October 15, 2008
Darn good question...
Question for Obama [Jonah Goldberg]
"You speak constantly about helping the middle class, why did you belong to a church for so long that considered 'Disavowal of the Pursuit of 'Middleclassness' to be a religious obligation?"
Actually, the sick-making insanity is that there are 50 million or so middle class Americans who REALLY want to be seen as hip, cool, bohemian....and NOT middle class!!!
And 97% of them are buying the same trendy cool hip mass-produced consumer goods as all the others buy, to show that they are "special" and "different."
And they give their children this year's trendy names, to show that they are not anonymous and insipid. I had to laugh today, thinking of a certain pretentious family in one of our kid's schools (maybe 1995) who named their children "Paris" and "Somerset." Because I was in Kragen Autoparts, and the nice but not classy young black woman at the counter had a name tag that read...... "Paris."
And all those 50 million brain-dead middle-classians are now going to prove that they are hip and with-it and not middle-cass by voting for an amiable con-artist... Funny.
As Andy Warhol put it, "There is nothing so middle class as the "Disavowal of the Pursuit of 'Middleclassness."
Posted by John Weidner at October 15, 2008 06:51 PM
Is there no strain between the proclamation that Rich would find hard to goto heaven and the fact that by historical standards (and also present day worldwide standards), All Americans are fabulously rich.
Posted by: Bisaal at October 15, 2008 09:28 PMThat's a darn good question!
I strongly suspect that our wealth is keeping a LOT of Americans out of the Kingdom of God. For various reasons.... it distracts us, makes us too comfortable, helps us think that happiness can be found without God, etc.
However, in the time of Jesus most rich people were oppressing and squeezing the poor. Directly and clearly.
Unless you follow socialist theory, that's not the case now. Getting rich now helps the poor. If I own shares and they go up, it means, for the most part, more jobs and cheaper consumer goods. Leading, as you say, to a country of people who are "fabulously rich."
So I don't think the harsh condemnations of the rich that Jesus made exactly apply to our situation. (And he seems to have had some well-to-do people among his own followers.) I personally think the "oppressors" now are those who push bad ideas at foolish people, leading them to destruction.
But our wealth is a deep concern to me. Newman wrote:
...I must say plainly this, that fanciful though it may appear at first sight, the comforts of life are the main cause of our want of love of God; and, much as we may lament and struggle against it, till we learn to dispense with them in good measure, we shall not overcome it. Till we, in a certain sense; detach ourselves from our bodies, our minds will not be in a state to receive divine impressions, and to exert heavenly aspirations. A smooth and easy life, an uninterrupted enjoyment of the goods of Providence, full meals, soft raiment, well-furnished homes, the pleasures of sense, the feeling of security, the consciousness of wealth,—these and the like, if we are not careful, choke up all the avenues of the soul, through which the light and breath of heaven might come to us. ... If we attempt to force our minds into a loving and devotional temper, without this preparation, it is too plain what will follow—the grossness and coarseness, the affectation, the effeminacy, the unreality, the presumption, the hollowness, (suffer me, my brethren, while I say plainly but seriously what I mean,) in a word, what Scripture calls the Hypocrisy, which we see around us...Posted by: John Weidner at October 16, 2008 06:38 AM
