21st Century Christianity - A brief manifesto for our age.

[2ndRateMind]

Besides all that, this world system is about to end in a few years and be replaced with a Millennial Kingdom where everyone is a believer, everyone knows the Lord and we will all live in peace and harmony. This present world is so corrupt and on it's way out. You think man can fix it? Nope, not with sin and evil in it. Jesus will rid the planet of sin and evil and unbelievers. That will be His population control; there will be a drastic reduction.

Forgive my scepticism, but people have been prophesying the second coming every few years since the crucifixion. It hasn't, so far as I can make out, happened yet, and in my opinion probably won't, at least until we have resolved our challenges, problems and issues, and rendered God's world a fit place for Him to inhabit. I think, after all He did for us, the guy deserves a holiday, not another massive task to undertake. Meanwhile, just do your best to follow His two Great Commandments, apply the Golden Rule to your utmost ability, and you won't go far wrong.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

[2ndRateMind]

It is shocking in the face of the greatest tyrannies in history - all embrace your ideology - Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia and Communist China resulting in over 100M deaths, there are still those so fully indoctrinated as to passionately support it.

If you think my 'ideology' has anything whatsoever to do with Fascism or Communism, you either haven't read the entire thread, or you have misinterpreted it to fit your own preconceptions and prejudices. Fact is, all the writing I present is an ordinary Christian's reaction to the world he finds around him.

Not that I think Christians are entirely free from fault, either. There is the massacre at Béziers, during the Albigensian crusade, for example:

The Crusaders captured the small village of Servian and then headed for Béziers, arriving on 21 July 1209. Under the command of Amalric, they started to besiege the city, calling on the Catholics within to come out, and demanding that the Cathars surrender. Neither group did as commanded. The city fell the following day when an abortive sortie was pursued back through the open gates. The entire population was slaughtered and the city burned to the ground. It was reported that Amalric, when asked how to distinguish Cathars from Catholics, responded, "Kill them all! God will know his own." Strayer doubts that Amalric actually said this, but maintains that the statement captures the "spirit" of the Crusaders, who killed nearly every man, woman, and child in the town.

There has to be something deeply suspect about a religion that found this kind of brutality acceptable. So, I am neither credulous nor cynical about the faith, just sceptical enough to try to suggest improvements where I think they are necessary. And that is an attitude that suits me.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

[Dropship]

..Not that Christians are entirely free from valid criticism, either. There is the massacre at Béziers, during the Albigensian crusade, for example..

Real Christians don't do that stuff..

 

[Wrangler]

I have already tried to explain that I am not at all motivated by envy, and what does motivate me. (post #98) Interestingly, Marx devotes a considerable time in the beginning of Das Kapital to the plight of the Victorian working poor. It seems pity, not envy, was what really motivated him.

You can claim pity but your blaming the rich is the dead give away of your true covetous motivation, power.

 

[Wrangler]

So, all communism stems from Karl Marx's economic and political analysis in Das Kapital. In it, he uses the labour theory of value, (the LTV), which basically stipulates the value of goods and services to be directly related to the hours of labour it takes to produce them. If this is the case, Marx suggests, the only way you can, as a capitalist owner of the means of production, make a profit, is to pay your proletariat worker less than the value of the goods they produce. He calls this 'exploitation'.

The fact that you are so educated on the Devil's work product is revealing.

The 'exploitation' can easily be overcome by all these mistreated workers forming their own company.

As for the pie, yes, at any given point in time, it is fixed.

Therefore, communism?

At any point in time? There are graphs you can show of human population growth over the last 2K years. And there are graphs of GDP/capita over these time periods. IF your theory had any merit, the trend would not be exponentially up.

I hate to burst this capitalist pipe-dream for you, but the fact is, we live in a finite world with finite resources, and for that reason alone, we cannot have unlimited economic growth indefinately into the future.

Therefore, communism?

So next, I ask out of genuine interest, on what grounds do you decide who deserves how much of the pie?

The very idea that you suppose this is something to be decided by an individual is telling of your communistic bent for control.

In America, the obese are often your urban poor. And they are obese because they eat too much rubbish, processed, junk food, because it's cheap, and do not exercise enough.

LOL You don't see the irony in condemning non-communist America knowing America's problem is obesity at epidemic levels whereas most life forms, including humans, for all of history live on the edge of starvation? You are sweet!

 

[Wrangler]

If you think my 'ideology' has anything whatsoever to do with Fascism or Communism, you either haven't read the entire thread, or you have misinterpreted it to fit your own preconceptions and prejudices. Fact is, all the writing I present is an ordinary Christian's reaction to the world he finds around him.

LOL You haven't read other replies to you. I'm not the only one who notices your anti-Biblical posts.

 

[2ndRateMind]

The very idea that you suppose this is something to be decided by an individual is telling of your communistic bent for control.

Not at all. It's a difficult question, and all I am asking is that you contribute your opinion to the debate here, so we can all discuss it.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

[2ndRateMind]

Therefore, communism?

Absolutely not. There can be no quicker way to destroy an economy than the idea of an equal distribution of wealth. As you have already pointed out, it robs people of any incentive to work hard and to improve themelves and their lot in life. What's worse, such a regime needs to be enforced, and so it robs people of their God given freedom. And that's just the theory. In practice, it's even worse than that because the wealth never is distributed equally, and the leaders always seem to manage to appropriate the bulk of the nations riches.

Nevertheless, there is something stirring in the slogan 'From each according to his ability, to each, according to his need'. If we all lived that out, voluntarily, without need for enforcement but simply because we love each other, we would have made a radical social advance entirely consistent with Jesus' teachings as reported in the Gospels.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

[2ndRateMind]

At any point in time? There are graphs you can show of human population growth over the last 2K years. And there are graphs of GDP/capita over these time periods. IF your theory had any merit, the trend would not be exponentially up.

If you lived on $2 per day, I doubt you would care very much about trends in economist's graphs. I know for sure I wouldn't.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

[Wrangler]

Nevertheless, there is something stirring in the slogan 'From each according to his ability, to each, according to his need'. If we all lived that out, voluntarily, without need for enforcement but simply because we love each other, we would have made a radical social advance entirely compatible with Jesus' teachings as reported in the Gospels.

Friend, you misread the entire Bible and the purpose of Christ ministry. We are not angels by nature but choose evil by default.

This basic misreading of human nature is a death nail in communism. You are holding dear, a fiction.

Charity is not the basis of an economic system.

 

[2ndRateMind]

The fact that you are so educated on the Devil's work product is revealing.

I would hope it reveals no more than a restless, enquiring mind, 2ndRate though it may be, looking for ways to improve the human condition.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

[Wrangler]

If you lived on $2 per day, I doubt you would care very much about trends in economist's graphs. I know for sure I wouldn't.

Best wishes, 2RM.

What an ignorant post! How many dollars per day should one live on?

 

[Wrangler]

I would hope it reveals no more than a restless, enquiring mind, 2ndRate though it may be, looking for ways to improve the human condition.

Best wishes, 2RM.

If you want to improve the human condition, abandon all communist ideas.

 

[2ndRateMind]

You can claim pity but your blaming the rich is the dead give away of your true covetous motivation, power.

So you say. But the world is hierarchical, and the lower cannot appreciate the higher.

As the English philosopher John Stuart Mill put it in his work Utilitarianism (1863):

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question...

And I really don't want power. Or wealth. Or honours. Or fame. Or any such sop to ego. I just want as many as possible to enjoy God's Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. As I do.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

[2ndRateMind]

Real Christians don't do that stuff..

Not any more. But see! Progress is possible! But that doesn't mean we are all perfect yet, and there is no more progress to make.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

[2ndRateMind]

What an ignorant post! How many dollars per day should one live on?

Are you saying, as you seem to be implying, that it's OK that a third of the world's population should live on $2 per day or less, provided the economists have pretty graphs that show rich people are getting exponentially richer? How long do these poor sods have to wait before they get included for a share of all this wealth?

Best wishes, 2RM

 

[2ndRateMind]

If you want to improve the human condition, abandon all communist ideas.

I will accept good ideas from anywhere, whatever their provenance, and reject bad ideas from anywhere, whatever their provenance.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

[2ndRateMind]

LOL You don't see the irony in condemning non-communist America knowing America's problem is obesity at epidemic levels whereas most life forms, including humans, for all of history live on the edge of starvation? You are sweet!

No, I don't see any irony. You identified a real problem. I told you the cause of that problem. Now, if you really care about it, and the people afflicted by it, it's up to you to sort it out. It's your country, after all.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

[Ronald David Bruno]

Thank you for fact checking that for me. You are quite right, my figures were wrong. But it's not all bad news!

Let's take 2022 numbers.

Google now has world GDP at $95 trillion, which is about $12,000 per year per soul on earth.
Credit Suisse now estimates Total World Wealth at $463.6 trillion, or about $58,000 net worth per soul on earth.

Fairly shared, this now allows the conventional nuclear family $48,000 per year income, $232,000 net worth.

So, I shall be reviewing my own financial arrangments, and making the necessary adjustments, and see if I can't increase my net worth, some, and reduce my income, some, probably by giving more of it away.

But, I'm sure you would agree, that even $12,000 per year is a whole lot better than $2 per day, or less.

Best wishes, 2RM.

It won't happen. The Elite world leaders won't give up what they have. You think Bill Gates will? He is an atheist. I suspect Besos and Musk are too. The Rothschild family is worth hundreds of billions if not into the trillions. They live as barons in castles. You think people like King Charles are going to dissolve their wealth, divvy it up and live in a 1300 sq. ft. 3 bedroom home and drive a low-end emission electric vehicle? No, the elites want to get the population down by 90% in order for their Utopian model to work. Still the masses will live equally, but not the elites in charge.
There is a better world coming, the Millennial Kingdom, ruled by Jesus, with only Christians on earth, living in peace and harmony - no predatory animals either. This is our yearning, for a perfect world, that we can't fix. Only Jesus can.

 

[Ronald David Bruno]

True. Apparently we would need 5.1 planet earths to sustain the 8 billion of us at the current US standard of living. We obviously can't do that, then. So, we have to manage our ecological footprint a whole lot better if we are to achieve what I set out in the OP:



And we need to think about how to empower women to manage their fertility, and reduce family sizes. We could start by educating them properly (the higher the level of education, the smaller their families tend to be), making contraception better available, (Roman Catholics, in particular, need to change their doctrine on this) allowing them paid employment (Muslims, in particular, may need to adjust their attitudes towards women outside the home), and just generally, socially, making of the world a more female friendly place.

Best wishes, 2RM.

Man can't fix the world with sin in it.