Jesse LaGreca , you are leading all of us down the primrose path of sinfulness, particularly the sin of covetousness. Don’t believe me? Just ask Dennis Babish, a blogger for Break Point, a blog dedicated to “changing lives, minds, and communities through Jesus Christ”.
The entire article can be found here.
Babish attempts to apply quotes from German Lutheran Pastor and Nazi-resistance leader Dietrich Bonhoeffer, as taken from Eric Metaxa’s biography of him, to the current Occupy protests. He uses this as the money quote:
The world will allow itself to be subdued only by success. It is not ideas or opinions which decide, but deeds. Success alone justifies wrongs done.
How does that relate to the Occupy protests?
Fast forward to today, and we see what happens when there is no “success.” For decades now “The American Dream” has been promoted as the latest form of success: a college education, high-paying job, big house, fancy cars, etc., all under the slogan “You can have it all.” For many of those decades it appeared that success was for anyone who wanted it, whether they applied themselves or not. Increased credit card debt, home ownership for those who couldn’t afford it, more and more government entitlement programs, promotion of self-worth and entitlement to the “good things in life,” all whitewashed the underlying destructive path America was on. In 2008 it all came tumbling down. The failures became apparent.
When failure hits, a scapegoat is needed. Surely it was because those rich people on Wall Street stole this dream and wanted it only for themselves. Now we have Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protestors demanding that the riches of the “haves” be taken and distributed to the “have-nots.”
Yes. He puts haves and have-nots in quotes. That’s a false notion, according to Babish. All of you on the streets, camping out, or speaking until you become hoarse, facing potential arrest and violence from police as well as sabotage from agent provaceteurs, you are the ones who will have to stand before God and give an accounting for your sin. None of the 1%’s wealth is ill-gotten. It’s the result of God’s providence, as well as them using the “talents” and “gifts” God gave them to exploit that into even more wealth. You who are not the 1%, including those who are struggling – that’s also the result of God’s will. There’s no such thing as obscenely wealthy.
Voltaire’s adage that “the comfort of the rich depends on an abundant supply of the poor”? Well, that’s proof that God has a plan. And the proof text, as Babish puts it, is Matthew 25, particularly the Parable of the Bags of Gold.
Which leads me to my final point. What the protestors are promoting is what the Bible would call covetousness. There really isn’t any such thing as “haves” and “have-nots.” We all are “haves.” If you read the parable of the talents, you will notice two things. First, each servant was given a different amount, not equally divided, and commanded to manage what they were given. God is not showing favorites. He gives us all different amounts of wealth, intelligence, creativity, and so forth, and commands us to manage what He has given us to His glory, not for our worldly success.
We also see that when the master returned and asked for an accounting from each, he didn’t take from the two that were successful and give to the one that was lazy. Rather, he condemned the lazy one for not doing anything. He then took away the talents the lazy one had and gave it to the two that had much, and said: “For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” (Matthew 25:29-30)
Occupiers, and all the rest of you who are not part of the 1%, know your place as given to you by the Good Lord. If you want to be right with God, agitate for an end to the progressive income tax and the social safety net. These things just entice people to break one of the Ten Commandments.
November 9, 2011
progressivekyle
2 responses to “REPENT! Ye Sinners of the #Occupy Movement”
Tom Gray
November 10th, 2011 at 00:53
So, greed and success are bad? That is a confusing argument; it appears that your definition of “greed” and “success” needs to be qualified. The OWS crowd is greedy; they want what the mythical 1% have but do not want to put in the effort to earn it. That is worse than being greedy, that’s being lazy. At what point does success become excessive? And who should define when enough is enough? Not you and not me and certainly not government.
At it’s core, the OWS movement is predictably conflicted; they clamor for the “collective” avariciousness of the 99% while protesting the greed of the 1%. They decry individual success because they have not succeeded. They are the “have nots” who desperately want what the “haves” have.
progressivekyle
November 13th, 2011 at 00:11
Tom if wrong were a football team you’d be the 1972 Miami Dolphins. You deride the occupiers of greed but in your first sentence you question me about whether greed is a bad thing?
And then you attribute things to occupiers which are not true. We don’t want what the 1% has. We’re not aspiring to live like Donald Friggin Trump. We want to be able to have a decent job earning a decent living, be able to store away some of what we make, be able to send our kids (if we have any) to college without having to sell a kidney, take a decent vacation once a year, and be able to provide the basic necessities for ourselves and our families without angst over whether one misstep or source of misfortune will send us tumbling down an endless spiral to near-permanent desperation.
To call them lazy shows you have no idea of what you’re talking about but are simply repeating what you’ve been told. Look it up for yourself. It’s documented, verifiable fact that nationally there are about four or five job seekers for every job opening. Not all of the occupiers are hippies or unemployed. I was at Occupy Denver about a month ago and enjoyed every bit of it. Every one I bumped into was decent. There’s a whole mix of people at those events. They can be those with jobs, some of which are underemployed. They are parents with children, grandparents, retirees, and what have you.
There is no boilerplate, bulletpointed message that comes from this, but if any of us can take off our ideological blinders for just a moment we can see that one message is that our democracy, economy and society is supposed to work for all of us, in other words, actually be a democracy, not an oligarchy with the trappings of democracy where a few prosper and the rest are simply cogs in the machine with no purpose other than being chewed up and spit out when we’re no longer deemed useful by TPTB.