An examination of the synoptic gospels reveals that the early church practiced an early analogue of what we today would call communism. The churches were far enough to the ideological left that we find the rich condemned to hell in these documents, and as we are told in the book of Acts, the churches instead developed a communal lifestyle on collective farms, and abolished all private property. This economic radicalism might go a long way to explaining first the crucifixion, and the tossing of churches to lions, and the trauma the church suffered at the time might explain why the church then abandoned its roots, and became most famous for being strictly conservative, rigidly authoritarian and right wing through the following eras of church history.
Now it goes without saying that the religious right and the conservatives in the church have very little in common with the left wing ideology of the gospels, and that is why you will always find that churches on the right dispose of the gospel traditions, and instead go searching around in the proverbs and other conservative documents to find an economic model. This model they can confidently proclaim to be ‘biblically based' without being the ideology they reject which is encapsulated in the gospels. (In the book of Proverbs to be rich is to be holy and righteous, and to be destitute and poor is the just reward of the wicked, a polar opposite ideology to that which informs the famous parable of Lazarus and the rich man in the gospels, where the opposite is the case )
The simple minded judgments of Proverbs are based on the doctrine of divine justice being manifested in the present world in ways that can be measured by noting who is rich and who is poor, who is sick and who is healthy, who lived and who died. The gospels attack this simple view of the world. When the temple collapsed and killed the worshipers inside, according to Proverbs ideology, this made those in the temple sinners, but this was far from true according to gospel critique of this ideological position.
The prayer of Jabez is a call on God to fulfill the ideology of the book of Proverbs preferred by the religious right over the gospels, for obvious reasons. "Increase my territory,' goes the prayer of Jabez. After all, to start singing proverbs myself, in the house of the righteous and godly is found much wealth. Wealth is the wreath of laurels granted for a godly life lived in holiness, while a fool is brought to poverty and ruin. Honor, and wealth and power are the rewards granted by God to the righteous man, but the wicked man has his fill of poverty. Increase my territory, and make me rich, book of Proverbs style, goes this prayer currently being heavily promoted by the religious right. A small nod will be given to the gospel traditions, in that after receiving great wealth and riches from God, book of Proverbs style, Christians will then be able to make donations to poor people, which is alleged to be the working out of the social ethics of the gospels..
Pray to God to get rich, and then make donations to poor people. This is the model for social action and social change of the religious right. For the most part this ideological position is a hodge podge mixture of proverbs, and prayers of Jabez, etc., and the only acknowledgment of the gospel tradition will be found in this (watered down) notion that one should make donations.
Now it is certainly true that the religious right can support their doctrines by quoting chapter and verse from right wing portions of the Bible (for the most part found in the older Jewish traditions) and it is also just as true that the most left wing communist can support their doctrines by quoting chapter and verse from left wing gospel traditions. No one is ever really going to prove much of anything by book quoting in this case, and it becomes obvious that people are going to have to make their own moral judgments and their own sensible analysis of the problems they face, and cannot simply quote a book as an authority, and make some point that way.
According to the facts available from the United States Department of Agriculture or the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, human beings only eat 10 per cent of the food produced in the world. 10 per cent is used in industrial processes. The other eighty per cent is consumed by livestock. For the most part world agriculture is the prop and mainstay of the meat packing industry. Cows return 1 gram of useable protein for every 100 grams of protein consumed, and beef is usually between 12 and 14 per cent protein. This is similar to the protein content of the grain the cattle consumes, so no improvement is achieved (there is no such thing as a difference in a protein molecule, and the sometimes heard argument that meat protein is ‘high quality' protein or ‘easier to digest', these arguments are also propaganda red herrings, much like that ‘over population' and ‘world food shortage' myth that so many people believe (and isn't more comfortable to believe such things). The truth is a little harder to deal with. Furthermore, most people over indulge in meat (protein is not stored in the body but rather is used immediately or is passed out through the urine). Adequate portions of meat are usually no more than 2 or 3 ounces (for example just 3 ounces of turkey contains almost a complete daily requirement of protein).
Now in order to come to a reasonable moral judgment we are going to need to examine the facts on the ground, and then we are going to have look inside for whatever answers we are going to find. I ask you to consider again the following real life scenario. There is no ‘global world wide food shortage.' There is no ‘over population' when it comes to food, although human populations are obviously stressing and destroying the environment. Keep in mind that human beings damage the ecosystem as part of their desperate struggle for food and survival, and the two issues can be linked. They are not separate. And of the two, the drive for food is what is driving the ecological destruction of the planet, so of the two issues, the state of the ecosystem, and the problem of food for people (not just cattle) , the food problem is paramount, since it is the cause of the devastation.
Now given that basic human rights (the right to food and survival) has in this scenario been compromised by the drive to preserve profits and the inertia present in the system, you would think that the proper moral response from a church, or anyone else who cares about the planet and in particular the people living on the planet, would to be question the moral justice of such an arrangement. The church also has a multi-billion dollar broadcasting industry that blankets the planet, so churches could help out a lot in situations like this by becoming sources of information for a badly misinformed world when it comes to issues like this one. There is a great deal of freedom of movement in the situation described above, and we are far from having our backs against the wall. Something can be done, but the solution is very obviously not going to be making donations, but rather addressing the moral issues and the social structures that are responsible for creating the above described situation.
Food is life itself, and life should not be bought and sold like a commodity. Food for people, not simply for profit. Life for people, not simply profits for some and death for others. If this issue demonstrates anything it is the odious nature of the unquestioned propaganda that flies around this place, and it also demonstrates the kind of structural reforms that are required if the planet is to become truly just and humane. If we do not seek natural justice and do what is morally right, our environment will be destroyed and we will also all live another day in the bleak, grayness of this place, which can be so depressing, if you are the type of person who stops to reflect on such things. In the end, we are responsible, and being responsible, we get what we deserve.
The church has the slogan, ‘the truth will set you free.' I have found out through years of experience that what this means is not simply what it so plainly says, but rather, once filtered through church religion it means ‘church religion and dogmas will set you free.' That is why you hear religion and more religion coming from churches, but very little natural justice and very little revealed truth. You see the real truth just might set free some starving baby in bondage to rotten systems hidden behind unquestioned myths and propaganda falsehoods. Some truth from that church might set that baby free, but as I have found, never is heard a word, and if a word is heard, it will be more of that ‘prayer of Jabez' and book of Proverbs stuff - get rich and then make some donations.
Lots and lots of religion I have heard, and you can hear that sorry excuse for a ‘truth' day in and day out, without respite. I have heard it all, but never have I heard those churches put aside the tired old religion and do what is so obviously the right thing to do (and, I should add, being a prophet with responsibility, get it done before Yahweh gets here, or you might find that problem solved the Yahweh way, and churches can begin to study up on being vegetarians - that would another way, the really ugly and humiliating way to finally get something done, and I bring it to mind because it is the last resort solution, and things being what they are, it is probably the final solution to this problem in the end.)
Now I have some history here, and there are some churches, and some preachers, who might remember my explosive anger and those nasty prophecies I was making at that time, that got everybody who heard it so upset. (As I found out, you can't even damn that church to hell and get them to change...lesson noted). Yes, there was a reason for that fury, there was a reason I was raving like a Jewish prophet, for a while there. Didn't work for me, didn't work for them either. Nothing works. That is should be this way in a church, which should be a place of high idealism, genuine truth, righteousness and faith, really is an indictment of the leaders of the religious right. You see, they don't want it to work, and that's why it never does.
I just want to say how disappointed I am at that global Christian media, my one slim hope, at one time, but something I completely discount as so much rubbish today. But look, let's be serious here. People get the prophets they deserve, and in a way, they get the prophets that they themselves help to create. In the end what those churches wind up with is a web site like this one, and pages on it like this one, with that disturbing possibility that I am telling the truth hangs in the air.
To paraphrase Jeremiah's description of his religious opponents, when they did not respond to moral imperatives, he heard them instead saying, ‘Yahweh won't come, and we already have priests and prophets. Let us fight against him with our mouths and listen to nothing that he says...." This just about summarizes the current situation, and really is an indication of how distant that church really is from the living presence of Yahweh (they really aren't to worried, and that really just about summarizes how ungodly they really are in their inner life). .
The prayer of Jabez would be about what you would expect for the latest united propaganda move by the religious right. This prayer for growing prosperity in Christian suburbia is in synch with the prosperity doctrine so in vogue, in particular in the churches in wealthy nations. The prayer for greater wealth, even multi-millionaire status is typical of that curious blend of selected Bible quotes and North American consumerism, a lifestyle of accumulating more wealth and consuming products which is endorsed and given divine blessing in the Jabez prayer (no big surprise there). The accompanying call to send donations is a just a sop being tossed in the general direction of those gospel traditions, and the prayers of Christ and apostles, which it is so obvious when you look at it have taken a back seat to the comfortable, and more easily peddled, consumer ideology of that Jabez prayer...