Oh, dick measuring. Didn't take long before you whipped it out.

Handing one a business and teaching one how to be an entrepreneur are two different things, bud. I'm not knocking the 9-5, if that's your thing. It's obviously not what the majority of my generation wants. We've seen how it turns your generation into a bunch of pissy ninny muggins and we generally don't want a thing to do with it.

Your generation: One with the most toys wins. Cute, but we see right through that garbage. 😃

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My wife is the materialist, not me. I really could care less, but I certainly don't want to walk the earth like a bum either.

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Exactly who do you think is selling on the Internet? That's right, it's small business people. Sure, there's the big boys like Google, Facebook, and Amazon who get all the press. But what's made the Google business model "click" is hundreds of thousands of small businesses buying pay-per-click advertising, etc. What's made the Amazon business model work is hundreds of thousands of small businesses willing to have Amazon storefronts and sell in the Amazon marketplace. What's making the Facebook business model work is hundreds of thousands of small businesses deciding to join, use their facebook account to connect and establish their web presence.

And the sales tax experience highlights just how restrictive a "tax" can be to trade. Internet sellers often have just as high markups as the guy down the street. But when I can get free 2nd-day shipping from thousands of different sellers "fulfilled by Amazon" by paying a mere $80/year, I'm going to buy from the high markup seller in New York or North Dakota a lot just to save myself the damn sales tax.

State/local governments love the "sales tax option". But every time that option gets exercised, the people of the state/municipality in question are going to end up screwed. Now that the internet and other globalization technologies have reduced transportation costs by orders of magnitude, all a sales tax is going to do is chase the customers of a state's business toward out-of-state sellers. And the more a state tries to tax out-of-state transactions, the more of the options those sellers offer the customers are going to disappear.

(This I suppose is where zombieslayer is going to jump in with his "national sales tax" idea. Sorry, my friend, that'll just make us a nation of smugglers.)

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You forget wade, all big businesses are evil.

I don't agree with Penn on many issues.. but he nailed it with this one:

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Yes Formo paying your taxes doesn't make you morally superior, it makes you patriotically superior.

Making contributions to actual charitable contributions makes you morally superior. Making contributions to tax shelter charitable contributions makes you a republican.

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No matter how many times I read it, this one always has a "thud" sort of reminder:

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you."

(Matthew 6:1-4).

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One can easily flip that coin of the bible's words... I refer to the following quotes... if one takes this on words alone.. it is God's will to have taxes in place. He is the one that appoints the leaders.. thus he wishes the taxes due. Romans 13:1 & 2 state it clearly.

So in other words.. is it not God's will for us to support the weak?






Now to be honest and direct, I openly will tell you that many items in the bible seem in conflict and I have no issue with saying that I often ponder the verses within the Bible. Mostly because I challenge the interpretations of those that transcribed the Bible from God's words.

But none the less it is discussed in the context of the Bible.

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Yes, it is his will and supporting the weak demanded of us. Did Jesus hang out with kings of the earth or did he wallow with the underbelly of society?

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Matthew 22 -- that to me is mostly a(nother) warning against idolatry. (Not that I am immune from its temptation, as Dexter pointed it out to me in another thread recently.)

Romans 13, though. That has been troublesome for me to live up to for years. Part of it is the "turn the other cheek" argument -- and that is always problematic for me when it comes to the systematic and unavoidable failures of the state.

But I like to think that my grumbling and bitching and disdain and hatred for most things governmental is not simply a mistaken belief that "it's my money, not theirs" and "I know better than they do". That's why I call myself a Christian anarchist and not a libertarian, and it's why I do not subscribe to the Ayn Rand school of thinking. There is something higher than "me me me" that we should be striving for.

Yet there is one very important qualification to the "submit to authority" requirement set forth in Romans 13 after all: if one's conscience believes that the government is acting contrary to God's will, then one will sin by obeying the state, or even by failing to oppose the state.

It's a dangerous qualification, of course -- Christians can delude themselves about God's will with the best of them (see Crusades; see Tim McVeigh). But it's no less an obligation for a Christian for its being dangerous. A democratic government may be in power because God wants it in power, but that does not make those who work for it any less imperfect, any less capable of doing bad things, any less capable of evil, any less capable of frustrating and opposing His will.

Shawn, I think your question, "s it not God's will for us to support the weak?" is the wrong question. Or at least it is too human-centric. The question should be "What is God's will?" and stop there. It's not about supporting the weak or not supporting the weak. It's about striving to do what God wants.

There is an exchange in [i]The Magic of Recluce I've probably quoted here before that I think is relevant. Antonin, the white wizard (and bad guy in the story), says to Justen the gray mage (and annoying teacher of the story's hero), f"Actions speak louder than words. There are those here who hunger. Will righteousness feed them? Will the innkeeper feed them from the goodness of his heart and deprive his family and kin? ... Is it wrong to feed the hungry?"

Justen's response? "It is not wrong to feed the hungry, but it is wrong to feed their hungers."

Can it be wrong to emphasize "supporting the weak"? I think it can. Not because I'm more important. Not because "it's my money." But because how the weak are supported, how the hungry are fed, matters. Do we support the weak because it makes them dependent on our support? Do we support the weak because it makes us feel good that we are "doing something," that we are "doing our part." Because it shows we are a good person or that we will earn points with God? Are we just loving ourselves as we love our neighbors?

Or are we doing it first and foremost, not out of compassion, but out of love for the Lord our God?

We must ask of our compassion the same questions we ask of our self-absorption -- are we doing it for ourselves or are we doing it for God?

Jesus is (IMO) not an individualist. But he is also not a communist. Those are human creations. Jesus is a personalist. (I think the term was originally Teilhard de Chardin's, or perhaps Thomas Merton's? Anyone know?)

What I mean is that Jesus does not want us to define ourselves as rugged individualists whose own judgment was the best, but he also does not want us to define ourselves with regard to our obligations to society and to others. That is why "love thy neighbor as thyself" is the second great commandment. Neither thy neighbor nor thyself is as important as "loving the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your soul, and all your mind." No, what Jesus wants us to do is define ourselves by our personal relationship with Him. He wants us to define ourselves by our willingness to strive to do what He wants us to do in all things. He wants us to do is strive to make each of our personal choices not because "we" need something and not because we think our poor neighbors need something, but because we want to please Him.

That, ISTM, is in the end why Paul says submit to authority. Paul well knew that the authorities didn't always do God's will. Paul spend years in prison, Paul was executed and so was Stephen, John the Baptist, Peter, and many others, because he put God first. Paul said submit to authority because he knew it was far too easy to resist to authority for the wrong reasons. The corruptions and self-centeredness of fallen man have led and will continue to lead far more people farther away from that personal relationship with God when they "revolt and rebel" than those few who legitimately rebel because they are pursuing God's will.

It was the difference between Martin Luther King and almost all other civil rights activists. They all saw injustice. They all "resisted" authority. But King, like the German monk he was named after, and like Paul, accompanied each act of resistance with a willingness to submit to the authorities. Not accept what the authorities are willing to do as inherently divinely approved, not even necessarily to obey everything they say, but recognize that any such non-acceptance, that any such non-obedience, must be accompanied by a willingness to submit to that authority's power, even unto beatings and death.

Civil disobedience is not a denial of guilt. It is a willingness to admit guilt. It's a willingness to say, "Do what you will. Do what the law says you have the authority to do. You have the authority to do it, and I must submit to that authority. But what I do, I must still do. "Gott helfe mir. Ich kann nicht anders."

Resistance, whether its the kind that can get you jailed or killed or whether its simply the resistance of protesting and complaining -- we should do it only if we are confident that it passes two tests: i. Is this what God wants of me? and ii. Am I willing to bear personally the costs if I am wrong about the answer to i, or even if I'm not.

Anytime we resist without sincerely believing the answer to both questions is "yes," we have broken the Great Commandment.

Again.

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