From the quotes you have posted though I'm not seeing that. From the story it sounds like Ananias was punished for making a voluntary choice to keep some of his money for himself. I have a hard time seeing that as an act of love and generosity but rather forced charity.
"For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales 35and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need."- This was the practice of love. Many people who had lands or houses sold them to help those in need. "2With his wife's full knowledge he kept back part of the money for himself, but brought the rest and put it at the apostles' feet." This was the conspiracy, they lied about the amount the land was sold for to appear they were doing what the others had done. "8Peter asked her, "Tell me, is this the price you and Ananias got for the land?" "Yes," she said, "that is the price." 9Peter said to her, "How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? " They died for lying. Point- it is love that motivates a Christian to help others not laws. They were not forced to give at all, and they lied about how much they were giving. It is not loving to be forced to do anything. Even if it is a good thing. And love must be expressed freely without control for it to be real love. When I pay my taxes I do it to obey the law not because I love the government. I give money to the government because they have the force of law for me to do it. I give money to people with needs because I love them. I give far more to help people than I pay in taxes. But I don't really care about taxes, some of the money pays for wars and some of it goes for food stamps for people in our church... I try not to think about it. I try to stay focused on helping people.
So if they hadn't given in the first place they would've been spared? I have a hard time buying that killing someone for only donating part of what he claimed to is an act of a loving God.
I thought the same thing too, but it's likely they broadcasted to everyone else that they donated all of their wealth. So it was also a matter of raising their own prestige and "face" through their lies, which negated the original intent of donating. From a pragmatic viewpoint, donating for the poor regardless of intent is a neutral/good act. One of Jesus's gripes against the Pharisees was their pragmatism to the law while not keeping with the spirit of following the law. It made them hypocrites and ultimately kept them away from God. So the lesson, imo, is if you can't do an act with your heart and be honest with it, then it might be better not to do it at all.
No, if they had not lied they would have been spared. It wasn't the giving it was the dishonesty. It had nothing to do with donating only part of the money.
rhester is right...the punishment, as it were, wasn't for holding something back...it was for lying. Lying to God..and the Church.
To be clear, I have no problem with government helping people or anyone helping someone. That people are helped at all is awesome. I personally don't think of the government when I am aware of any need, I feel personally responsible. I think capitalism and socialism and many other ism's are practically political or governmental systems. The economics of loving your neighbor cannot be legislated or institutionalized.
I understand lying is for what they were punished for but consider that they were lying about how much money they were giving to charity. To me that would be like PBS killing me for not fulfilling my pledge. I find that hard to reconcile as the act of a loving God that not donating what you said you were is worse than not donating anything at all. Certainly lying is bad but at least they donated something.
yeah, i'm freaked out by the story, no doubt. i didn't mean to imply i wasn't. i am. i am everytime i read that story...just as i am with earthquakes, hurricanes, children with cancer, etc. i will not pretend to you that i have peace or clarity on those things...aside to tell you that i believe there can be purpose in suffering. but that's really easy to say when you're not the one doing the suffering. there's a line in the lion, witch and the wardrobe where they're talking about the Christ character (the lion) and they describe him as, "not safe, but good." that's as close as i can get. on the flip side, i don't buy into prosperity gospel...it's pretty clear that good things happen to bad people sometimes...and bad things happen to good people sometimes...that's clear from experience and from scripture.
This is certainly true. It is just that capitalism unless moderated by an active welfare state does a very poor job even if the society is quite wealthy. the facts are really not in dispute, though conservative think tanks are paid to confuse things by those who stand to benefit from lower taxes on the wealthy.
Lying to PBS and lying to God is a contrast. us humans usually don't see lying the way God sees it if you are looking for the justice in it you would have to know the seriousness of lying from God's perspective not yours let me give a stupid example, one of my kids was small and we locked the poisonous cleaners away so they couldn't drink them (plus they had supposed child proof tops) my kid knew the stuff was bad, my wife drilled the point as best as possible to a toddler but curiosity seemed very strong in this one. my wife caught the kid with a bottle of cleaner and had managed to open it her reaction clearly demonstrated it was a far bigger deal to her than he could possibly understand the fact that we trivialize lying in comparison to some of God's reactions doesn't necessarily make us right before you judge what happened just consider that between you and God there is room for both disagreement and misunderstanding
The difference is that God can kill me and based a misunderstanding. If the message is that charity is to be encoouraged I don't see that killing someone just because they lied about the amount encourages charity. To me the moral of story is don't donate because then you keep all your money and your life. As I've said before I'm not going to pretend to understand the mind of God but stories like that aren't ones that I find very encouraging to accept the idea of a loving God.
I'm not sure whether to be encouraged or discouraged that even a self-admitted Jesus freak would find that very strange.
i don't know what to tell you. i'm all about Jesus....but there are definitely parts of the Bible that I read and think, "man, i wish that weren't there!" i could lie to you and tell you i'm comfortable with all of it...but i'm not. i have real questions, too.
Mathloom I really enjoy our discussion because you make very good points in bringing men like me more towards faith. Now back to the point on hand. The evil I speak of, is greed and my belief is that human greed is unsatiable and neverending. That is just the nature of the state we are in, one can continue to deny, hope for salvation but in the end 6 billion people cannot live without greed as their most basic motivator. Thus once you accept this nature of man and his desire for materialistic pursuit, then you must create a system that lets man fullfill that need. Yes this is wrong and probably a sin in your eyes but you cannot control the minds of billions and make them all behave like good samaritans. Furthermore, its true millions of people live honest virtueous lives but not all men behave the same. This where the masterplaners of our society decided to create a system driven primarily by greed so that each man gets to acquire his equal share of sin. I call it equally oppurtunity to sin. Sounds terrible but that is the reality, all men are sinners and will continue to be so till their death. This the entire backbone of our entire modern world. Now a man like Jesus may come along a show people how to live a better more fullfilling life but that model is not always accepted by everyone and neither should it be enforced upon men by other men. For an example of that disaster see Middle East and Sharia Law, which misguided clerics have used to bring shame upon the noble ideas of Mohammed who was a much better leader, ruler and philospher in my opinion than any other religious figure in history. Today western scholars demonize his methods and teaching but fail to realize he was the only man in theological history to really provide a set laws that worked in practical life. He covered everything from sanitation to property inheritance to volunteer taxation on wealth. He provided men with rules to govern themselves and still honor the Almighty. No matter how primative, that model is more sustainable than metaphysical ideals of salvation, hope and redemption given to men since the begining of dawn by self proclaim prophets of the world. Now to test faith of many bogus Christians and so called men of faith on this board, I set forth a challenge. If i come to your house, are you willing to provide me with one FREE meal of your choice everyday for 365 days in the name of Jesus? Now you can feed me whatever you like so long as you eat the same thing with me. I am open to scraps, leftovers, ramen noodles whatever humane possibilities you can come up with but you have eat the same thing. Or there is another option. I make the same offer to you, as capitalist I am willing to feed anyone who shows up at my house for 365 days so long as they perform some work of my choice. For example, mow my lawn, clean my garage, wash my car etc... Now lets see who is willing to make a promise and keep it, the faithful Christian or me the greedy, exploiting, blood thirsty capitalist?
From the classic film, The Third Man. The lead characters are on top of a ferris wheel. Harry Lime has been stealing penicilin, diluting it to the point that it isn't effective, and reselling it, and his friend Holly Martins is trying to pursuade him to stop: [rquoter] Martins: Have you ever seen any of your victims? Harry Lime: You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don't be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax - the only way you can save money nowadays. [/rquoter] My personal slant wouldn't be that capitalism per se is evil. I would suggest that impersonal corporatism would be closer to the problem. It disconnects the executive from the results of his actions. The law treats corporations as individuals. Extending that analogy, when diagnosed using the DSM-IV, most corporations would be characterised at the very least as showing strong indications of Antisocial Personality Disorder, more comonly described as being sociopaths. In true sociopaths, this is a result of lacking the ability to feel empathy. In the corporate sociopath, it is more a disconect by the executives making decisions from seeing that which would engender empathy. A corporate executive sees the results of his efforts as so many dots to be counted and enumerated, one direction or the other.
