Enjoy the decline.
Most people have difficulty believing that this is scripture, that this is wisdom. When they read this they think “if this is wisdom, I don’t want it”. It is relenetlessly bleak: you are all going to end up tn the grave, what you do here will not matter, and if you do right you will probably be taken apart by those who are evil.
This world is not good, so enjoy those things that are: good wine, good food, the comfort of your wife. Nice clothes. Because your time here is limited, and you better enjoy the decline.
14There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people who are treated according to the conduct of the wicked, and there are wicked people who are treated according to the conduct of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. 15So I commend enjoyment, for there is nothing better for people under the sun than to eat, and drink, and enjoy themselves, for this will go with them in their toil through the days of life that God gives them under the sun.
16When I applied my mind to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth, how one’s eyes see sleep neither day nor night, 17then I saw all the work of God, that no one can find out what is happening under the sun. However much they may toil in seeking, they will not find it out; even though those who are wise claim to know, they cannot find it out.
1All this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God; whether it is love or hate one does not know. Everything that confronts them 2is vanity, since the same fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to those who sacrifice and those who do not sacrifice. As are the good, so are the sinners; those who swear are like those who shun an oath. 3This is an evil in all that happens under the sun, that the same fate comes to everyone. Moreover, the hearts of all are full of evil; madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead. 4But whoever is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion. 5The living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no more reward, and even the memory of them is lost. 6Their love and their hate and their envy have already perished; never again will they have any share in all that happens under the sun.
7Go, eat your bread with enjoyment, and drink your wine with a merry heart; for God has long ago approved what you do. 8Let your garments always be white; do not let oil be lacking on your head. 9Enjoy life with the wife whom you love, all the days of your vain life that are given you under the sun, because that is your portion in life and in your toil at which you toil under the sun. 10Whatever your hand finds to do, do with your might; for there is no work or thought or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol, to which you are going.
The trouble is that Solomon is wise, and we are fools not to see that this time is evil. This passage is put with an analogy from Galatians, that of the two wives of Abraham one was a slave and connected to the earthly Jerusalem, and one to the Jerusalem above. We can either be of this earth or allied with the kingdom to come. We cannot be both.
21Tell me, you who desire to be subject to the law, will you not listen to the law? 22For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and the other by a free woman. 23One, the child of the slave, was born according to the flesh; the other, the child of the free woman, was born through the promise. 24Now this is an allegory: these women are two covenants. One woman, in fact, is Hagar, from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery. 25Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. 26But the other woman corresponds to the Jerusalem above; she is free, and she is our mother. 27For it is written, “Rejoice, you childless one, you who bear no children, burst into song and shout, you who endure no birthpangs; for the children of the desolate woman are more numerous than the children of the one who is married.” 28Now you, my friends, are children of the promise, like Isaac. 29But just as at that time the child who was born according to the flesh persecuted the child who was born according to the Spirit, so it is now also. 30But what does the scripture say? “Drive out the slave and her child; for the child of the slave will not share the inheritance with the child of the free woman.” 31So then, friends, we are children, not of the slave but of the free woman.
[That is two of the most difficult and challenging passages of scripture in one morning. I need more coffee, and look at the audience slide away]
This world is fallen, and people are stupid. Individually we are smart, but as a crowd we become foolish, at times mad. This world is evil, and we should not be shocked when we see injustice, evil, and those who practice such succeeding. If we were aligned with this world despair is the rational position.
First, the world’s oligarchs slowly but surely took over London real estate, where as we reported last week, home prices in May soared by the most in 12 years, and now, according to the Telegraph, in order to make London into an even more exclusive enclave where only the uber-wealthy can rub shoulders, assorted luxury buildings are installing metal spikes on the ground outside to fully deter homeless people from sleeping (and hence living) there. In other words, in London homeless people have been relegated to pigeon status, as the same technique has been long used to prevent rats with wings from landing, and defecating, at select locations.
…
As for Tesco, it decided to simply lie:Tesco said the spikes outside its store in Regent Street were not intended to target those in need of shelter. A Tesco spokesman said: “The studs were put in place to try and stop people engaging in anti-social behaviour like smoking or drinking outside our store, which can be intimidating for our customers.”
Anti-social studs?
That said, since the world’s central banks have managed to make the world’s top metropolises sufficiently gentrified to where only the uber wealthy can afford to live there, the poor should thank their lucky stars that they only have to deal with sharp spikes instead of, say, moats and land mines near luxury buildings (that said it is only a matter of time before that thought experiment becomes reality).
After all, in a world in which justice has a standard for the 1% and everyone else, a few blown up homeless would surely be classified, in the passive voice of course, as “accident that have happened due to glitch.”
I will add one thing to the list: the comment that Islam is the religion of war was demonstrated (yet again) when a bunch of Islamic terrorists got into a gun battle as they tried to hijack a plane in Pakistan. Pakistan. A country set up as an overtly Islamic state.
We should not be shocked. The spirit of this world is evil, and the action of those aligned to this spirit are reprehensible. Do not be them, and do not support them For we have a higher calling.
