Posted on 05/24/2013 8:07:53 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
What are golden calves for? To be ridden by kings. The story in Exodus is a story of people enslaved to the state, led by God to freedom, but who keep lapsing back to the security of Egypt with its divine king and its steady meals and without the burden of choice. Moses was on the mountain receiving The Book of the Covenant, the civil implementation of the ten commandments, a short national constitution with a small state and strong protections of property rights. While he did that, the people reverted, and tried to reconstitute Egypt and its political cult.
Over the past two hundred years, the world, led by England and the U.S., has moved toward enormously higher levels of economic freedom and the resulting prosperity. Since the fall of the Soviet experiment, that was extended to more of mankind. But since the financial crisis, the general trend in the world has been to go back, to extend to the state power over markets. Any call to elevate the state even more, to collect our assets and melt them into some collective image which we can all ride backwards in history to the time before the free-market seems like a call to go back to Egypt, to security and slavery.
The pope attacks the market order because he finds it ‘faceless’ and ‘lacking any truly human goal.’ He’s right: the market does not have a face. But that’s only because it has 7 billion faces. It doesn’t have a human purpose, but that’s because it has 7 billion human purposes. If you want an economy with a face and a human purpose, then the Egypt of the Exodus era is your place and the Pharaoh of the exodus is your man.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
....the market does not have a face. But that’s only because it has 7 billion faces. It doesn’t have a human purpose, but that’s because it has 7 billion human purposes. If you want an economy with a face and a human purpose, then the Egypt of the Exodus era is your place and the Pharaoh of the exodus is your man.
Truth be told, a lot of pastors view it this way, too, I’ve noticed it is because if they come straight from college, seminary, then pastorate, they don’t have any industry/marketplace, hence, free market experience. Those who were businessmen first, I believe, view it differently. Having your paycheck, 401k, and healthcare derived from tithes and offerings, well, it can blind you to what and how that money was earned. It should not be taken for granted...and, a lot of pastors have trouble seeing what we see when it comes to the, “bi-partisan” immigration bill, too...explaining how that hurts the churches’ ability to thrive should be pointed out to pastors.
Your excerpting only includes the last several paragraphs — not a good sign for completeness.
And yet somehow a very good sign of complying with FR's rules for posting Forbes articles.
There is no there there in this article.
It is filled with poorly exegeted, and incoherently assembled garbage suggesting that the Pope believes “x” without referring to actual statements affirming it.
It sounds more like the writer wanted to inflate his viewership by throwing in themes like Pope Francis + leftist views, with a few biblical images to add spice.
There is no substance to it.
so.....next Spring I no longer have to pay at my parish Fish Fry?
Whether fully accurate or not, the great unfairness done to the Church is not recognizing it is a SPIRITUAL endeavor.
The Church cannot approve abortions or homosexuality, despite what liberals want.
The Church is going to help illegal aliens despite conservatives (me included) believing there is no legal justification.
The Church is going to look at the human/spiritual dimension of the modern workplace, not the bottom line.
You just can’t and shouldn’t make the Church agree with a Wall Street Journal editor, or a politician.
Christians talk about Christ but today they mean Marx.
It’s become abundantly clear that this Pope has the views of a typical South American Jesuit when it comes to economic matters. He is a populist leftist who’s message will be damaging to the cause of free markets all over the world. It is the market that can lift people out of the very poverty the Pope rails against, NOT government.
Were you responding to me?
I have no essential disagreements with your statement.
Oh you'll still have to pay. The parish will no longer be serving the fish in individual portions, however. Instead, the fish will be pureed (a la chopped liver) and sculpted into one giant Golden Calf-shaped congealed nugget, that all can feed from.
I’m not sure what you mean, here. Are you saying that the Church agrees that it is right to forcibly seize the property of some men to give to others (see “stealing”), no matter how needy?
Because, if so, the Church is in direct rebellion against God and His commandments (”Thou shalt NOT steal”).
Socialism, no matter in what form, or committed by whom, is a defiance of God’s Word.
Just commenting on the article, thanks.
Stealing from one to another doesn't help either one.
Though economics are as much a moral issue as any other. The Pope’s socialist views are an unfortunate impediment to people’s mobility and do not confront the doctrine of sharia directly enough.
Socialism came to Egypt when Joseph taxed land owners a percentage of their crops during good times, and used their wealth to buy their property for Pharaoh during the bad years. In the end, Pharaoh owned everything, and as time passed, we see what he did with all that power and wealth. I’m sure Joseph’s plan was a compassionate one, intended to do good for the people, and in the short run his plan helped. The end of that plan was the Exodus. I guess God knew what was needed to stir his people to action.
Nothing has been kinder to the poor, given them more jobs, opportunity, and a share of the wealth than free enterprise, and nothing has given the poor the political enfranchisement and say in their own government than rule of law built on respect of property rights and free enterprise. Allowing men to work for their own prosperity and posterity is far better than the economic determinism of Socialism.
My Church is not in rebellion against God. Period.
Correct. Along with an ignorance of Church teaching on socialism, private property, subsidiarity...
Some article posters don't let truth get in their way.
Well I think the best thing we evil producers in the world could do is to no longer fund the gimmie, gimmie leftists of the world and see how well they do without the support of us who used capitalism to create wealth and create a better life.
Capitalism is evil in the leftist view but not so evil that the useless of the world don’t demand more from us.
I know some here will view my stance as problematic but I now 100% refuse to donate to anyone or anything as my government not only stole money from me (and all of us) to give to those who never earned it, then they have the gall to say we don’t do our fair share. Well liberals sit on it and rotate! The only money you will get from me is what you can extort by the abuses of power in government.
No matter how much was given, I (we) will always remain the evil white people and no amount will ever be a “Fair Share”.
We just cannot out populate nor fund those who squirt out millions of babies every year without a nano-second of thought as to how they will care for them. All subsidizing them has done is what subsidizing always does, create more of the problem.
Didn’t say it was. Said that socialism and those that support it are.
If the Pope supports it the Pope is defying God. Don’t know that he does, of course.
But if he does, the RCC may go off the rails, temporarily at least.
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