Indeed. The Catholics believed the same way. We call it the Inquisition.
Rhema
Go steal somebody else's money. No wonder you live under the cloud of the condemnation of Christ.
Not if you're stealing money through taxation.
Wow, i go from talking about my commitment to showing Christs, Love .Compassion and Justice to those in need, the Hungry, the homeless, the poor and the sick, to being compared to the Inquisition, Id be interested to know how you came to that conclusion, seems a little extreme to me.
So you see Taxation to help the poor and suffering as stealing, an interesting position to take, of course in the legal sense it cant be stealing as its authorised by statute, so i assume youre talking of the morality of Taxation, just out of interest, do you view all Taxation as theft, so you wouldnt have a police force or armed forces, theys be no provision for state health services, no infrastructure, in effect you get what you pay for and if you cant afford to pay you dont get it, do you see this as the basis for trying to build Christs Kingdom on Earth, to shape a just and caring society?.
But if i accept your point about the immorality of Taxation, of it being stealing, there is a school of thought within Christianity that says nothing is ours, that all we have is in fact Gods, loaned to us while we're on this Earth, to do good with, so in fact if you believe that then you cant be accused of stealing something from someone that isnt theirs in the first place , giving to Christ in the face of the Hungry, the sick the homeless, be it through personal giving, or through Taxation, is in fact only giving back to him when he needs it , what is already his, i hope you can follow that, yes its a bit confusing.
And even if you dont regard your money and possessions as Gods, but your own, the question that needs to be asked is are they actually yours and how did you obtain them. I know most people on these boards come from the US so ill use that as an example, but the same can be said for any rich nation thats built its wealth on the theft, exploitation, suffering and death of others. The US was founded on theft, theft not of a few $ in taxation, not of a few thousand or even Millions of $ in Taxation, the US was founded on the theft of a whole country. And that theft was accompanied by a destruction and slaughter of the original inhabitants that can probably be classified as Genocide. So thats the basis of "your" wealth, Theft on an unimaginable scale and the destruction of entire cultures and the deaths of millions. So morally, is this money yours, and if it isnt , how then can it be stolen from you. For it seems to me that nothing is yours, for its founded on the proceeds of Theft and Genocide.
But putting that to one side, the next uncomfortable truth we face is that of Slavery. Millions of Africans were shipped from Africa to the Americas where they were, enslaved, beaten, tortured , raped and murdered to make vast profits for Plantation owners, and that wealth flowed into the coffers of ordinary citizens in the US, and the Banks and the Government built their economy on it, their lives were stolen in their millions to finance the growth of the US, it is indeed Blood Money.
But coming a little more up to date, ill give 3 examples of just how the US has built, and maintains its position of Economic and political dominance over the World. And how that dominance is used to ensure that the resources of this world, which if shared equally would give everyone a decent standard of living, are sucked into the rich countries leaving hundreds of Millions of men, woman and children to struggle for their daily survival.
The first is Indonesia, where in 1965, with US and western backing , General Suharto came to power in a bloodbath costing over a million lives. US and Rich country Corporations moved into what Nixon described as "the greatest prize in Asia" and proceeded to carve up the economy and resources of Indonesia,. Vast profits were made , all of which ended up back in the rich world while the mass of Indonesians lived in abject poverty. Even when in 1975 Suharto invaded East Timor and over the next 24 years killed nearly 200,000 people, a quarter of the population, the support of the west didnt falter and we continued to sell him the latest weaponry. And the World Bank and IMF , as it did all over the World, supported the Suharto regime with billions of $, its estimated that of the $30 billion lent by the world bank, around $10 billion was lost by corruption. Yes, theft indeed, and a theft and genocide that the west enriched themselves with.
The second is Iraq, after the democratically elected leader of Iraq was deposed in a CIA coup in the 1950's a series of pro western leaders came to power , eventually leading to Saddam Hussains rise in 1979. We knew all along this man was a brutal despot, but that didnt matter, whether it was his 10 year war with Iraq, or the oppression, murder and torture of his own citizens, including the gassing of the Kurds in 1988, we sold him all the latest weaponry, including chemical and biological weapons. And we did that for one reason, the availability of reliable and profitable Oil supplies to the west, Iraq has one of the largest Oil reserves in the world and also was used as a bulwark against the newly formed Islamic Fundamentalist Government in neighbouring iran. But after Saddams invasion of Kuwait in 1990, things changed, he was no longer seen as a reliable ally in the region, but the west didnt want him out because of the Islamic fundamentalists in iran, so we imposed an embargo on iraq, to keep him down but not out that cost the lives of over 600,000 iraqi Children, and eventually in 2003 when we deemed the time right we got rid of him, which unleashed civil war and destruction in Iraq costing over 1 million lives.
The third is Guatemala. In the 1950's the Guatemalans elected a leader Arbens, who initiated a land reform to give land to landless peasants, This upset a number of US corporations who were making vast profits from growing fruit, particularly Bananas, in Guatemala, like the United fruit Company from Boston, and with CIA backing he was removed and a more compliant leader put in his place, More compliant that is to US interests and the profits which were flowing back to the US from the exploitation of cheap labour. The people rose against this oppression, and during the 1980's a civil war ensued. The US backed the Brutal Military regime of Rios Mont, who in a campaign to wipe out the "insurgents" went on a genocidal rampage murdering close to 200,000 indigenous Mayan Guatemalans. And the US backed this mass murderer, who President Reagan described as " aman of great personal integrity" ,all in the name of maintaining the US's Economic dominance of the Guatemalan economy and its political influence in what it regards as its "backyard".
So please, when you talk of theft, think of examples such as this which have been repeated the world over to give you what you consider "yours", for on a moral basis, nothing of what we have, over and above our fair share of this worlds resources is ours, because its the product of theft, oppression , suffering , murder and even genocide on a massive scale. 7 million children die every year from hunger and disease because we in the rich world "steal" what is rightfully theirs, nearly a billion people live in abject poverty for the same reason, and you speak of "stealing money through taxation".
Yes i do feel the condemnation of my sins for being a beneficiary of this Holocaust, as i think all of us that likewise benefit from it should do, and it often seems to me that when i hear some Christians seemingly obsessed by Gay Lifestyles and the like, it appears we are indeed "straining at a gnat when having already swallowed a Camel".
