ageofknowledge wrote:
No GMAN you really don't want to be me. Go to bed each night and thank God you aren't me. And do it sincerely.
I'm sorry for you, but I've got my own demons to fight too.. I'm partly crippled myself, I blew out my back 12 years ago, doctors told me that they won't operate on it which leaves me here partly confined to the house. On top of that I've lost both parents, rather young. I'm faced to live life completely on my own, living alone, I have absolutely no family support here in California. If I get sick, I'm toast.. Last year, I almost had to call a cab to get home from the hospital.
I understand. Really I do. Sometimes I dream there's a community somewhere that people like you and I can live on where everyone has a job to do according to their ability and everyone's basic needs are met. But a real Christian community like they used to have in America a long time ago.
ageofknowledge wrote:I understand. Really I do. Sometimes I dream there's a community somewhere that people like you and I can live on where everyone has a job to do according to their ability and everyone's basic needs are met. But a real Christian community like they used to have in America a long time ago.
Unfortunately, you can't yet tell your state's secretary to switch you over to them as they aren't registered in any state yet. Not enough members.
Amen to this... I think most people forget that when Christianity is fully practiced, it truly is socialist in that respect. That is giving to the poor, (distribution of wealth), morals and ethics and the likes.. All perfectly wrapped up in a beautiful package.
But no, we can't have that.. For some reason God is not wanted in this society. Why I have no clue but I think it has something to do with pride, unable to confess that sin is in us. God forbid we confess that we have sin in our lives. That I believe is our problem, instead of becoming a nation of prestige, we have become a nation of pansies. 2 year olds mind you..
The heart cannot rejoice in what the mind rejects as false - Galileo
We learn from history that we do not learn from history - Georg Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel
Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable, if anything is excellent or praiseworthy, think about such things. -Philippians 4:8
Christian community is and can be a real thing. It is something we should work toward in our own churches. Economic ruin may force us there as well.
There are some Christian Communities that are rather wacky, controlling, and isolationist so these avoid. What I try to do, is to let people in Churches realize we are a family of believers in Christ. We all have problems and from these we grow through these together. Co-dependent needs need to be broken.
It is easier to give to the local Soup Kitchen to feed the poor; However, Christians need to learn that their fellow members have needs too. A Local Christian fellowship (Community) can discern the need and act together as the Lord leads.
In America, we are too isolated as Believers in our own local assemblies' play'n Church instead of living it. We have been burned too much and hurt and thus too cautious and untrusting. There is a reason for the Local Church. I wonder if there isn't a way to find a Christian Community near you that you could look into?
Also Christian Communities are not political socialist… but socialist in the familial sense of belonging to one another because we belong to Christ …That is the difference…
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Science is man's invention - creation is God's
(by B. W. Melvin)
Old Polish Proverb:
Not my Circus....not my monkeys
You make some great points B.W.. Modern society has unique challenges that range from store front churches and televangelists that use a fake prosperity gospel to fleece millions to a modern transitional society where people move so much it's hard to have much accountability in urban mega church settings amongst members.
In 1900 more than half — 54 percent — of Americans lived in places where the population was less than 1,000. Another ten percent lived in towns of one to four thousand people and only 36 percent in urbanized areas of five thousand or more. Even in the great age of industrial capitalism, nearly two of every three Americans spent most of their days in towns and villages or on farms with fewer than five thousand residents.
What is striking is the small size of the modal American residence and how sharply this differs from our own time. There were large urban centers, of course, but consider that as recently as 1950, 15 percent of Americans lived on farms.
There was great accountability in those days compared to today and it was at the local level.. family, neighbors, community. You didn't just take money from people and not pay it back. Not twice anyways. Word got around fast. You weren't so fast to blow someone off either. That someone was somebody you grew up with. Their parents knew your parents and so on and so forth.
Today.. everyone sings their songs in the megachapel singing of God's great love (for themselves) and evangelizing the world (something they only do through words if they do at all as a rule), and then leaves the church smiling past their sick needy broken brother-in-Christ on their way out to dinner and wine. Nobody cares. It's just feelings and words. There's nothing more to their spirituality. I think they are deceived.
Anyways, I sure didn't do that. I purposefully sought out ministry when I was on top before things went so bad for me. I rolled up my sleeves and talked corporations into donating their old computers and built out education centers and installed them in inner city missions and worked with gang members at Victory Outreach to get their high school diplomas and worked with friends younger brothers (really their responsibility which they wouldn't take on) to disciple them. Man.. I'm sickened by this sing and smile Christianity on their way out to party I see today.
A lot of it really is tied to such a transitional materialistic immature selfish capitalistic society in my view.
Why is it that so many people are quick to judge capitalism as evil and political socialism as pure and nobly good?
One must never forget we are all sinners. Therefore, political socialism is just as evil as capitalism.
How — because a small group of major corporations make a 'company store' monopoly out of an entire country. You only can tote the party line and take what they give and sell and when.
Political socialism always leads to tyranny. Christian people forget that people are enslaved to their sin nature run the system of political socialism. Such political socialist become the greedy capitalist without the means of capitalism to self correct such abuses of power.
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Science is man's invention - creation is God's
(by B. W. Melvin)
Old Polish Proverb:
Not my Circus....not my monkeys
It's really about how you structure it. For example, having a ruling elite in charge of dispertion results in totalitarianism eventually (exactly what we saw under 20th century communism) especially when tied to state atheism. No one is advocating that I hope.
What we are advocating is changing what we are doing to get better results. Consider changing the rules so that free enterprise has some accountability tied to it to benefit the country's citizens, government, and the long term interests of American companies. We already have examples of this such as anti-trust legislation which prevents oligarchy from simply taking over. An example of a change we need to make is to tie free enterprise more closely to labor. For example, legislating that for profit organizations must issue a material amount of minority stock to their workers much like an ESOP does though with the important distinction that they also continue to compete for external shareholders who invest in them and do away with unions in these cases.
The trainwreck of union versus management (who must by law seek only to maximize the profit of external shareholders) which resulted in companies breaking their contract with the American worker and quite literally disconnecting from American labor becoming transnational companies trolling the world for the cheapest labor and lowest operating costs would have been averted. In fact if we implemented that situation today while simultaneously cutting out some of the unnecessary regulation and tort, we would begin to see real profit and material domestic growth return to American along with the innovation and manufacturing we lost. Bottom line: healing would begin.
This is but one of many examples I'm talking about in response to your last post.
Regarding the subject Gman and I have been discussing, since our society is so transitional and mobile and people simply won't take care of their own anymore; we believe they/we can't be left by the side of the road. It would be ungodly and immoral to leave it there. So we are for some socialism to ensure this doesn't happen. National health care qualifies.
The "banker's solution" we implemented with the bailout stopped a complete meltdown from occurring and a few big companies have been able to take advantage of competitor's demise (e.g. shrinking competition as companies go out of business). Ford just posted their first profit in four years, for example. But by itself it is no solution for an American economic recovery. To do that you have to innovate, secure and maintain ownership of innovation, secure and maintain manufacturing and distribution using domestic labor and do so in a socio-political business environment that ensures profit is realized. Taxes and regulations that materially impact businesses have to be necessary and reasonable. Neither too great nor too little. That's not the direction we're headed in unfortunately. We've decided to ignore all of that and simply implement a banker's solution taxing everyone that profits from the banker's solution. A strategy that won't bring long term economic prosperity back. Innovation and manufacturing will occur progressively more and more outside of the United States from now on rather than inside it as we have been accustomed to in our lifetimes. Sure there will be upward spikes, trumpted by the media who will misrepresent what is happening just as they misrepresented what was happening all the way up to the day of the meltdown, but they will be followed by declines that gradually grade downwards... as they must given the situation.
Currently, despite some companies profiting from the bailouts and thinning of competition, things continue to get worse for the American people, jobs are still being lost. They aren't being lost as fast as they were but they are still being lost. We realize a net loss of jobs despite a growing population every quarter. It's getting so bad that: "Half of US Kids Will Get Food Stamps, Study Says" http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory?id=8977934
I wish I wasn't some poor unemployed nobody. I spent 25 years at university at night getting straight As across a wide variety of discplines. I read out several school and public libraries over the years as well. No kidding. I would love to write a white paper outlining an economic recovery for America and use that as the anchor for a book outlining a way forward for America but with a much bigger scope beyond just economics and then use that as a platform to run for public office. But it's just way too much work for one person to do all by themselves with a zero budget out of a garage. So these insights will go to waste beyond just posting and talking about them.
Thanks for that article. I haven't been keeping up with this at all since I don't feel that anything I do would have an impact either way. But this is depressing - that whatever they do decide to do, won't even come into affect for three years or more; and that so many will still be left uninsured. What did the Netherlands do again? So . . . why can't we do that??
"I believe in Christianity as I believe the sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else." C.S. Lewis
They have an extremely profitable economy (16 1/2 million people managed to post the 16th largest economy in the world) with very low unemployment (e.g. 3-4%) with almost no illegal immigration being very homogeneous. We would have to clean up our act and get back on track to scale their model to our 300 million disparate population in a severe recession with a huge illegal immigration problem.
That said, tens of millions of us desperately need quality medical care instead of deforming without it and then when we are almost done throwing us onto medi-cal the worst medical care in existence and washing their hands of us after exploiting our labor for decades.
I see the Republicans as having successfully prevented the real reform we need. So this is going to be a step toward what we need. We'll have to fight the issue again to get it. Millions will suffer and die in the meantime but it is a fight we have to continue. First round was under the Clintons, second round under Obama, and third round will be under? I can tell you this, we are making progress at least. This thing the Republicans fought to morph into what we see about to go through the senate is overly complicated because of their resistance and special interests. I'm researching it to understand it fully.
