The Disreputable Bede

Kao soy, northern Thai noodles, today for lunch after church

I'm very thankful that several long-standing prayers have been answered in the past couple weeks for three different people. One person got their green card and two others got jobs after long stints of unemployment/under-employment.

There are a few places in the Old Testament where it talks about people living under their own vine and fig. The notable thing about this image is that people are owners and not renters or tenants.

The Torah had a provision where every 50 years, land bought and sold would return to its ancestral owners. One of the effects of this law was that there would not be rentier and tenant classes in Israel and that the means of production in that agricultural society would not be concentrated in the hands of a few. Ideally, people would own things and be self-sufficient.

This is one reason Christians should be worried about not just increasing income inequality in society, but more people living in perpetual debt because they don’t own anything. It’s hard to buy commercial software with a perpetual license these days. It seems like nobody owns their own music or movies any longer. Businesses love subscriptions and recurring revenue.

Anyway, this is stuff I’ve been thinking about recently. I’d love other people’s thoughts on this. Is there a simple way to explain that the Bible addresses these types of social issues? Am I missing something?

Some related scriptures …

1 Kings 4:25
During Solomon’s lifetime Judah and Israel, from Dan to Beersheba, lived in safety, everyone under their own vine and under their own fig tree.

Micah 4:4
Everyone will sit under their own vine
and under their own fig tree,
and no one will make them afraid,
for the Lord Almighty has spoken.

Zechariah 3:10
‘In that day each of you will invite your neighbor to sit under your vine and fig tree,’ declares the Lord Almighty.

Isaiah 5:8
Woe to you who add house to house
and join field to field
till no space is left
and you live alone in the land.

Micah 2:1-2
Woe to those who plan iniquity,
to those who plot evil on their beds!
At morning’s light they carry it out
because it is in their power to do it.
They covet fields and seize them,
and houses, and take them.
They defraud people of their homes,
they rob them of their inheritance.

Before he faced his passion, Jesus warned his disciples that they would all fall away. He told Peter that he would fall away, but that he had prayed for Peter that he would come back and be strengthened.

The author of the Book of Hebrews says that Jesus intercedes for us continually.

This makes me wonder that perhaps Jesus was praying for Job during his trial, many thousands of years ago. Even as he allowed Satan to afflict him, Jesus prayed that Job would pass through the test.

This is entirely speculation, but at least it's informed speculation.

Which world’s richest man does this bring to mind?

C.S. Lewis’s Perelandra, describing an antagonist, Dr. Weston:

He was a man obsessed with the idea which is at this moment circulating all over our planet in obscure works of "scientifiction,” in little Interplanetary Societies and Rocketry Clubs, and between the covers of monstrous magazines, ignored or mocked by the intellectuals, but ready, if ever the power is put into its hands, to open a new chapter of misery for the universe. It is the idea that humanity, having now sufficiently corrupted the planet where it arose, must at all costs contrive to seed itself over a larger area: that the vast astronomical distances which are God's quarantine regulations, must somehow be overcome. This for a start. But beyond this lies the sweet poison of the false infinite-the wild dream that planet after planet, system after system, in the end galaxy after galaxy, can be forced to sustain, everywhere and for ever, the sort of life which is contained in the loins of our own species-a dream begotten by the hatred of death upon the fear of true immortality, fondled in secret by thousands of ignorant men and hundreds who are not ignorant.

“I defy the pope and all his laws, and if God spare my life ere many years, I will cause a boy that driveth the plow, shall know more of the Scripture than thou dost.”

~ William Tyndale

The first English bible was smuggled into England on this day (March 26) in 1526—500 years ago!

The ideal state of the world is where swords have been beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks because there's nothing else to use them for.

But the reality is that we live with the consequences of human sin and evil where the lamb is definitely not safe lying down with a lion.

It's with this view that I can say that the hardline Islamic regime that has undemocratically and ruthlessly ruled Iran for the past 40 years is getting just deserts. This doesn't mean the nations who started the war (the United States and Israel) are doing good. They too are storing up wrath.

This is the view that you see in the prophets, where God basically says, "You're going to get punished. And you, too. And don't think you're off the hook, either!" This cycle won't end until Death is swallowed up in victory. This is why believers wait patiently and cry, "Come quickly, O Lord!"

As an aside: I've noticed that the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians/Medes in turn are condemned for their aggression in the prophets. Egypt seems to be condemned mostly for its pride, but is not depicted as an aggressor nation.

Paul told Timothy to fan the flame … but it’s easier with a leaf blower

Sooooo ... Richard Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist and famous atheist author of the book The God Delusion, thinks that their chatbot is conscious and treats it as an intelligent friend.

🙄

@mattsheffield@mastodon.social

This is great!

"Gen Z Christians attend church more often than millennials, Gen X and baby boomers, according to the Barna Group, a firm that studies U.S. faith trends. In 2025, the typical Gen Z churchgoer attended nearly two weekends a month, the highest level since the firm began tracking, and up from around one weekend a month in 2020.

Young men in particular are more interested in faith. A Gallup poll released in April found that in 2025, 42% of young men said religion is very important to them, up sharply from 28% in 2023, and overtaking young women."

WSJ gift link: https://www.wsj.com/us-news/young-new-yorkers-have-a-new-hot-spot-sunday-mass-b96e1449?st=awkg8i&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink