James 5:1 Now listen, you rich people, weep and wail because of the misery that is coming on you. 2 Your wealth has rotted, and moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver are corroded. Their corrosion will testify against you and eat your flesh like fire. You have hoarded wealth in the last days. 4 Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. 5 You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter.
Beautiful. My father is an extremely greedy and empty rich man. He deals with money so single-mindedly that he has completely destroyed any dignity or respect anyone has ever had for him. I pray at least that he isn‘t alone on his death bed, because finding God just seems too impossible for such a person.
Basically the entire book of Jonah, it’s hilarious, I don’t know how it took until I was an adult to realize that it’s intentionally written to be very funny.
But also I think it’s very poignant, specifically I think it warns against the sort of behavior that leads religious people (and, I could venture to say, some lefties) into the arrogance that leaves you wishing for everyone else to get what they deserve.
It boils down in the last chapter, where Jonah realizes that God isn’t going to exterminate the city:
But this was very displeasing to Jonah, and he became angry. He prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord! Is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? That is why I fled to Tarshish at the beginning, for I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from punishment. And now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” And the Lord said, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Then Jonah went out of the city and sat down east of the city and made a booth for himself there. He sat under it in the shade, waiting to see what would become of the city.
He sits there and almost dies of exposure, but God saves him with a little plant that gives him shade for a day before it is killed by a pest.
When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, “It is better for me to die than to live.” But God said to Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?” And he said, “Yes, angry enough to die.” Then the Lord said, “You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left and also many animals?”
And that’s how it ends, this pathetic little dude whining at God about how his bush was more important than all those people he hates. Whining at God because he knows God is merciful and wants to save these people, which is something he doesn’t want, because it would make him a false prophet. I think it’s really interesting for the Bible to have this story about how when your religion conflicts with loving other people, God wants you to abandon your religion.
Seriously, reread it, it’s hilarious. Everyone Jonah encounters is more godly than him, the sailors, the Assyrians, the FUCKING COWS put on sackloth and ashes.
Or if you’re too busy to read, check out this Tom-Waits-esque dramatic musical reading of the book by one of the coolest Christian musicians I’m aware of.
James 1:27 Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.
Boils down Christianity to its essence. Care for the downtrodden and most vulnerable, and don’t let yourself become consumed by the petty concerns and pressures of the society you’re in.
It really is difficult to remain unstained. Even worse is that people don’t want to deal with the downtrodden so that they will not “stray” from their path. The parish priest gave a homily yesterday about the temple of the body, and, how it should be kept clean and neat for when God comes to meet us, just how we are to keep His Church clean and neat for when he takes it up into the heavens.
I cried one time in church when the priest was reading the account of Jesus and the adulterous woman from the Gospel of John.
When he told her “neither do I condemn you” it felt like he was talking to me.
I also like Paul’s description and talk of love in 1 Corinthians 13 and I’m quite fond of “For the foolishness of God is wiser than men; and the weakness of God stronger than men” from the same Epistle.
