Posted on 12/26/2001 4:35:52 PM PST by Starmaker
It was dark and snowy late last Friday night. The city was eerily quiet in expectation of Christmas.
My 15-year-old son had hurt his thumb in a basketball tournament and I took him to Emergency.
There was a TV in the waiting room. Bill Maher was doing a Christmas show, about Jesus' message of Christian brotherhood.
"Just as in nature, there is a human ecology," Bill Maher intoned.
"As long as America monopolizes the world's wealth, as long as there is poverty and sickness, there will be terrorists. We have to level the playing field."
The audience applauded and Bill Maher instantly became a moral giant.
"Oh sure, we all respond positively to words," he continued.
"But would you be willing to give 15% of your wealth to people in the Third World? Would you be willing to level the playing field?"
Again, the audience responded dutifully.
My jaw dropped. What is this man saying?
That America is to blame for the attack Sept. 11 because it is so successful? That we have to pay guilt money, or else?
First, "human ecology" doesn't cause terrorism. Ideology does.
The Taliban and Al-Queda were brainwashed by religious schools. Improving their economic conditions would make no difference.
Second, everyone knows that you can't give money away. People have to work in order to feel self respect. Has Bill Maher forgotten about "earning" money?
My father was a Jewish holocaust survivor.
After the war, he took just one year to make up for missing high school. He won an Entrance Scholarship to Albert Einstein's alma mater in Zurich, and became a distinguished physicist. Like millions of immigrants in his day, he didn't ask for affirmative action or "diversity" programs. He asked for an even chance.
He never gave me a cent.
When I was 11-years-old, I told him I wanted to go to university. He told me to start saving for tuition. This inspired me to approach the local newspaper to write an advice-to-parents column.
"Ask Henry" ran weekly in 35 newspapers from 1961-1964, and later paid for my tuition.
If my father had said, "no problem son, your tuition is assured," I would never have acted on my own behalf.
Bill Maher may be a sincere idealist, but surely our focus in the Third World should be on improving economic opportunity, on providing a hand-up NOT a handout. If we turned people into welfare cases, they would hate us more.
Jesus said we should love our neighbor. He didn't say we should support him.
Christ's teaching is NOT about economic equality. It is not about money at all.
Christianity is about wealth of Spirit. Jesus told the rich man to renounce money altogether and follow the gospel. Jesus knew that the experience of God's grace makes money insignificant.
Conversely, the farther we are from God, the more important money becomes.
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven."
Notions of Christian brotherhood make us vulnerable to manipulation by Liberals and Marxists who accumulate wealth and power by pretending to champion "have-nots". Social workers and charities grow fat. Hollywood stars gain moral stature.
At Christmas, let's be critical of appeals to our higher nature.
For example, what if Bill Maher was being paid to soften us up for "world socialism?" That's what he's talking about, after all.
What if the real aim was a world government designed to perpetuate unsustainable inequities, not alleviate them.
"The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion," said Edmund Burke in 1784.
I know this sounds paranoid but we live in strange times.
Let's be discerning when proffering the hand of Christian brotherhood.
"Be simple as a dove and lay snares for no man: but be cunning as a serpent and let no man lay snares for you."
Jesus wasn't a liberal.
Be carefull what you wish for Billy boy!
OTOH, Jesus comes across to me as a moral conservative but not a legalist (which is what the Jews of His day expected Him to be). I would expect Him to abhor abortion and the rampant sexuality found in America and most western countries but I would also expect Him to condemn those who judge harshly without looking toward their own sins and flaws.
It would be corny as well as wrong to portray Jesus as a "compassionate conservative" although His message is actually one of compassion and scarifice mixed with conservative social values.
No. Neither is He a moral-liberal.
I vote that Hollywood start and the rest of us will watch to see how it goes!
Second, I cannot believe that Jesus would support the cowardly use of big government to confiscate his neighbors' money so that scumbag politicians could use it to buy the votes of society's parasites by giving them "free stuff".
"Sell all your belongings, give the proceeds to the poor, and follow me" might be construed as a call to support your neighbor not to mention an anti-capitalist, pro commie message.
cowardly use of big government to confiscate his neighbors' money so that scumbag politicians could use it to buy the votes of society's parasites by giving them "free stuff".
Albert Schweitzer claimed that early Christianity was grounded in the expectation of Christ's immanent return. That is something to wrestle with. How one chooses to understand "immanent" and "return" is another question.
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