bacht

More like "as far as any empirical researcher has been able to determine". You're smart enough to know that such things can never be proven by scientific means or pure logic.

The existence of non-corporeal entities is a low probability, and their actions in our world would likely be indistinguishable from natural phenomena. On the other hand we have lots of evidence of human imagination and susceptibility to suggestion.

Irrational belief systems have been with us since prehistory and continue even in the modern world. Why insist on adding more nonsense to a world that's already full of it? This seems like an unnecessary distraction, obscuring rather than clarifying truth.

Julio

David looks to me as a man who wishes to promote religion at the cost of suffocating his own brain, in favour of the diatribes of religious charlatans.
The pope comes to mind, and his business with transubstantiation!
David, please tell us:
Are you blessing the killing of Ananias and wife Sapphira for their money?

Zeluvia

I dont think this is it.

To give all your possessions to the community represents several things: Trust in the others of the community, committment from you, since you no longer have any distraction or fall back position, you are in effect giving UP independence, and SUBMITTING to the will of the community, which is, after all, an act of FAITH.

The SIN in holding back the money was neither greed, nor lying, it was lack of faith and commitment.

Therefore, they couldn't have had a TRUE calling from the Holy Spirit, they were imposters, posers, crazy people faking a calling possibly with nefarious purposes, because if they couldn't TRUST the community, then the community shouldn't trust THEM.

It doesn't suprise me at all that modern Christians don't get this.

Julio

But the system could not be godly or from the Father of Jesus!
Don't you see it?
The system was corrupt, and soon was dismantled or collapsed from within.
Less than 20 years later, Paul was still collecting money and goods for the same poor in Jerusalem!
This is the "empirical" proof that the "Holy Spirit" was but an excuse to eliminate the two activists!
They were used to giving the tithe.
That's what Ananias probably gave.
Peter got angry and killed them to avoid an uprising among the others who gave the crook Peter ALL their money!
The same is still going today in the Roman cult of the pope.
[I'm sure the episode never took place in real life, but Christian pastors clim their pulpits to preach sermons on stewardship using this crime to also extract funds via the same fear tactic! It is a fraudulent application of a spurious passage.
Why would godly people resort to dishonouring/dishonest methods to obtain money?]

Julio

And next, I have to ask those dishonest preachers who demand stewardship via this crime, my intrusive question:
What happened to Ananias' money?
The text doesn't say.
But since you can enlarge on the details of this weird story, so can I.
What happened to the money?!
Peter kept it, in spite of killing the two!
It was then blood money, as it has been all along the bloody history of this malevolent religion of Jesus of Nazareth!

lpetrich

Here's my favorite interpretation:

Ananias and Sapphira were pesky kulaks who refused to collectivize all their property as Comrade Peter had demanded.

Yes, that story seems rather Stalinist.

Julio

Yes, Stalinist.
Well put.
I had never thought about it from that angle.

Solo

Here is a systematic view of re-distribution of wealth under different ideologies, just so you get working on that angle:

IF YOU HAVE TWO COWS and live under

Christianity: you may keep one but you owe the other to the church in back tithes.

Islam: you may keep one but you are well advised to give the other one to the khadi to stay on his good side.

Socialism: The state will confiscate both cows and give you a ration of milk.

Bolshevism: The state will confiscate both cows and send you to Gulag.

Nazism: The state will confiscate both cows and, if you don’t mind, shoot you. If you do mind you will be shot you and your family sent to a concentration camp.

European Union: The state will confiscate both cows. It will shoot one of them and pour the milk of the other into a river.

British National Health Authority: The state will shoot both cows to put an end to the rumour that British cows are mad.

French Trade Unionism: You discover you like sex with sheep more and you want to sell both cows but you can’t because the truckers and the railways are on strike.

Classical Capitalism: you buy a bull and raise a herd. Eventually, you sell the herd and buy the shares of Standard Oil. You either end up getting rich on inside trades, or shooting yourself when you discover you are one of the suckers.

Modern American Corporate Capitalism: You sell both cows and also shares for a herd of 200,000 Holsteins. You fight extradition from the Bahamas.

Modern Russian Corporate Capitalism: You sell 100 trillion rubles worth of shares of a non-existent oil and gas syndicate. You are hunted by both Putin and the oligarchs. You are trying to buy the Bahamas. At this point you don’t give a damn about two cows.

Best,
Jiri

Julio

LOL!
Loved it.

Chili

Yes, that is the whole purpose of 'your belief' wherein the concept sin is the artificial agent that is used to bring about eternal life. To achieve this 'the believer must die' to all his possesions or 'he will die on his own' is the message in this parable and not be part of the community of believers who are of "one heart and mind," to say that each believer is no longer divided in his own mind wherein heretofore he was estranged from God. Note that in Catholicism man is basically good in that the heart of Christ is the is equal the heart of man and so 'to be one with God' is to be one with Christ in your own heart and hence: "of one heart and mind."

At least in Catholicism, if I understand it correct, to be a member of the Christian community in Rome one must be free from all fetters including ownership of any 'thing' at all, which is and always will be true in that God wants 'our all' and not just our possessions. So in this context when we 'surrender all' it is not 'the all' he wants but he wants the very 'I' that surrenders all and this is what the Ananias and Shapphira parable is all about wherein 'they conspired and counted' and thus not gave their all.

The mechanics behind this are quite simple and are probably best explained in Romans 6, which then automatically means that Rome is free of sin