Rod Dreher's Crunchy Con Christian moms fall for human train wreck Robert F Kennedy Jr's Make America Healthy Again

  

 Anna Gleaton and her husband operate a small homestead on 60 acres outside Gainesville, Texas, a rural town just south of the Oklahoma state line. Their farm, which operates on the principles of regenerative agriculture, includes pigs, goats and a dairy cow, which Ms. Gleaton described as “an adventure.” Another adventure: home-schooling their nine children, ages 2 to 16.

Ms. Gleaton, 36, describes herself as a conservative Christian, and she voted for Donald Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024. This time, she had not been optimistic that he would focus on issues that most concern her, including contaminated soil and waterways, factory-farmed meat and the lobbying by agricultural corporations.

But Ms. Gleaton now gets goose bumps when she looks ahead, largely because Mr. Trump has nominated Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Kennedy faces Senate confirmation hearings on Wednesday and Thursday.

“It’s not very often that my world, my realm, is mainstream,” she said.

Ms. Gleaton is part of a growing crowd who question not only educational institutions for what they see as liberal orthodoxy, but also “Big Ag” and “Big Pharma” — leanings coded as progressive not long ago.

In that sense, Mr. Kennedy has been speaking her language for years. He has criticized ultraprocessed foods, warned about the dangers of specific food additives and questioned the safety of fluoride in the water supply. ...

But among home-schooling mothers like Ms. Gleaton, Mr. Kennedy has long been seen as a bold truth-teller, one who understands their skepticism about the education and health establishments, including traditional vaccine regimens. And his rising profile comes as this particular constituency is also coming into its own politically and culturally.

More.

 

Rod Dreher is quoted at the end of the story.

 

The ignorance of these people about this devil must be willful, pretending not to see.

Theories about Kennedy’s reckless behaviors abound. Long before it was reported, members of the family knew about the brain worm, which in court testimonies Kennedy conjectured he’d picked up from food he ate in South Asia. He said the tapeworm consumed a portion of his brain and led to protracted “brain fog.” But more often his family points to Kennedy’s 14 years as a heroin user, which began when Kennedy was 15 and didn’t end until he was 29. 

 

More.

I'm so old I remember when the pope excommunicated Martin Luther for doing this very thing Pope Francis recommends American Catholics do in this election

 

“Not voting is ugly,” the 87-year-old pontiff said. “It is not good. You must vote.”

“You must choose the lesser evil,” he said. “Who is the lesser evil? That lady, or that gentleman? I don’t know."

"Everyone, in conscience, (has to) think and do this.”       

-- Pope Francis, quoted here

 

Since your most serene majesty and your highnesses require of me a simple, clear, and direct answer, I will give one, and it is this: I cannot submit my faith either to the pope or to the council, because it is clear that they have fallen into error and even into inconsistency with themselves. If, then, I am not convinced by proof from Holy Scripture, or by cogent reasons, if I am not satisfied by the very text I have cited, and if my judgment is not in this way brought into subjection to God's word, I neither can nor will retract anything; for it cannot be either safe or honest for a Christian to speak against his conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me. Amen.

-- Martin Luther, quoted here 

 

Catholic biblical scholar just coincidentally concludes that the history of hell pretty much confirms the Roman Catholic dogma of purgatory

 Candida Moss, here for the Jesuits, thinks that the biblical hell begins as a relatively late product of Greek influence from the time of Alexander the Great, and that in keeping with later Catholic reflection is a temporary place of punishment and purgation, not of eternal damnation.

Evidently Hitler does go to heaven, but he will be the very last one out of hell, on that you may rely.

Her essay does a better job of explaining how the later Catholic idea of purgatory reflects the actual awful material conditions of Roman penal and slave experience in late antiquity than it does of explaining the gospels' language. In the end the pope's hope that hell one day will be empty is "surely right", according to Moss.

In the middle of those Greek and Roman historical bookends, however, lies the New Testament language about hell. And it is just weird how Moss is so perfunctorily dismissive of that language. She hardly treats of it at all. For her it is simply "obscure" because it is usually parabolic or "evasively symbolic", a point of view which is oddly reminiscent of long-standing Protestant dismissiveness of "the hard sayings of Jesus". The Protestants find the hard sayings problematic in the main because they contradict the universal gospel to the Gentiles. In this case, a Catholic finds them problematic because they contradict the universalism implied by purgatory. For neither could it be possible that those sayings reflect an actual historical message, being so stern and radical as to be unthinkable. They must be an anomaly: "eschatology straight up, without the diluting effects of divine mercy and forgiveness."

Just so.

Candida Moss stumbles over the Albert Schweitzer hard truth. The ameliorating of the hard sayings was the anomaly. The hard sayings did not arise from Lake Placid. Lectio difficilior potior, interpretatio item.

Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it.  

-- Matthew 7:14

For Moss the gospels are contradictory and run "hot and cold" on hell. The gospels give us only a "faint sense" of hell at best. After all there was a time when hell was not in the Bible, before the Greeks, and it shouldn't surprise us that the parables of Jesus really don't describe any "actual eternal punishment" dontcha know. It's a foreign idea, whose time came and went.

Oh dear.

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire: Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

-- Mark 9:43ff. 

Moss would like us to think, simply ignoring this passage, not only that there is no eternal fire according to Jesus, but that all such worm talk actually came from a later period, from the horrible fact of the parasites in human shit found everywhere and on everything in ancient prison cells, the literal analogues of an imaginary storied hell as in Dante, rather than from the actual message of Jesus about the eternal decay of death in the grave. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, they do a dance upon your snout. This is . . . completely unconvincing.

That last point needs to be emphasized. The eternal decay of death in the grave flies in the face of Jesus' supposed belief in and preaching of resurrection of the body. The eternal grave which confronts us here is an offense to that.

But there it is. Eternal fire. Eternal worm. Straight up.

Cave art all over the world shows digits may have been ritually removed, rendering Christian gospel accounts calling for self-mutilation less exceptional

In a paper presented at a recent meeting of the European Society for Human Evolution, researchers point to 25,000-year-old paintings in France and Spain that depict silhouettes of hands. On more than 200 of these prints, the hands lack at least one digit. In some cases, only a single upper segment is missing; in others, several fingers are gone. ... Four sites in Africa, three in Australia, nine in North America, five in south Asia and one in south-east Asia contain evidence of finger amputation. “This form of self-mutilation has been practised by groups from all inhabited continents,” said Collard. “More to the point, it is still carried out today, as we can see in the behaviour of people like the Dani.”

More. 

 

The Christian gospel accounts have been dismissed perennially as mere hyperbole:

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. And if thy right hand offend thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not that thy whole body should be cast into hell. 

-- Matthew 5:29f.

Wherefore if thy hand or thy foot offend thee, cut them off, and cast them from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life halt or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet to be cast into everlasting fire. And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: it is better for thee to enter into life with one eye, rather than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire.

-- Matthew 18:8f.

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:

Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:

Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:

Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

-- Mark 9:43ff.

 

This older tradition is remembered in stark contrast to the miracle working Jesus of resurrection imagination who is wont to undo some of these extreme expressions of repentance:

The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. 

-- Matthew 11:5

And great multitudes came unto him, having with them those that were lame, blind, dumb, maimed, and many others, and cast them down at Jesus' feet; and he healed them:  Insomuch that the multitude wondered, when they saw the dumb to speak, the maimed to be whole, the lame to walk, and the blind to see: and they glorified the God of Israel. 

-- Matthew 15:30f. 

And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them. 

-- Matthew 21:14 

And in that same hour he cured many of their infirmities and plagues, and of evil spirits; and unto many that were blind he gave sight. Then Jesus answering said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached.

-- Luke 7:21f.

Man is a very worm

Darwin mocked for saying much the same thing

 

 

 

 Man is a very worm by birth,

Vile reptile, weak and vain!

A while he crawls upon the earth,

Then shrinks to earth again.

-- Alexander Pope

How much less man, that is a worm (σαπρια)? and the son of man, which is a worm (σκωληξ)? -- Job 25:6

But I am a worm (σκωληξ), and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. -- Psalm 22:6

Fear not, thou worm (ολιγοστος) Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the LORD, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel. -- Isaiah 41:14

Jewish cooking authority opens the can of worms known as cultural appropriation, aka theft

And she does it with such chutzpah, too.

Leah Koenig, here, not only justifies the appropriation as "borrowing" by implying that what was stolen didn't really belong to its owners in the first place, in the sense of exclusive ownership, but she also connects that with the essence of Jewish culture itself:

The relatively young, politically supercharged country is often accused of cultural and culinary appropriation of Arabic cuisine. Of course, Israel is filled with remarkable cultural diversity, including Arab communities living within the country, and Jews hailing from Arab countries who arguably have their own longstanding relationships with Levantine cooking. The problem comes back to those making claims of exclusivity. Yes, falafel, hummus, and the like are “Israeli” because these dishes are fundamental to the people who live there. But by no means are they Israel’s alone. ... 

Ultimately, borrowing is at the heart of all Jewish cuisine—and Jewish home cooks have historically played the role of adapters and transmitters of recipes, rather than innovators. But this is something to celebrate, not apologize for. 

 

 

Oy vey, as if we needed another reminder that stealing from the non-Jew is built-in to the religion and race from the beginning.

 

Didn't Luther make the point well enough in On the Jews and Their Lies?

Being chosen has its advantages:

Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of any thing that is lent upon usury: Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury; but unto thy brother thou shalt not lend upon usury: that the LORD thy God may bless thee in all that thou settest thine hand to in the land whither thou goest to possess it. 

 

-- Deuteronomy 23:19f.

Pope Francis call your office, Jesus believed in eternal punishment

And if thy hand offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter into life maimed, than having two hands to go into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:

Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

And if thy foot offend thee, cut it off: it is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:

Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

And if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out: it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire:

Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.

-- Mark 9:43ff.

The absence of "church", "saints" and "early catholicism"

You will search in vain for church and saints [ἐκκλησία and ἁγίων] in the gospels, save for Matthew 16:18, Matthew 18:17 and Matthew 27:52 (and what "saints" meant in the latter isn't exactly the same idea which we find after the gospels, but let's not open that can of worms right now).

The gospels dubiously tell us Jesus predicted his future death and resurrection on the third day, but the future church and its many members? not so much, which only underscores the dubiosity of the third-day rising predictions. (For fun, I resurrect the word "dubiosity", which had fallen into disuse already by the time of Samuel Johnson).

You would think that a guy who knew he was going to rise from the dead and found a church would have said much more about it. After all, predicting the future church is small potatoes compared with predicting your own crucifixion and resurrection on the third day. Jesus' imagination was clearly focused on something less pedestrian than the now interminable church age and the salvation of its billions of goyim.

And you would also think the church would have made him talk much more about it.

Talk of the "church" only in a little corner of Matthew is probably "early catholicism" at work, or at least something like it. It looks suspiciously similar to the insertion of the third-day-rising predictions themselves. It too is propaganda, but on a much smaller scale.

This tells us something very important.

The absence of "church" from the gospel tradition, even from John, testifies to, if not the sway of a smoldering conception of the eschatological future imagined by Jesus, at least to the enduring cognitive dissonance the memory of that still produced. The problem still being wrestled with in the gospels is the death of Jesus and the failure of the end of the world to materialize, not something else. This dissonance probably had everything to do with the production of the written gospels in the first place. The emphasis on, and the similarity of, the passion narratives in the gospels both make that plain.

The absence of "church" as a category, however, points to an earlier stage in this process of self-reflection than we find in the epistles. We are not yet at the later self-referential stage of the church found in Paul and elsewhere in the New Testament after the gospels where "church" and "saints" are most definitely used as routine categories. This means the material in the gospels, if not the gospels themselves, dates much earlier than is generally appreciated. The absence of "church" in the gospels is thus similar in significance for their dating to the gospels' failure to mention the destruction of the Jewish temple. Together they point to a date for the gospels before 70, perhaps well before.

It is difficult to believe that when the rest of the New Testament after the Fourth Gospel is loaded with uses of "church" and "saints" that the gospels could possibly come from that era.

The hypothesis of an intrusion of "early catholicism" has not been without its problems, however, for example for the composition of Luke-Acts. It is almost inconceivable that the repeated use of "church" in Acts, for example, comes from the very same hand as gave us the Gospel of Luke, or at least that Acts comes from the same time period of composition as the gospel, a point which perhaps speaks against the two-volume history hypothesis of Luke-Acts. But it is more inconceivable that on the original conception in New Testament scholarship of "early catholicism" at work all over the place in Luke's Gospel that it could be an exponent of that without once mentioning the church. To make matters worse for the theory as originally conceived, the third gospel's unique witness to some of Jesus' most pointed eschatological assertions hardly fits the relatively more mundane future ecclesiastical setting from which it is supposed to have sprung.

What this means is that as a phenomenon "early catholicism" remains a useful hypothetical category whose content has to be rethought and scaled back. The gospels' solution to the eschatological dilemma which occasioned their composition in the first place supplies that content. Early catholicism is thus at the same time a lot earlier than originally conceived and dedicated to a different object.

It seems best to view the gospels as earlier than 70, at least in spirit, and as attempts to rewrite the narrative of the failed eschatological message of Jesus.

Martin Luther wanted to drain the Vatican swamp, using as his Twitter his German translation of the Bible and the Pamphlet

Peter Stanford, here:

The 95 theses – and much of what Luther subsequently said in public as his message spread across the continent, right up to his excommunication in 1521 – were the work of a classic disrupter who, in today’s terms, wanted to drain the “Vatican swamp”.

Fluent in the language of the street, the undeniably charismatic Luther wrote most of his best-known and most inflammatory texts not in church Latin but in German, going on to produce in 1522 the first translation of the New Testament into everyday German, and in 1534 a translation of the whole Bible.

Those in the pews no longer had to rely on the word of priests and bishops instead of the word of God. He realised the force of appealing over the head of “experts” long before Michael Gove hit upon it in the Brexit push.

And in working with the owners of newfangled printing presses, he was among the first to spot the potential of what was the social media of its day as an alternative means of spreading his new anti-establishment gospel. Pamphlets of edited versions of his tracts spread like ripples through Germany, then Europe, Rome and even England. In an age of widespread illiteracy, he made sure he engaged those who could not read by including illustrations, using crude, often satirical woodcuts from the studio of his close friend and fellow Wittenberger, Lucas Cranach the Elder.

So when he stood before the Holy Roman Emperor and the princes and prelates of Germany at the Diet of Worms in 1521, defending his writings on pain of death, Luther had crowds outside on the streets rallying to his defence, stirred up by leaflets and posters saturating the town.

Much as they wanted to be rid of “this petty monk”, as pope Adrian VI labelled him, the establishment could not hand him over to his fate for fear of igniting an uprising. So Luther, unlike those earlier would-be reformers, lived to put his theories into practice.

Fearfully and wonderfully made, or just a lowly worm?

  

 

 

I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.

 

 -- Psalm 139:14

Fear not, thou worm Jacob, and ye men of Israel; I will help thee, saith the LORD, and thy redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.

 

 -- Isaiah 41:14

Rush Limbaugh Opens A Can Of Worms, Accidentally Discovers American Catholics Are Cheapskates

Looks like Pope Francis' American Catholics are a bigger bunch of cheapskates than even Rush Limbaugh imagines, which would better explain the Pope's recent anti-capitalist remarks than some new turn in the direction of Marxism:

Here Rush Limbaugh paints the figure broadly and still comes up with a pretty small sum:

Let me give you some numbers here.  The citizens of the United States of America in 2012 donated a total of $316 billion to charity.  Catholic Charities USA distributed $4.7 billion.  $316 billion donated to charity by the American people.  Catholic Charities USA distributed $4.7 billion.  The point is -- that's not to denigrate the church -- that is to illustrate as the Reason.com writer said, the pope's big cause is charity.  Without capitalism, there wouldn't be any.  Without capitalism, the Catholic Church wouldn't have any money to donate to anybody.  Without capitalism, there wouldn't be enough people with enough money to give it to the Catholic Church in the form of donations itself. 

But The New York Times, here, claims $2.9 billion of $4.67 billion came from US taxpayers in 2010, and only 3% from churches (just $140 million!):

Catholic Charities is one of the nation’s most extensive social service networks, serving more than 10 million poor adults and children of many faiths across the country. It is made up of local affiliates that answer to local bishops and dioceses, but much of its revenue comes from the government. Catholic Charities affiliates received a total of nearly $2.9 billion a year from the government in 2010, about 62 percent of its annual revenue of $4.67 billion. Only 3 percent came from churches in the diocese (the rest came from in-kind contributions, investments, program fees and community donations).

Jesus Believed Hell's Worm Does Not End, Its Fire Does Not Go Out

In Mark 9 there's a fire asbestos

Not fleeting, as if just to test us:

Where the worm is eternal

And the flame, unquenchable.

Repeated three times! Imbecillus!

 

-- Johnny 

The Eternal Flame

In Mark there's a fire asbestos

Not fleeting, as if just to test us:

Where their worm is eternal

And their flame, unquenchable.

Repeated three times! Imbecillus!

 

-- Johnny 

Number One Stupid Thing I Heard in Church in 2010

Well, the year isn't over, but I don't think there's much chance that what I heard on Christmas Eve will be bested for its completely uncritical superimposition of contemporary preoccupations on an ancient, remote culture by any other thing I might yet hear before January 1:

The patriarch Jacob "was alone, a fugitive, and a disgrace to all. He himself felt like a failure. ... a poor, helpless, and forsaken man." The prophets might have gone so far as to liken Jacob to a worm, but Genesis does not.

This is the introspective conscience of the West at work on the text, the self-doubt which has nearly reached its apogee in Europe and America and explains its decline. It deliberately glosses over the evidence about Jacob, who consistently to the end strives with the God of Abraham and Isaac, acquires a large family and great wealth, and throughout retains the promise and blessing of God, who in fact frequently deigns to visit and contend with him.

Pretty good for an aplastic man on whom people could not quite get a handle, unlike his brother who had made his mark on the world but of whom none of these things would be said. Jacob's virtue was that he was clay in the potter's hand. The latter may be in control, but the clay has properties of its own.  Of Esau, well, let's just say he set up early. His passion had led him elsewhere.

At Christ Church, Presbyterian Church in America, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Different Strokes for Different Folks

It is common among the Lutherans to insist on letting Scripture interpret Scripture. This is all well and good until you find out this means that Paul gets to interpret Mark, for example, despite the fact that it is easily argued that Paul had no knowledge of the teaching of Jesus as found in the Gospels.

The principle doesn't mean that a text should be allowed to speak for itself. Instead, the principle presupposes the notion of the unity of the Bible, which simply insulates its books within a cocoon of canonicity, impenetrable by anything from without and the individual books within incapable of disagreeing with each other, the latter being what troubled Luther about James.

Sunday's sermon in a Lutheran church was based on the story from Mark 10 about the godly rich man who asked Jesus what he yet needed to do to inherit eternal life. It pointedly illustrated the special pleading so characteristic of the Lutheran manner of interpreting the Bible. The preacher actually wanted us to believe that Jesus did not give the rich man a straight answer at all, even though Jesus said in all candor that the rich man needed to "sell whatsoever thou hast and give to the poor . . . and come, take up the cross (a theological embellishment absent from Matthew and Luke), and follow me." No, a deeper theological (!) point was being made by Jesus, we were told, to the effect that we cannot save ourselves by our own actions. Only God can save. So Jesus demanded an "impossible" thing of the man to underscore that point.

In other words, Mark is not allowed to speak for himself. Ephesians must be imported to interpret the text: "for by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast." Indeed, almost every line of Scripture must be brought under the sway of Paulinism as understood by Lutherans.

The problem with this line of thinking is that the text of Mark shows that the disciples themselves had successfully obeyed the difficult call to discipleship given to them and "said goodbye to everything that they owned" (Luke 14:33). The Synoptic accounts are all in agreement on this, and indicate that Jesus recognized their obedience and promised them rewards "in this present time, and in the world to come life everlasting" as a consequence. That is the simple meaning of the text, however much one would rather it sounded like St. Paul.

It is true that the disciples were surprised by the severity of the demands Jesus placed on the rich man. No doubt they compared their experiences and concluded "no one could be saved" if such extreme conditions were required as the cost of discipleship, conditions with which they themselves had not yet had to comply. Obviously we are confronted here with varying costs of discipleship, the simple meaning of the text. The disciples had not sold everything and given away the proceeds to the poor. They obviously had nothing to sell. All they had were menial jobs to walk away from, and wives and children, and the humble dwellings where their poor families remained behind. The rich man doubtless had all these things as well, but much more in great abundance, and money in the bank.

So how can two levels of cost be justified? How can that be fair? Have not all "sinned and fallen short of the glory of God?" Is it not the case that "there is none righteous, no not one?"

The Synoptics are unanimous in reporting the sycophantic ruse of Jesus' opponents who came to him saying "we know that thou art true, and carest for no man: for thou regardest not the person of men" (Mark 12:44; Matthew 22:16). Indeed, they must have heard that Jesus was as likely to criticize the upstanding figures of the day as a "brood of vipers" as he was his own followers as "ye of little faith." If Jesus' invectives against scribes, pharisees, the rich and the powerful, and hypocrites in general cause one to think he simply favored the poor, the meek, the downtrodden and such like, that is a mistake. He addresses his willing hearers as "you who are evil." He is routinely found employing the language of reversal and rebuke: the first shall be last and the last first, the truly great must be the servant of all, Satan is as quickly personified in the person of Peter as the voice of the heavenly Father, etc. No, Jesus is at pains to level the playing field, as it were.

If we were to let Mark and the other Gospels speak for themselves, a different answer comes to hand for the question of the cost of discipleship: "Every one to whom much is given, of him will much be required." Because human beings are not equal in their earthly condition, they must become so when they answer the call to discipleship. All people, rich and poor alike, must unite in the abolition of the antonyms which divide them. They must repent and see themselves as God sees them, as the mere ants we appear to be from thirty thousand feet. The spirit at work in Jesus is the same spirit at work in Isaiah, who called Jacob, the Israel of God, a "worm."

From the richest ruler with great possessions to the poorest widow with only two mites, all must say goodbye to the old world with its old distinctions, honors, achievements and rewards, and yes its shames, calumnies, failures and injustices, and follow as equals into the kingdom of God. Those who have little to leave behind must leave it as surely as the rich must leave behind plenty. It is only from the human point of view that the one leaves little and the other more. From God's perspective, it is the renunciation of whatever one is which shows the true repentance. "Whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it."

There can be no question of renouncing someone else's life, someone else's experience, only of what falls within one's own sphere. Wealth is a snare, however, more likely to weigh down the would be follower, too cumbersome for the demands of the narrow way that leads to life. It is not surprising that a preacher in a wealthy American town in 2009 should do whatever he can to explain away the severity of Jesus' demands on the rich.

 

But it is still sad.