Check out the cover of the new Time Magazine, and read this article.
My question:
Didn't Jesus talk about laying up our treasures in Heaven and not on Earth?
If God wants us to be rich, then why did He have His Son live a life of poverty (ended by an excrutiating death)? Why did every one of the apostles (except for John), live similar lives without material comforts and die as martyrs? Why did wealth and temporal power (De Civitate Homo) not enter the picture until the Roman government embraced Christianity? Even then, monks and holy men lived humble lives.
It's trash like this that makes skeptics believe that Christians and Christianity are stupid. Why is it that the worst so often speak the loudest?
Preachers like Osteen teach a new age religion where the message is to be self-reliant. Osteen and others have forgotten that God is in charge of our lives, not us. While God asks us to be good stewards of our gifts and talents, he said something about camels and needle eyes and how difficult it was for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
ReplyDeleteIt's also a move to market Christianity to the modern audience. I have always hated this, that a religion thinks that it must change with the times. It mustn't, lest it discredit its tenets. If the people move away from the true Church--perhaps they are led by a rebellious and often slightly inebriated German monk who offers princes salvation without humility--then those people will suffer. If the Church abandons the truth, then everyone will suffer.
ReplyDeleteOh, how nice would it be to have a burning bush now! (Watch, that's the comment that will get me on a government watch list. A freakin' homophone!).