Is It Bad To Be Poor?

Here is a question for you. Is it OK to make fun of the poor? Is there some precedent that has been set by the upper crust of society that makes it OK to mock those that are less fortunate? I think that there must be, between politicians who seem not to worry to much about the poor, they of course being amongst the wealthy, and some preachers who seem to believe that one is poor because they don't have enough faith in G-D, it seems to me that they are saying that there is something wrong with being poor, that we are ,in some intangible way, less deserving of something that I haven't quite put my finger on... I will admit that not having much money in America can be quite a challenge but I find no small amount of irony that in both of the above mentioned cases, we are talking about people who claim to be religious and yet don't seem to follow their worshiped leader in poverty. Jesus was poor from what I remember, so if it was good enough for him why not for them and, for that matter, why wouldn't that be good for all of us? I recently heard about a colleague of a friend of mine who goes out of her way to make fun of those that are poor, or ,should I say, make less money then her and her husband make. She thinks it's stupid that anyone should live in a development area in a ranch style home even suggesting that there is something wrong with you if you are living like that. It's kind of hard for me to digest that kind of thinking, because it's just not the way I think. Most of my friends have a more then I do but I don't begrudge them that, I rather prefer to rejoice in their good fortune rather then wallow in some sort of self pity, so in the reverse I don't really understand why anyone would look down on the poor, unless of course they are jealous. That must be it, they are actually jealous of our poorness, it has to be. Think about it. I don't worry that my friends are angling to get something from me, I don't have anything that they would want, financially speaking, and even if I did,we have all been poor together, so to help them, if I was able ,wouldn't be an issue. When your poor you learn who your real friends are. As a poor person, I don't have to concern myself with stocks and bonds and investments in the stock market. That thing could crash and it wouldn't change anything for me, most wealthy folks can't say that. Don't take me wrong, I am not against wealth per se, I wouldn't be upset if I suddenly found myself well off, but I think the real problem for most is that they forget where they have come from, if they started at the bottom that is, and their desires tend to go way beyond their needs. This , I'm guessing anyhow, is what makes them unhappy and tends to make them scornful of those who don't share, or don't have the means to share, those same desires. Seems to me that if you keep your needs and desires simple, then you will be able to easier fulfill them and as a result you will be a happier person. One last thought on poverty. There have been many rich and famous people who have died recently, some from natural causes , some under tragic circumstances, yet somewhere down the road their names will be forgotten. Yet there are any number of poor folks who will be remembered forever because they changed the world in their poverty. Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Jesus, Abraham ( he became wealthy but he was still a nomad) just to name a few that come to mind. All of these people had nothing and yet they changed the course of history, the course of their country or at the very least they changed the lives of many people and they did it with nothing. So I guess in being poor ,in this country anyhow, I'm in some pretty good company. Shalom

Be Still

Psalm 46: 10 Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! I have had that verse running through my head this morning and I have to admit that I am finding it difficult to do. The " be still" part that is. There was a time, in this country, that a religious person was given an amount of respect, because ,while not everyone was religious, most believed that at some point you would have to answer to G-D for your soul, so you didn't want to mock people of faith and add to your sins. How times have changed. Not only is there little to no respect of anyone religious, but our nation has gone to the opposite extreme, if your Christian or Jew, anyhow. Today both Judaism and Christianity are mocked and ridiculed by the elites in the government and Hollywood. Essentially your moral values and or beliefs, are worthless, unless they agree with the state policy or what Hollywood is trying to promote. This is what we have become. You may believe what you wish and worship or not as you see fit, or at least you should be able to under the Constitution, but apparently that's not the case anymore. You will do as the government tells you too and if you don't like it you will be fined and or imprisoned ,your morals and conscience doesn't matter anymore. Strange how Hollywood can produce movies that suggests that there are no consequences to free sex and yet those same people will push for forced compliance for religious institutions to pay for abortions and birth control which they, religious institutions, believe to be morally wrong. Perhaps the better solution is to let the Hollywood elite pay for all of it seeings how they are constantly telling us it's OK to be sexually free. I have tried to tell people that if we go down this path on religion, that it's only a matter of time before they come after something that you believe in. No one ,so it seems any how, is listening. So be it. So I go right back to "Be still and know that I am G-D" in the end G-d will not be mocked, in the end ,as it says in the verse, "I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth." It really doesn't matter if anyone listens to me, I have done my part, but when G-D speaks there will be no doubt who is in charge, so I will be still, and everyone will know that He is G-D.

I know Nothing

I don't know. Other then your children uttering them, how many times have you asked a question of someone, who should know the answer to the question, and they say to you I don't know? It's probably not as often as you might think. I have discovered that when most folks are given that question, and they are the acknowledged brainiacs of said subject, that they tend to either try to blow you away with much talking and wind or they go the route of vague generalities and silence. We took our home school group, a few years ago, to see an exhibition of recovered items from "The World Of Pharaohs" at a museum that I won't name. The exhibition it's self was great but it turned out that the kids knew more about what was there then the tour guide that we were given. In all fairness to the woman, our kids had been studying this for months and I think could have named all the major and minor gods in alphabetical order, and I think she had been pressed into service at the last moment, but rather then admit this, she tried real hard to bull her way through it. It must have been hard on her to have 12 year old's know more about what was going on then she did. "I don't know" could have saved her a lot of embarrassment. Then there are the scientist. The really smart people who are supposed to have the answers to everything. Ask them a question sometimes and I swear you will get one of the most colorful and wordy " I don't knows" that you will ever hear. They will use words such as probably, perhaps, theorize and postulate, amongst others, and give you a lot of specialized words just to tell you that they really don't know. What , pray tell, is wrong with not knowing? Is it a sin or a crime to admit to not knowing everything ? I was watching a show on reincarnation and near death experiences the other night and the main person that they were interviewing, at the end of it, actually said that all he could do was base his evidence on what people had shared with him, and while he believed it was quite possibly real, he openly admitted that he didn't really know. If some of you are thinking ,well of course he didn't know because it's not real, then you are making my point. HOW DO YOU KNOW? Your not dead so therefore you can only guess based on your own personal beliefs and what you have been taught . Do you get my point? I saw a picture the other day, taken from Mars, that was of Earth. Our planet was little more then a pinprick in the far distance, I actually thought it was a speck of dust on the screen. If the earth is so insignificant just in our own solar system, and the ends of the known universe are billions of light years away, how is it that we tend to think that we know all the answers? Religious leaders will say we KNOW the truth. Scientists will disagree and say no your wrong,we KNOW the truth! Political leaders and dictators and just about anyone with any kind of opinion will all claim that they KNOW and yet the truth of it all is that none of us really know. Perhaps if collectively we could all come to understand just how little we know and just how vast the universe and all it's unknowns are, we could get passed all our petty differences and make this world a better place. Bottom line for me is that I don't claim to know anything. Nothing. Nada.Zilch. I'll leave all the great wisdom to those with the degrees and technical skills. I will, how ever try to embrace the fact that my knowledge of things is rather small and embrace those who feel the same as I do and who knows maybe it will turn out that we knew more then we thought.