$50 Lesson

HEARTLESS wrote: So Kate as a non-Christian, do you follow this, or just like to try use it against those that don't hold your beliefs? Simple, direct question.

I do not follow Jesus' teachings, and based upon your responses in this thread, neither do you.

Simple, direct answer.

So that is a whats mine is mine and whats yours is fair game answer, how am I not surprised?

Kate wrote:

PrintSmith wrote: There is a lie. You are attempting to have Christians defend something that their Messiah never said. I am telling you that the Christian interpretation of the passage is quite different from the one you are forwarding. I am a Christian, more specifically a Roman Catholic. I am telling you that the passage you are quoting does not say what you are saying it says and for that reason alone no defense is either possible or necessary. An argument bottomed on a flawed premise is itself flawed Kate, that is one of the rock hard rules that is inescapable.

Your argument, that Jesus told Christians to sell all they owned and give it to the poor, is bottomed on a flawed premise because Jesus said no such thing. That is the lie you are telling here Kate, that Jesus said all Christians must sell all they own and give it to the poor in order to be made complete. I am telling you, as a lifelong Catholic who has extensively studied the catechism of my faith with the help of a great uncle who was a Monsignor in the Catholic Church (the other great uncle who was a Monsignor founded the Catholic Register and died when I was about 4 years old) as well as numerous parish priests, nuns and other members of the laity who instructed me that the lesson Jesus was attempting to teach is substantially different from what you are claiming it to be.

Matthew 19:20 - “All these I have kept,” the young man said. “What do I still lack?”
What he lacked was what Jesus said was the greatest of the commandments, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ (Matthew 22:37). These are the commandments that are missing from this particular passage in Matthew 19:16-22, the ones that pertain to loving God and not placing anything or anyone in front of Him. Do you see how the 19th Chapter of Matthew is setting up the 22nd Kate? Jesus looked into the soul of this one man and saw that the man's love of money and property was greater than his love for God and this is why Jesus challenged him as He did. Does it make more sense now why Jesus said it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it was for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven?

Funny, the passage I read says that these words were directly from Jesus. Are you saying that the Bible is wrong when it attributes those words to him?

Nope, but I am saying that the meaning you have attempted to attach to those words is wrong. Those words were spoken by Jesus as a reply to the question that the man had posed to him - "What do I still lack?" What the man lacked was a love of God that was greater than his love of wealth. The commandments that pertain to loving God were not included in the ones that Jesus told the man he must keep. Is this because those commandments are not important? Of course not, it was because He knew that these were the commandments that the man wasn't keeping. The price for entering the Kingdom of Heaven is that you must first love God above anything else, which is why this is the greatest of the commandments. If you loved God above all else, then selling your possessions and giving that money to the poor would not be too high of a price to pay to make yourself complete and enter the Kingdom of Heaven. If it is, if what you own is the most important thing in your life, which it was to the man Jesus was speaking to at the time, then nothing will make you complete. Only God can make you complete - that is the lesson Jesus was trying to teach us that Matthew speaks to in this portion of his Gospel.

All of this over a simple old joke. Viking you ought to be ashamed of your self, or not! It's kind of nice to see you back here.

Especially when it annoys the closet commies. Ouch that just slipped out too.

HEARTLESS wrote: Especially when it annoys the closet commies. Ouch that just slipped out too.

Which is why most of us "closet commies" know all to well that nothing is really a joke when one of you "forever fascists" posts it.....you make your post, and when someone finds your motives questionable, wow....it's suddenly a joke. Now this "joke" I had heard before....ok, many, many times before, and it is usually posted by a troll unless posted in the jokes forum.

But it has been fun to watch you all perform the conservative twist and shout, er, spin and whine.......

I didnt' think LJ's joke was funny at all. But only because it is true.

Play nice now blue haired, humorless, trolls of Lenin.

HEARTLESS wrote: Play nice now blue haired, humorless, trolls of Lenin.

Tried that....you conservative trolls just can't get it through your thick skin heads that you get back what you put out there.

Now that is funny, care to share where or when you've played nice. It will be the shortest list EVER.