Sorry but you have not shown me anything that backs your statement up.

Where did the bible say wealth was good? show me?

Where did it say regarding money, everything you showed me just then was negating wealth, forget the christians have more money crap.

I know what it says and i can see your interpretation, but just like nostradamous the vague nature ensures you can take what you like out of it. if you believe, you want to interprete it according to your belief.

If it is so full of conflictions, balancing everything out, cannot this be proof that many men wrote it, and god was perhaps not coming through, rather individual attitudes?

If you need this as a means to give your life rules and beliefs that are not your own, i hope it does its job. But if you are a free thinker, non brainwashed and have your own thoughts and feelings i dont understand why you subscribe to a set of beliefs.

In life, things are changing. look at politics, its is becoming less party orientated, people now work often of sets of principles individual to them rather than blindly following all party policies. Christianity will be the same for those free thinkers of the future.

Sunday school renegade, Tennyson? You bet. That's where I learned the streets of heaven are literally paved with gold. The tasteless logic behind gospel entrepreneurialism has been around for a long time.

Make your money, treat your family to a better life but don't lose sight of the main game. Those who catch the bug are a bit like long-lost friends who turn up our of the blue, promise to change your life, then try to flog you Amway.

Biblical references to avarice are a dime a dozen and make perfect sense whether you're religious or not. I haven't memorised them but have found it's easier to toss them like hand-grenades at those who maintain money and religion are easy bedfellows. I'm curious to hear what our resident preacher has to say on this. David?

But I'm even more curious as to what Tennyson's far-off divine event will be.

The poet, Alfred Tennyson, was person who lived in genuine hope.
He understood and lived within the mystery of creation.
And he wrote a 36 stanza poem called 'In Memoriam' to unfold his rich insights:
These are the last 4 stanza's (you can google the others):

....

Of those that, eye to eye, shall look
On knowledge; under whose command
Is Earth and Earth’s, and in their hand
Is Nature like an open book;

No longer half-akin to brute,
For all we thought and loved and did,
And hoped, and suffer’d, is but seed
Of what in them is flower and fruit;

Whereof the man, that with me trod
This planet, was a noble type
Appearing ere the times were ripe,
That friend of mine who lives in God,

That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event,
To which the whole creation moves.

cheers!

how bout Joe Hill: 'the preacher and the slave" 1911. in the context of the churches in america taking the employers side in the general strikes of 1910-11.

Long-haired preachers come out every night,
Try to tell you what's wrong and what's right;
But when asked how 'bout something to eat
They will answer with voices so sweet:

You will eat, bye and bye,
In that glorious land above the sky;
Work and pray, live on hay,
You'll get pie in the sky when you die.

The starvation army they play,
They sing and they clap and they pray
'Till they get all your coin on the drum
Then they'll tell you when you're on the bum:
Holy Rollers and jumpers come out,
They holler, they jump and they shout.
Give your money to Jesus they say,
He will cure all diseases today.
If you fight hard for children and wife --
Try to get something good in this life --
You're a sinner and bad man, they tell,
When you die you will sure go to hell.

Workingmen of all countries, unite,
Side by side we for freedom will fight;
When the world and its wealth we have gained
To the grafters we'll sing this refrain:

You will eat, bye and bye,
When you've learned how to cook and to fry.
Chop some wood, 'twill do you good,
And you'll eat in the sweet bye and bye.

Brilliant.

I gotta read more poetry.

There go the pearls, trampled underfoot, yet again.
You can't say we weren't warned.

Must get those swine to the butcher, for yes... we can still eat them in Oz... ham sandwiches. Or bacon pie, in the sky, bye and bye!