This letter again started slow for me, but I loved the last chapter. As did, apparently John Smith. He was sent to the English colony of Virginia to help save it from the same fate as the lost colony of Roanoke. When he got there the crazy people were so obsessed with searching for gold and other treasures that they were actually starving to death, no one had planted crops and few had even built houses. He comes in and declares "if you do not work, you do not eat"...borrowing from Paul.
It worked.
Paul says many more good and useful things in the last chapter.... namely, mind your own business and take care of yourself.
1 comment:
We have seen several times in the O.T. where the Bible seems to espouse private property rights (capitalism), etc., and we had a hint in 1 Thes. but in the second half of chpt.3 we clearly see it. As Crystal mentioned, If you do not work, you do not eat. Do not be idle. The apostles shared (voluntarily - remember the one gentleman and his wife who tried to hold back even though they could have kept what they wanted for themselves as Peter said, it was their money) their finances as an organization so that they could concentrate on evangelizing. The rest of what we've seen as far as economics is clearly supported of the free market and capitalism. Private property rights are inherent, people are charged to work and not be idle, and to give to help the widow and orphan (as a mandate), and to help the poor (although by the mandate to hard work in this text, we must assume the poor to be people who have a legitimate reason for lack - natural disaster, disease, etc.). The next time a liberation theologist attempts to distort the Word, you can set them straight of what the overall Biblical context (Christian worlview) of economics really is.
Tomorrow is Acts 18:19-19:41
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