Trump's Commerce Secretary Howie Lutnick says you are among the best only if you are rich

 

 

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have rusted, and their rust will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure for the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out; and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in pleasure; you have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned, you have killed the righteous man; he does not resist you.

 -- James 5:1ff.

Even sound money tells lies: "The golden age is back" (for about five minutes)

Western Caesar, AD 286-293

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whatever victories the several pretenders to the empire obtained over one another, they are recorded on coins without the least reflection.

-- Joseph Addison

Promising Renewed Greatness: Slogans from Two Insurgents :

The coins [he issued] include many literary allusions but none more so than in the cryptic … legend that appears on many of the silver coins:  RSR.  This was short for Redeunt Saturnia Regna, ‘The Golden Age is back’, from Virgil’s Fourth Ecologue. 

Loyalty, like grace, shows the nobility of the giver of it more than the nobility of the receiver

Though loyalty, well held, to fools does make

Our faith mere folly; yet he that can endure

To follow with allegiance a fall'n lord,

Does conquer him that did his master conquer.

-- William Shakespeare, Antony and Cleopatra, Act III, Scene XIII

For loyalty is still the same,

Whether it win or lose the game;

True as the dial to the sun,

Although it be not shone upon.

-- Samuel Butler, Hudibras

I have coveted no man's silver, or gold, or apparel. Yea, ye yourselves know, that these hands have ministered unto my necessities, and to them that were with me. I have shewed you all things, how that so labouring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.

-- Acts 20:33ff.

Ralph C. Wood of Baylor tries to enlist St. Paul in his nincompoopery

Here:

It is safe to say that, prior to Descartes, human reason seated itself either in the natural order or else in divine revelation. In the medieval tradition, reason brought these two thought-originating sources into harmony. Thus were mind, soul, and body regarded as having an inseparable relation: they were wondrously intertwined. So also, in this bi-millennial way of construing the world, was the created order seen as having multiple causes—first and final, no less than efficient and material causes. This meant that creation was not a thing that stood over against us, but as the realm in which we participate—living and moving and having our being there, as both ancient Stoics and St. Paul insisted. The physical creation was understood as God’s great book of metaphors and analogies for grasping his will for the world.

So, in the creation we live and move and have our being, huh? Firm grasp of the obvious there Ralph, except that's not at all what Paul said.

The language only vaguely familiar to Wood comes from Paul's Areopagus Speech in The Book of Acts, but Wood has it turned completely around. Paul insists that we live and move and have our being "in him", in the transcendent Creator God, not in creation, whether God's or our own:

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands; . . . For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. Forasmuch then as we are the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man's device. -- Acts 17:24, 28f.

Far from being a great book "for grasping God's will", the world is a woefully deficient book in desperate need of an editor (as is Wood):

For there is no difference between the Jew and the Greek: for the same Lord over all is rich unto all that call upon him. For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? And how shall they preach, except they be sent? as it is written, How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace, and bring glad tidings of good things! -- Romans 10:12ff.

Whatever may be said of Descartes as a dividing line between the modern and the pre-modern, he has nothing on Paul, or Jesus, neither of whom imagined the long future which unfolded and we call Christendom. They were apocalyptic thinkers for whom the end of the world and final judgment were nigh. The separation between us and them is far deeper than anything wrought by Descartes, real or imagined. 

Useful to you in themselves, extras can be traded like cash in the apocalypse

about $.06 per round

about $.65 per roll

silver/copper content worth $3.3149 per coin on 11/8/16

Jesus could little abide, and he and his followers could little afford, the annual Temple Tax

And when they were come to Capernaum, they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute? He saith, Yes. And when he was come into the house, Jesus prevented him, saying, What thinkest thou, Simon? of whom do the kings of the earth take custom or tribute? of their own children, or of strangers? Peter saith unto him, Of strangers. Jesus saith unto him, Then are the children free. Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee.

-- Matthew 17:24ff.

Tyrian Full Shekel, equivalent to 3.43 denarii (3.9 grams silver per), the price of two Jews' Temple Tax

Miracles have declined in proportion to the increase of our wealth

 

 

 An old chestnut related by the dear departed F.F. Bruce in his 1988 commentary on Acts 3.6:

According to Cornelius a Lapide, Thomas Aquinas once called on Pope Innocent II when the latter was counting out a large sum of money.

“You see, Thomas,” said the Pope, “the church can no longer say, ‘Silver and gold have I none.’”

“True, holy father,” was the reply; “neither can she now say, ‘Rise and walk.’”

Stupid statement of the day: "People who live in poverty cannot change the world with the Gospel of Christ"

Raphael's Healing of the Lame Man

For rank ignorance of the early history of the church you can hardly do better than that, and I won't mention who said it but her initials are RS.

Christians basically took over Roman culture from the bottom up through their sustained ministry to the poorest members of society, transforming it so that it eventually became what was called the Holy Roman Empire.

Evidently it is little studied anymore.

A shining early example of changing the world one person at a time without money but with the Gospel of Christ comes from the Acts of the Apostles:

Then Peter said, Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth rise up and walk.

-- Acts 3:6

Thy money perish with thee

Then Simon himself believed also: and when he was baptized, he continued with Philip, and wondered, beholding the miracles and signs which were done. ... And when Simon saw that through laying on of the apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them money, Saying, Give me also this power, that on whomsoever I lay hands, he may receive the Holy Ghost. But Peter said unto him, Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.

-- Acts 8:13, 18ff.

You cannot serve God and mammon

 

 

 The law of thy mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. ... Therefore I love thy commandments above gold, above fine gold.

-- Psalm 119:72, 127

How Come You Are Poor But Your Pastor Is Rich?

Wage Statistics for 2011 from SocialSecurity.gov

Maybe because a fool and his money are soon parted one from the other.

Your average pastor makes enough money before benefits to put him/her/it firmly in the top 10% of net compensation paid in 2011, if the numbers in this story are close to reality:

"How much should we pay our senior pastor? ... Many refer to surveys by the National Association of Church Business Administration and Christianity Today’s Compensation Handbook for Church Staff, both updated regularly. But a Google search on the subject yields endless links — some the results of scientific polls, others a collection of anecdotes. National averages in those surveys range widely — from about $83,000 (not including benefits such as health care insurance and retirement contributions) to about $112,000. But national averages often are less decisive for personnel committees than factors closer to home."

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"For a certain man named Demetrius, a silversmith, which made silver shrines for Diana, brought no small gain unto the craftsmen." -- Acts 19:24

This Jesuit Pope Knows Not Christ

But then again, who does?

"[M]en and women who work are dignified. Instead, those who do not work do not have this dignity."

Quoted here.

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You mean Jesus and The Twelve had no dignity?

Did the Son of Man, who had no place to lay his head, work? Did the disciples, who had left all and followed him, work? Did they leave their nets, their very jobs and their families, or not? Did Jesus ask them to do that, or not? Did Jesus tell the young ruler that what he lacked was to keep working to help the poor, or that he needed to sell everything, give it to the poor, and come follow him? Do men who work have to ask God for their daily bread? Are we to sow not, nor gather into barns, or like the fool build bigger ones to hold all our gain?

Can you say, "I do not possess silver and gold, but what I do have I give to you: In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene—walk!"?

This Pope could have written the First Thessalonian Epistle, but not the Synoptics.

Libertarian John Tamny says humans are capital

 

 

 

 Here, just in time for Holy Week.

Yeah. The life of Jesus was worth just 30 pieces of silver. Maybe 30 of these Tyrian tetradrachms, about 4 months' skilled wages.

Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, "What will you give me if I deliver him to you?" And they paid him thirty pieces of silver. ... When Judas, his betrayer, saw that he was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders, saying, "I have sinned in betraying innocent blood." They said, "What is that to us? See to it yourself." And throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, "It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money." So they took counsel, and bought with them the potter's field, to bury strangers in. Therefore that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, "And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord directed me."

-- Matthew 26: 14f., Matthew 27:3ff.

The Alchemy of 'A'

 

For fools are stubborn in their way,

As coins are harden'd by th' allay.

-- Samuel Butler, Hudibras