then he said to them, “Watch out! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.” 16 And he told them this parable: “The ground of a certain rich man yielded an abundant harvest. 17 He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do? I have no place to store my crops.’ 18 “Then he said, ‘This is what I’ll do. I will tear down my barns and build bigger ones, and there I will store my surplus grain. 19 And I’ll say to myself, “You have plenty of grain laid up for many years. Take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.” ’ 20 “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’ 21 “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God.”
(Luke 12:13-21, NIV)
We have to read the Bible canonically. All these parts complete the picture of the Christian life. These stories complement each other.
I am well aware of all the ways we Westerners love to soften Jesus’s words. Worrying about climate change in the future and saving money for it is considered wise and conventional wisdom. Savings, retirement. All common sense. Jesus was a flouter of convention. What isn’t common sense is the widow giving her last bit of money to God (this story has a double meaning), or people giving everything to God as Jesus commands and trusting Him. Instead we all have probably tainted our Gospel with capitalistic, prosperity like ideology. For me it’s the “American dream.”
In this story, building a house on rock literally means listening to the commands of Jesus. “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice . . .”. Using this parable to disregard the words of Jesus elsewhere is the opposite of what should be done.
I suppose when Jesus referenced slavery in a parable he was likewise saying that practice is acceptable? Otherwise, by your logic, He wouldn’t have said it. I’m sure that argument has been advanced by many slave owners throughout history.
Rather, maybe he appeals to conventions to flout conventions? We are so wealthy in 1st world countries (running water, 4 walls and electric is more than 99% of what any human has ever had throughout history).
As far as I can see, Luke 12:13-21 supports what I have said and I certainly am not going to let a Proverb trump the clear teaching of Jesus who is the Canon within the canon. Proverbs don’t really work like that, neither do Psalms. I’m not smashing any infants on the rocks and being happy about it.
And even if true, this wouldn’t be the first idea in the OT that Jesus overturned or disregarded. We don’t want to hear Jesus condemning our lifestyles. What we take as common sense and proper. It’s much easier to just let him condemn the Jewish leaders and Pharisees of his time and go about our business. But that is exactly what He did to them and we do not seem to be very different.
Well, yeah. Because we Westerners often misinterpret Eastern hyperbole. Here in the Netherlands we say things like “you should give the full 100%”. The former Arab boss of one of my friends constantly talked about “1000%”. When Afghans yell “death to the vote counters”, they don’t mean the vote counters should really die. They just want to show they are really upset.
I’m not going to encourage teens who struggle with porn to gouge out their eyes à la Matthew 5:29.
38 As he taught, Jesus said, “Watch out for the teachers of the law. They like to walk around in flowing robes and be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, 39 and have the most important seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at banquets. 40 They devour widows’ houses and for a show make lengthy prayers. These men will be punished most severely.” 41 Jesus sat down opposite the place where the offerings were put and watched the crowd putting their money into the temple treasury. Many rich people threw in large amounts. 42 But a poor widow came and put in two very small copper coins, worth only a few cents. 43 Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. 44 They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.”
13:1 As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” 2 “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”
(Mark 12:38 - 13:1)
You can also read it as Jesus being very angry at the establishment convincing this widow to feel obliged to donate the money she actually needs for herself. Context is king.
That is a false analogy.
The logic of the parable is:
Judaean houses were made from mudbrick. So when heavy rain occurred, the house would collapse without a proper foundation.
Just as his listeners would build their houses on a proper foundation, so they should build their spiritual life on a rock (i.e. Jesus’ teachings, as you say).
In the parables that mention slaves, there is no such thing as: “a wise person requires many slaves.” They are just part of the story.
Agreed. But I don’t see what that has to do with this:
He is not planning to climb the corporate ladder, invest more in stocks, and eventually become a millionaire. Jesus also said we shouldn’t judge others too soon.
We know NOTHING about Skovand’s personal situation, what job he does, how much he spends on charity, how much he volunteers for church, to what extent his area is affected by natural disasters, whether he lives in a rural or urban area, et cetera. We don’t have any right to criticise him.
Imagine a farmer from Congo writing that because of the increasing periods of drought, he has to work more to be able to buy extra reservoirs so he has enough water for his fields. What’s wrong with that?
First century Palestine was a far different world than ours. If you wanted to become rich (i.e., above the basic subsistence level), it always was at the cost of others. Just think of Zacchaeus the tax collector. If you acquired a new piece of land, someone else lost it.
I really like how it is described here, they give Jesus advice a modern application:
Surrounded by poverty, crime, and threats of violence, we rightly sense danger everywhere. Working to protect “me and mine” at any cost, even if it includes neglecting or harming others, has become normal, even “virtuous” in popular culture. We’ve got our own problems to deal with, and doing what it takes to generously love each of our neighbors sounds nice but feels unrealistic. So when we hear Jesus say, “Seek first the Kingdom of God,” it sounds idealistic and impractical if not impossible.
But Jesus resists the temptation to depend on violence of any kind to preserve himself. He rejects every selfish way of gaining personal security, and he becomes the clearest example of what it looks like to live in this new way of life.
…
It would be easier to practice loving every neighbor with perfect love in a world where every neighbor loves you back the same way, but it’s difficult (even deadly) to practice that way of life in a hostile world. When danger still exists, fear can compel us more than love. We conform to average patterns of life that value security above all else. Possessions, income, and protections help us feel safe. Often this means we feel entitled to what we have, leading us to compete with our neighbors for resources. But to seek first the Kingdom of God means prioritizing love over survival—something Jesus embodies throughout his life and teaching, especially on the cross.
…
Normal empires and kings tell their citizens that safety and satisfaction result when one has money, stuff, and power over other people. Once we have secured ourselves with these things, then we can serve others.
But Jesus, the King of God’s Kingdom, tells us that safety and satisfaction result when we love God and others as we love ourselves. When Jesus says “all these things will be added to you,” he’s talking about drink, food, and shelter—all symbols of provision, fullness, and life. At first, it sounds like he’s talking about a friendlier way to secure, right now, the goods we value above all else. But notice how Jesus tells the crowds that these things “will be” added to you. He’s not promising that this happens quickly.
…
We’ll stop competing with coworkers. We’ll stop fretting about others’ approval. We’ll stop exhausting ourselves to secure a future we cannot control. The more we practice the ways of Jesus and his Kingdom, the more we enter a kind of freedom that helps us see how we are no longer in danger right now.
As I said, it has a double meaning. The Widow is doing what the establishment should be. They are supposed to be taking care of widows but she is taking care of them, giving everything, while they give much more than her but it’s actually so little per Jesus. It’s as much a celebration of unbridled charity as it is a condemnation of the establishment. The audience would have seen the double meaning. I don’t recall Jesus saying “look how stupid this widow is to give everything to God, now she has nothing for tomorrow.” Context is king and that same condemnation of the leaders applies to us. The widow is the hero of the story, giving it all to God and showing faith when the establishment is failing her. To make it only about the establishment is wrong.
Owning slaves was just as normal a part of reality as building houses on rock vs sand. Jesus appeals to conventional knowledge in both cases and Jesus nowhere condemned it. Also, nowhere in the passage is Jesus teaching us to horde wealth or save money for the future. If you are building a house, build it on rock. Thinking this makes worrying about money tomorrow okay is the false analogy because it flatly contradicts Jesus’s teaching. I get is. Jesus’s teaching were hard. If He came today, I suspect the world would reject Him just the same as back then.
I’m not judging others. I said “we” specifically. I view the financial plank in my own eye worse than I view the financial speck in others. I’m in that boat. I live better than I need to by far. But this is the normal American dream. But my point is this attitude is not Christian. We can worry about our financial future and climate change. I sometimes think about AI replacing teachers in the future and wonder if I’ll even make my pension? I don’t dwell on it though. But should I start saving everything, give less and prepare for that just in case (which is what was suggested), or just live a Godly life today and let tomorrow bring its own troubles?
What Jesus said is very plain and obvious to me. We don’t like it so we do everything we can to get around it. It’s Disney Princess theology. We always see ourselves as the tax collector and not the Pharisee, Israel and not Egypt etc. if only we could realize us modern day Christians are the Biblical experts of today. We are the Establishment.
And I thoroughly enjoyed the quote from the Bible project. Thank you for sharing. this is my favorite part:
Surrounded by poverty, crime, and threats of violence, we rightly sense danger everywhere. Working to protect “me and mine” at any cost, even if it includes neglecting or harming others, has become normal, even “virtuous” in popular culture. We’ve got our own problems to deal with, and doing what it takes to generously love each of our neighbors sounds nice but feels unrealistic. So when we hear Jesus say, “Seek first the Kingdom of God,” it sounds idealistic and impractical if not impossible.
Now add in the capitalism and individualism we all have been indoctrinated with our whole lives. The establishment is just as broken today as it was then and a congenial Jesus is a figment of “Christian” imagination.
Good point. I suppose my geography also influences my interpretation. In my country every house is made from brick. So my cultural assumption is: everyone who builds a house, is of course going to make it from brick.
But I guess the situation in the US may be quite different.
Definitely, sadly.
Got it.
Good point. If you read the Bible and come to the conclusion you live exactly according to its teaching, you are probably reading it wrong.
I was just talking with a friend about the coming “Big One” earthquake here and things turned to considering foundations. There’s a nearby place where a friend died recently that has maybe twenty houses on a bluff above the beach; three are on basalt, the rest are on either rock strata that slope towards the ocean or on an old conglomerate of beach rock & gravel in a brick-like clay matrix. Come the 'quake, those on the sloping strata will be on the beach in under twenty seconds in the wet season since water seeps between some of the layers, in under forty in the dry season, riding the rock into the surf; those on the conglomerate will follow them within a minute as the ground they’re sitting on crumbles and collapses onto the beach (and on top of the first houses to go); while those on basalt have a chance to survive.
But the real disaster will be a mile or so down the coast where there’s a development with sixty or more houses built right on ancient sand dunes (fifty years ago no one would have done that, seeing it as obviously stupid). Regardless of the time of year those houses are likely to just sink as the sand effectively becomes quick-sand, then as they sink they’ll be crushed by the sand pressing in, and finally will end up as jumbles of debris mixed in the sand as it settles into the surf.
Meanwhile in town there are lots of WWII-era houses that aren’t bolted to their foundations, and there’s where we made a connection to the parable: “a wise man bolted his house to concrete”.
Between 250 and 270 A.D. a terrible plague, believed to be measles or smallpox, devastated the Roman Empire. …
[Christians] cared for the victims of the plague, including their pagan neighbours. This wasn’t new—Christians had done the same thing during the Antonine Plague a century earlier. As Rodney Stark wrote in “The Rise of Christianity,” Christians stayed in the afflicted cities when pagan leaders, including physicians, fled. …
Rather than, on the one hand, panic buying loo rolls and pasta, or on the other, unconcerned indifference, we need to be people who ‘run towards the plague’. The present crisis will give us many opportunities to display ‘the abundant provision of grace’ that is ours in Christ. We have a solid hope and good news to tell. Death is deadly, but we are in the life-saving business.
Do you mean they should also help prepare non-Christians, or something else?
Of course I am! I just finished my letter to the church of Amsterdam. I am in need of a new amanuensis, though. Tertius is about to retire. Can’t blaim him, he will be turning 2000 years old next month. So if you would like to apply, please do, Mr. Sampson!
It would be interesting to see how deforestation prior to the Industrial Revolution made an impact. My gut reaction is to say very little due to the fact that there were massive rainforests that weren’t affected, not to mention the fact that a lot of CO2 is turned over by ocean life. However, it would be cool data to see nonetheless.
At the same time, losing those old forests in Europe is a shame. I would have loved to have seen the British Isles before most of the forests were chopped down. Thankfully, the US had the foresight to exercise some restraint so that we wouldn’t lose our forests in the same way, although we will probably never recoup a lot of the old growth forests we once had. The demise (and possible return?) of the American chestnut is also a sad tale, tying into your other comment about invasive species.
We were just recently on the Blue Ridge Parkway in North Carolina, and it was sort of shocking to see how rare old growth forest areas are in that part of the world. We would have had to travel far out of our way to see one, according to Google.
I am sure you are right however as to the impact on CO2, as ultimately an old growth forest is carbon dioxide neutral in a steady state, as the fixing and release of CO2 is equal.
Like @T_aquaticus I love old forests. Very scary to hear in the news the last few days here in Canada, that huge fires in the northern Boreal forest have again broken out. The result of ongoing heat and drought in the north. Several towns in Northern B.C. and Alberta have been evacuated… expect another smokey summer I guess. This seems to be an example of “positive feedback”. Forest fires release more carbon into the atmosphere, accelerating warming, accelerating more fires.