"The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me."
Mark 14:7
"The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me."
Luke misses it out altogether, which has been described as "cynical." Well, whatever. It's always fun to attribute meaningless discrimatory sentiments to a bunch of people dead these two thousand years. Some people claim it's because Luke was a Greek bastard, but not me. I think he had other means of expressing the thought.
Interestingly:
John 12:8
"You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me."
Are you beginning to get the drift?
It's no such thing as a commentary on the deserving/undeserving poor. It has nothing to do with the lumpen proletariat. It most certainly, and I am going to absolutely insist on this, has nothing to do with the concept of "a relative measure of poverty."
It's entirely focused on the anointment at Bethany. Unless you assume it's a profession of Jesus' megalomania (or alternative psychological weakness), it's a simple response to the question of whether to spend money on expensive oils right now, or else to save the money and give it to the poor.
There are, of course, two different ways to take this. You can pick what I assume is the Richard Dawkins position, which is "I am Jesus! I am morally bankrupt! Smear me with expensive unguents and let me wrestle a gigantic Judaean boar at 25/4 against!"
Or, alternatively, you could take the rather more sane view that it is an exhortation not to forget the present whilst you are promising to piss endless amounts of money down the drain on a cause that will never go away.
Sometimes, simple Christian doctrine can surprise you with its relevance.
---------
Sent from my Autotochthonous Throne as leader of the Pre-Trullan Greek Orthodox.
no subject
Do you mean one of the synoptics?
Matthew 26:11
"The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me."
Mark 14:7
"The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me."
Luke misses it out altogether, which has been described as "cynical." Well, whatever. It's always fun to attribute meaningless discrimatory sentiments to a bunch of people dead these two thousand years. Some people claim it's because Luke was a Greek bastard, but not me. I think he had other means of expressing the thought.
Interestingly:
John 12:8
"You will always have the poor among you, but you will not always have me."
Are you beginning to get the drift?
It's no such thing as a commentary on the deserving/undeserving poor. It has nothing to do with the lumpen proletariat. It most certainly, and I am going to absolutely insist on this, has nothing to do with the concept of "a relative measure of poverty."
It's entirely focused on the anointment at Bethany. Unless you assume it's a profession of Jesus' megalomania (or alternative psychological weakness), it's a simple response to the question of whether to spend money on expensive oils right now, or else to save the money and give it to the poor.
There are, of course, two different ways to take this. You can pick what I assume is the Richard Dawkins position, which is "I am Jesus! I am morally bankrupt! Smear me with expensive unguents and let me wrestle a gigantic Judaean boar at 25/4 against!"
Or, alternatively, you could take the rather more sane view that it is an exhortation not to forget the present whilst you are promising to piss endless amounts of money down the drain on a cause that will never go away.
Sometimes, simple Christian doctrine can surprise you with its relevance.
---------
Sent from my Autotochthonous Throne as leader of the Pre-Trullan Greek Orthodox.