I simply want to learn and my question is sincere. The people at the top live a blissful life, especially when compared to the people at the bottom. The people at the top can experience all pleasures of life and simply repent with the knowledge that they did everything there's to be done socially wise. They have no traumas, no regret or bitter feelings, the very opposite, they are completely satisfied, calm and confident because they had all the attention and love. Meanwhile the people at the bottom have been bullied their whole life, has never felt any kindness and even less love. They are not even playing on hard mode because no matter what they do, they will never receive the respect people at the top receive even if they are billionaires or contributed to their society, science or art. art. The people at the top are usually managers, ceos or anything that doesn't require hard work, while the people at the bottom do whatever they are allowed to. It's wrong of the people at the bottom to become gay/trans, kill themselves or live a life in sloth but what's evevn more interesting is that even if they became devout believers people would always think it's a cope because they failed at life, or perhaps they never stood a chance. How is any of that fair?
>There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it
How is true is that? Maybe hundred years ago where men had more right but nowadays it makes no sense.
>For whoever has, to him will be given, and he will be in abundance. And whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.
WOW! And then
>Saying, These last have wrought but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us, which have borne the burden and heat of the day.
Earthly suffering will seem trivial when you enter the kingdom of God.
>The people at the top live a blissful life, especially when compared to the people at the bottom. The people at the top can experience all pleasures of life and simply repent with the knowledge that they did everything there's to be done socially wise.
Luke 18:25
Now try reading the whole text.
Make better points. The reward makes it fair.
Not my fault that you can't even read a few more sentences.
I'll just use a tripcode for ease of reading.
This is a rather big issue but I get the general vibe. The first thing you have to consider is that people telling you most of what you've heard are full of shit themselves, and also pretty deranged, and also, they're like Job's three butthole friends who came to him to "helpfully" make his suffering worse at an already bad time.
Now, there's the big issue, which is to do with Job, and the smaller issues you have likely encountered, namely slinging around single verses to prove anything. Let's maybe start with the smaller issue, since you quoted the old-timey KJV, which people think is the language Jesus spoke.
The gospels are somewhat like adventure-novels and though they're wholly unrelated to the truth, quoting them is like quoting Robinson Crusoe: the novel is based loosely on the real life of Alexander Selkirk, but it's not Selkirk's published diary. Refer to Luke 1 () where it says right at the beginning the author, who's also not Luke, writes that she collected what people were saying about this Jesus:
>Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent The-oph′ilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.
People claim that Luke and all the gospels are "eyewitness accounts". (a) nobody claimed this historically and (b) they're calling the actual Gospel of Luke bullshit by saying that. They suffer from a kind of delusion that's a wholly psychological phenomenon that I can go into if you want, but we can also just leave it as "that's bullshit".
Job actually had a great life, validation(family), and was not poisoned by all the things he consumed or were around so he had a reason to endure these things in the first place and then got them back again. Can you say the same things about most men nowadays who don't get even the crumbs?
Job didn't get anything "back". His family stayed dead. In terms of wealth, he was restored, but those were different times, and the book of Job is an invitation to the reader to wrestle with this complex topic himself, not just to tell people to shut up and not complain: because THAT is the line Job's three friends took.
One can't read Job from an omniscient perspective, i.e. involving the scenes in heaven, since as far as either Job or his friends were concerned, those scenes genuinely didn't happen. This might sound confusing, but that's simply because Job also isn't some newspaper account, as we would read one today, composed of facts A, B, C, but a kind of play, and the scenes in heaven are symbolic. How would any human have known what happened in heaven? Did the writes of Job have a vision? The book of Job is a story, like Aesop's fables, which feature animals talking, despite most animals not having the anatomy to produce speech. You have to imagine that some actual human being had to have written that book: the most such a human being would have been able to perceive would have been Job's misfortune, not any scenes outside the universe - those scenes were his addition, and were symbolic for adversity randomly befalling people - hence "satan" (and wasn't that guy kicked out of heaven following that alleged war, but also given the entire Earth to rule, for some reason?) asking to test Job. In modern language, we really would describe these events in words like these:
>due to spread of disease, perhaps via poor sanitation or via animal carries, Job fell ill, and due to meteorological weather events and poor building construction, his house collapsed
But that doesn't make for such a compelling story and it also wouldn't really have any central message. That central message being that one shouldn't, as Hume said:
>derive an ought from an is
i.e. add to the suffering of the unfortunate by also telling that it's "their fault this happened".
Job 42:13
Is one son just as good as another?
The times were different, as you said. Most people nowadays can't even think about procreation because they know it's not really possible and even less actually have it.
Haha, got me. But if Job were to happen today, since we don't have those standards and see people as unique individuals and not just as property-units, would it involve literal resurrection?
I have no idea but everything would be so much different though. I don't think it's even possible to recreate it at all.
>Most people nowadays can't even think about procreation because they know it's not really possible and even less actually have it.
This is what happens to a homie when he gets all his social interaction from a Nepalese incel site.
>being insincere even here
Why are you like this? What do you get out of it? Is your coping mechanism really that strong?
How am I being insincere? If you think most people don't get to have kids over the course of their lives, you're a complete moron.
Job did persevere, which is laudable, but if you factor in the heaven-scenes, his perseverance made no sense, his god, if you read the account THAT straightforwardly, basically just had a good laugh with satan, who apparently also no longer was persona non grata. There obviously was no Satan/Lucifer there; the adversary was some angel who wanted to test Job, and he was god's servant.
>Luke
>She
Explain
Certainly. It slipped in there and I can't say I know either, but there is the argument that Luke was actually written by a woman due to being concerned with women's issues:
?t=4871
Not. My. Problem.
Who's problem it is then?
>blah blah blah life's not fair blah blah blah [insert mindless communist dribble here]
The people at the top aren't satisfied. People like that tend to have a need to accumulate more wealth and power, even though they already have more than they need to live a comfortable life. No, it isn't fair, but most rich people are probably going to be judged pretty harshly for God. He isn't a big fan of greed, vanity, and exploitation.
This all reminds me of chapter 5 of the book of James.
Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.
James 5:1-6
By people at the top I meant genetically, not by wealth as that's not important anymore.
You do know that a lot of pretty people you see online don't have nearly as good of lives as they say. People have turned themselves into brands, and do what they can to make themselves seem better and like they have no flaws. Yes, they definitely have it easier, but not to the extent they portray.
Yet they are not even comparable to that of an average person and then imagine how a below average person feels like.
Also, internally, Luke cannot be an eyewitness account, since it features pretty lengthy scenes where Jesus is alone, like in the desert (Luke 4):
>And Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led by the Spirit for forty days in the wilderness, tempted by the devil. And he ate nothing in those days; and when they were ended, he was hungry. The devil said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” And Jesus answered him, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone.’”
Here's the obvious question: how does anyone know that this happened? Wasn't Jesus alone? An eyewitness could at most have known that Jesus went away, not what dialogue he had with anyone, which he also didn't, by the way. Was "Luke" sitting in a nearby bush, eating doughnuts, and did she not make any note of this "devil"-guy coming up to Jesus and having a chat with him? I'm pretty sure people would asked about this: "hey Jesus, um, so, this devil that came to you in the desert... what's that about?"
But they didn't, because it's a novel.
The second this is that people love quoting single lines out of context because they kind of sound pithy, which they do, it's a nicely written work with lots of memorable one-liners, but it's not some technical manual with a ready-made answer to every concrete issue; it's not Chairman Mao's Little Red Book. You can maybe use a single verse as a slogan, but it doesn't "prove" anything. Prooftexting is a completely bankrupt practice, yet people do it due to, largely, the Protestant Reformation, during which some people took the idea of "sola scriptura" a bit too far. It's a time-honored tradition; people in the 2nd century were also claiming that the Psalms, which are songs, were prophecies. Actually, back then, the claim was that one could have some "esoteric insight" and they didn't hope that Psalm 22 would convince anyone, but over time, every belief degenerates into self-parody.
So
>For whoever has, to him will be given, and he will be in abundance. And whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him.
Is not some "proof" of the metaphysical statement that "the rich deserve their wealth" or somesuch nonsense, but is actually, ultimately, about competence in general. The line occurs in Matthew 25, in the PARABLE of the talents, which is about how you use the abilities that are given to you, and these abilities need not be solely monetary in nature: if you are given a little "play-budget" in life, shall we say, and you use that well, you are given more "budget" - budget can be anything; it can be skills, intelligence, etc.
It does say, after all: "he spoke in parables so that they would not understand", but holy shit, one could expect at least a little work into figuring the meaning out; it's not THAT esoteric. It's a fun little puzzle to get yer noggin joggin, not general relativity.
Suffice to say that people who are given wealth and then don't employ it gainfully because they only spend it on jetskys and scratch-off evidently can't handle money too well, if we want to make any monetary point at all. Even if we factor out any idea of guilt, one would not give such people money for their own benefit, because they're like the proverbial lottery-winner who burns through a couple millions in a few years and ends up homeless or dead.
As for
>It's wrong of the people at the bottom to become gay/trans, kill themselves or live a life in sloth
Where does the condemnation of homosexuality specifically come from? Chiefly two places:
>Leviticus
>Paul
Leviticus is a priest-code and was not historically observed even by lay israelites. Also, I would like to ask: what must have been going on among the Levites to justify the inclusion of the "no gay sex"-rule. You know: there's no rules against flapping your arms and flying to the Moon. You make rules against the stuff people are doing.
who says has to be fair...
The rules in Leviticus are something that most people would maybe vaguely know about, just as someone today would maybe know about the house rules of some monastic order, with those rules not being mandatory in any way for the general population. Also, did you know that historical studies have shown that the occurrence of intestinal parasites among members of medieval convents was higher than in the general population? This isn't an attack on gay people or anything, but it sure is interesting! You know how it is when the boys get together, in convents, or on the high seas, and all the rest of it.
As for Paul: he was, let's say "some claim", gay and hated himself; he also got bullied a lot over it by "the poor" (a reference to James & friends, who were poor and everything, but also somewhat abrasive and stand-offish). Thus, when one reads especially Romans, where the top zingers when it comes to this are, one has to take into account that one reads the words of a somewhat tortured man, and that's not an invitation to then copy his self-torture wholesale. In any case, Paul, if you want to follow his advice, was against the entirety of the "Mosaic" law being imposed on people, so anything in Leviticus would apply even less to people today.
It was actually the Pharisees who advocated for laypeople being burdened with all of these hundreds of commandment ("you who labor under heavy burdens", "my burden is light", etc.) historically - guard yourself against the teachings of the Pharisees, folks, or so I've heard. Of course, there was a reason the Pharisees were like that: it just feels good to be a self-righteous butthole due to how the human brain works, we've all done it, I've done it, not a condemnation, but it's an unfortunate fact of human cognition. It's the same motivation as someone who knows all the trivia of Neon Genesis Evangelion has, and who calls you a "pleb scrublord poser" for not knowing Rei's preferred brand of Funko-Pop or whatever.
Thus, indeed, the people doing well should not act that high and mighty, because they did receive their good fortune, at least oftentimes, through happenstance, and if they're also not managing it well, that's no cause for any commendation.
But back to the sociological aspect of it: people just love to "make the ought from the is" and construct an entire system around justifying what, from their perspective, are random factors (being born into wealth, etc.), while also making, again, random factors that bestow onto others misfortune, into some supposed "guilt", like Job's three "friends", who perhaps meant well, but yet were the victims of their own ignorance.
>is it fair?
Far be it from me to say what's fair or not, but in that "equity"-sense, obviously not; it's random chance: some people are born in adverse conditions, putting that mildly. But instead of saying: "frick you for being poor/sick", I would argue that this is, rather, an invitation for us to help those in need.
>For whoever has, to him will be given, and he will be in abundance. And whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him
That's about GRACE not material goods.
>The people at the top live a blissful life,
Jesus literally says being rich makes it harder to get to heaven. Also riches doesnt bring happiness.
>There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it
That is saying that God gives everyone enough grace to beat their temptations.
>That's about GRACE not material goods.
>Jesus literally says being rich makes it harder to get to heaven. Also riches doesnt bring happiness.
I never said anything about being wealthy.
>That is saying that God gives everyone enough grace to beat their temptations.
Where's the free will?
only homosexuals cry about fairness
This seems like Theodicy to me, here goes:
>Our human existence is an anomaly because it relies on finely tuned laws. This suggests we are created.
>If we are created, then we can assume our Creator created us with a purposeful relationship to Himself. This could be to love/serve Him.
>That love wouldn't mean much if compelled, so He is (partly) hidden and allows us to suffer.
>This suffering must include real pain, indignity and mortal peril, or else we would be complacent. This in-built complacency is possibly owing to our imperfect nature. Only the Creator would be perfect, with all the ontology that perfection implies (omni this and omni that), because He is self-creating/self-defining.
>God, as Creator, not only ontologically DEFINES 'goodness' itself but is also capable of bringing it about in arbitrary amounts/forms (as long as they don't defy logic(?)). Therefore if we do love God we can trust that his eternal reward is worth the suffering here on Earth.
>The above statements are all consistent with one another and the fact that God is necessary to our fine tuned existence also renders the rest of the arguments true.
>Finally, we have the Bible, an additional marker/compass about the intentions of our Creator. The Bible is correct FIRSTLY because its spiritual statements are correct and consistent and - when properly interpreted/thought out - fully comprehensive. The Bible is correct SECONDLY because it is supported by the historical miracle of God incarnating in Christ - this Resurrection is legitimate because it fulfilled established prophesy and corroborated by a host of objective historical sources.
>How is any of that fair?
None of that is exclusive to Christianity. Hierarchies have always existed in every society. Usually competition rewards competence.