Pastor Wright: blame it on his first name
I’ve found the key to Obama’s pastor and his fiery sermons: blame it all on his first name.
The prophet Jeremiah was the inspiration for the expression “Jeremiad”, a “prolonged lamentation or complaint; also : a cautionary or angry harangue.”
Sounds about Wright.
Okay, ten yard penalty and loss of down for deploying a previously punned pun.
LOL — that’s cute 😀
Can I plead cryptomnesia? Pretty please?
Actually, some shades of socialism can be traced in Christianity during all its history, and even slightly earlier. Monasteries where all property was communal, and everybody worked as he was capable and all get equal lot of food and other primal necessities, were clear examples of communist society. One of the first such communities, a prototype of both monastery and kibbutz, was a Hebrew sect of Esseis, or Qumranites, whose manuscripts were found in a cave in Judea (Dead Sea Scrolls) (1st century BC.)
In early Middle Ages there were many violent revolts instigated by so-called communist heresies, whose practice closely resembles that of Bolsheviks, rich in Christian symbolism and seeking aspiration and moral foundation in Biblical verses. Most of them were eschatological, preaching looming end of the world and requiring immediate redemption through abolishment of private property and imposing universal equality (does it sound familiar?). These mass psychoses urged Papacy to install Inquisition and recommend priest do not read sermons based on Book Revelation – this theme rendered too dangerous for laymen to contemplate. One of such bloody revolts is depicted in Umberto Eco novel “The Name of Rose”.
As we see, Theology of Liberation is not exactly a new phenomenon, it has deep roots in medieval Christian heresies. The problem with it is that it is not theology at all, but a radical political ideology disguised in religious language, with notions of human nature and origin of evil very different from those held by all mainstream Christian denominations, but very close to Marxist worldview, which should be properly described as secular reinvention of medieval communist heresies.
Precisely, Neo. It’s neither been reported that the rev’s sister, Delilah, operates a very successful upscale hair salon.
Neo, of course you can. Your spelling mistake in word cryptomnesia (not cyptomnesia) makes this explanation very believable. Only most unbearable pedant can remember sources of his inspiration better than essence, and I also have serious trouble with thoughts whose origin I can not trace down so make false conclusion that they are mine truly.
Oh, dear. Another reminder (as if I needed one) that haste makes waste. Spelling error now corrected.
Sergey,
Very good points about the Medieval heresies and the various forms of millenarianism that were around for centuries.
Absolute equality of the means of production and the goods produced is an impossible ideal. However, the ideas of protection for the poor, assisting them in survival and helping them to help themselves are very much a part of Christian teaching. A certain amount of redistribution of wealth is necessary in a civil society, but there are points beyond which this must not go, because it then interferes with the industry and creativity of capital and private enterprise. There are always trade-offs, plus capitalism is far superior to socialism for increasing wealth and living standards for all.
There are insights about this I did not fully understand until I had left the seminary and then went on to an M.B.A. program to study finance.
And again, virtue cannot be coerced. It has to be freely cultivated and encouraged. Socialism and Marxism eventually cannot work because individual initiative is not rewarded. Therefore, nothing gets done.
The monastic communities were supposed to serve as an example, an ideal, to the laity of the practice of egalitarianism that is freely chosen (that’s why VOWS of poverty, chastity, and obedience are taken by the initiates in monastic and religious orders).
The reason why there is a long tradition of Catholic social teaching was not just to combat Marxism. It was also to emphasize that the other extreme, a society that is totally selfish and social Darwinian, breeds excesses that are destructive.
To extend the metathread, I wouldn’t call it exactly a spelling error, neo, but rather a typo.
Some people call me pedantic, but they won’t define their terms and precisely why. /g
Oh boy, Occam’s Beard, I guess I have to issue another correction: yes, it was a typo, not a spelling error.
You guys keep me on my toes.
Totaly selfish society is not a society at all: an oxymoron. So no example of such society can be cited.
As about neccessity to protect poor, weak and uncapable to defend themselves, this so obvious that does not need to be argued. Every society does it, by establishing charities or providing tax deductions, and the very institution of taxation supposes using these fonds for some public benefit – from supporting infrastructure to building and supporting Army for national defence.
I tend to think that socialism is a natural pattern of relations in a small, tightly knitted community, where everybody knows everybody and needs to keep his/her reputation good enough to expect help from other members of the group. This was natural pattern of human communities for many, many millenia of Stone Age, so we all are genetically preprogrammed to it. But it can not be extended to large collectives, because in them life is anonymous, and individuals do not know each other close enough: neigbours are strangers. So another social order is required, where privacy and private property are cornerstones. Only common law incorporating these notions can provide safety and peace in this setting.
Sergey said part of what I was going to say. The rest was: from a spiritual point of view it doesn’t do any good to force people to give. You can say giving to charity is an imitation of Christ or an expression of charity or a way to lessen your attachment to worldly things or to your ego. Whichever you believe, it only works if you do it willingly.
By “willingly” I mean you have your own reasons. For example, you have decided to become a better, more charitable person; or you’ve felt sorry for someone who has less than you; or you’ve identified a communal need and decided that contributing will help everyone, including yourself. What counts is that nobody’s put a gun to your head.
Socialists typically put a gun to your head.
His last name, Wright, implies a worker or craftsman.
Professional complainer?
:o)
“Can I plead cryptomnesia?”
No, but I will accept a plea of clydesdalenesia.
Is the good Reverend perhaps the first cousin of Dudley Do Wright?
sergey,
the groups in the past were not socialist. no one ‘shared’ like we do till much later. food is scarce, and from wasps up to humans those that have a bit more can do better. we have always competed just like every other evolving living thing.
there were locations and things that at times resembles socialism, but they were not that at all. they just had plenty for a while.
once you do some math, you can figure out the math situation where you can have enough for some and not for all.
all the ways we solve problems today, like voting, they didnt have. life was more like the western town where each family tilled their own.
in fact viking law followed natural law. as your stake was the amount of property you could walk around in a day.
life before our inventions didnt have enough food. look at africa, then remove all food shipments and farms, and thats what we were pretty much like.
we were also cannibals. probably why we are so smart. an arms race within the species, as we hunted each other. predator pray tends not to increase past some balance.
there were no noble savages… life was as hobbes said, brutal and short.
however, if you look at how we develop, our intelligences could go up faster as long as societies didnt change the percieved landscape. once they did that, we would develop for a world that matched the rules of what pressure they change and hold, not the world we walk around in.
no socialist group has ever lasted other than fake modern socialism.
socialism is really the state trying to take over the communal function of knit groups… to make charity statist.
however, no one that actually pushes it sees it that way.
sorry got to go, real late. .
Art, your definition of socializm is different from mine. You imply state-imposed socialism; I describe a community where the is no private property, no money, no institutionalized hierarhy and no written law. Statehood, markets, law – all this are very recent concepts, thay do not apply to Stone Age.
Any pre-agricultural community in this sense was socialist, and many of them were remarkably stable. Even now such communities exist in Israel; but membership in them is all-voluntary, and this is critically important. State-imposed socializm implies coercion, and exactly this makes it unworkable.
I can understand Wright’s jeremiads to some extent. If you were exposed to racial hatred in your childhood, you can be expected to be a bit paranoid and oversensitive to this stuff, and see racism where no of it is actually present. Early emotional traumas are pervasive, they tend to color all subsequent perceptions. But Obama sells himself as a new, post-racial generation politician, and his almoust life-long association with such a person reveals either poor judgment or hypocrisy. Both cases are very damaging to his public image, and if many his black supporters see nothing wrong with it, it certainly weakens his appeal to young whites, who actually can not see any justification for race-baiting.
I can understand Wright’s jeremiads to some extent
Of course. Because being exposed to “racism” means that one should believe things like the US Govt invented HIV to kill blacks and all the rest.
It’s all about empowerment!
Life in Stone Age surely was not a paradise, as hippies and Christian anarchists, like Leo Tolstoy, painted it. But it still was socialist, while short and brutal.
Vince, not should, of course. But, realistically, can be expected to. I have seen many times how persecution or harassment makes people paranoid. All “old Russians” are paranoid about KGB, with very few exceptions.
I find the Acts (of the Apostles) to be quite “socialist”. Based on the wrong belief that Jesus Christ would really return in his Second Coming, before the Apostles die.
It’s not clear when this socialism was revised to be more sustainable.
I strongly favor peaceful, voluntary socialism — but more strongly oppose involuntary redistribution. Taxes are not collected peacefully.
(The credible threat of violent force is not peaceful — imagine the IRS without the power to garnish wages or jail you or do anything other than hurt your reputation.)
Churches which want the gov’t to do charity in solving a problem, are asking for non-peaceful solutions to that problem. They should, instead, be solving the problem peacefully, and voluntarily.
Too bad there is no corporate organization that rewards managers only for hiring more people, with the “middle line” of headcount maximization being the goal — using revenue in excess of current costs to increase headcount (and costs, thus reducing “profit”).
This idea is sort of “Jobism” — not sure if this is formal. “Living wage” folk don’t like it because they think most jobs aren’t so hot. I don’t like their silly socialist ideas.
Now you’re cookin’, Neo. Good job. Jeremiah was also the prophet who brought down (literally, as it turned out) Ahab, no?
nice post…
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