Friends,
I'd like to have a word with those of you who call yourselves Christians (Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Bill Maherists, etc. can read along, too, as much of what I have to say, I'm sure, can be applied to your own spiritual/ethical values).
In my new film I speak for the first time in one of my movies about my own spiritual beliefs. I have always believed that one's religious leanings are deeply personal and should be kept private. After all, we've heard enough yammerin' in the past three decades about how one should "behave," and I have to say I'm pretty burned out on pieties and platitudes considering we are a violent nation that invades other countries and punishes our own for having the audacity to fall on hard times.
I'm also against any proselytizing; I certainly don't want you to join anything I belong to. Also, as a Catholic, I have much to say about the Church as an institution, but I'll leave that for another day (or movie).
Amidst all the Wall Street bad guys and corrupt members of Congress exposed in Capitalism: A Love Story, I pose a simple question in the movie: "Is capitalism a sin?" I go on to ask, "Would Jesus be a capitalist?" Would he belong to a hedge fund? Would he sell short? Would he approve of a system that has allowed the richest 1 percent to have more financial wealth than the 95 percent under them combined?
I have come to believe that there is no getting around the fact that capitalism is opposite everything that Jesus (and Moses and Mohammed and Buddha) taught. All the great religions are clear about one thing: It is evil to take the majority of the pie and leave what's left for everyone to fight over. Jesus said that the rich man would have a very hard time getting into heaven. He told us that we had to be our brother's and sister's keepers and that the riches that did exist were to be divided fairly. He said that if you failed to house the homeless and feed the hungry, you'd have a hard time finding the pin code to the pearly gates.
I guess that's bad news for us Americans. Here's how we define "Blessed Are the Poor": We now have the highest unemployment rate since 1983. There's a foreclosure filing once every 7.5 seconds. 14,000 people every day lose their health insurance.
At the same time, Wall Street bankers ("Blessed Are the Wealthy"?) are amassing more and more loot --Â and they do their best to pay little or no income tax (last year Goldman Sachs' tax rate was a mere 1 percent!). Would Jesus approve of this? If not, why do we let such an evil system continue? It doesn't seem you can call yourself a Capitalist and a Christian -- because you cannot love your money and love your neighbor when you are denying your neighbor the ability to see a doctor just so you can have a better bottom line. That's called "immoral" -- and you are committing a sin when you benefit at the expense of others.
When you are in church this morning, please think about this. I am asking you to allow your "better angels" to come forward. And if you are among the millions of Americans who are struggling to make it from week to week, please know that I promise to do what I can to stop this evil -- and I hope you'll join me in not giving up until everyone has a seat at the table.
Thanks for listening. I'm off to Mass in a few hours. I'll be sure to ask the priest if he thinks J.C. deals in derivatives or credit default swaps. I mean, after all, he must've been good at math. How else did he divide up two loaves of bread and five pieces of fish equally amongst 5,000 people? Either he was the first socialist or his disciples were really bad at packing lunch. Or both.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
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10For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: "If a man will not work, he shall not eat."
Followers should give ten percent to their church and above and beyond that to the institutio
In terms of "those who will not work...sho
Followers of Jesus would be wise to read Matthew 25 - "The sheep and the goats". Is tithing really "enough"? Or are we called to do more?
There is no argument that capitalism has been revolution
We are also free to give to our church or the charity of our choice and Americans do in numbers larger than any country in the world. Don't confuse compassion and Marxism. Compulsion is not compassion
Many Christians deny is that this applies to all Christians
But the people of Jesus' time who believed this very same thing were the Pharisees, and Jesus was savage with them on this issue.
Jesus considered the tithe insufficie
Jesus did not wish to abolish tithes. He wished only to go beyond the level of easy fulfilment and easy moral self satisfacti
What did he mean by these last three phrases? The act whereby the disciple gives away his or her means of ‘security’ - capital.
Yoder translates the lesson from the parable of the poor widow: ‘The quantity of money that you give is of little importance
When he said ‘sell what you possess and practice compassion
He was calling for a jubilee levelling in AD 26, a ‘refreshme
For too long, we've been forced to listen to leaders and influentia
It's about time we see "people of faith" following through with action. I'm glad Michael Moore spoke out about his spiritual beliefs and is asking us to examine what Jesus would think about today's society.
We need to look around and discern between those who call themselves "Christian
Our churches are no longer able to meet the needs of those struggling within their communitie
When 1% of the American population has more wealth than the bottom 95% combined, the only thing that can help those "at the bottom" is a system of taxation that allows the government to provide for the "general welfare" of it's people.
"6This is also why you pay taxes, for the authoritie
Perhaps God wanted the governing authoritie
I have yet to see, "Capitalis
It is decidedly anti-Chris
Social welfare and all of Christiani
"The Politics of Jesus", by John Howard Yoder. According to Yoder, Jesus' ministry was based on the fulfillmen
You only need pick the bits you want.
i.e. The meek shall inherit the earth.
About six feet by two feet of it.
And only after the strong have finished with it.
"You can fool some of the people some of the time ..and thats enough to make a good living"(WC Fields)
But brokenness is actually a path toward wholeness. We Americans we have been cutting corners and selling our futures short and now we are feeling the pain as the seeds we have sown are growing into pretty weak and unsustaina
For a while, in despair, I imagined what my Grandmothe
But then my thinking changed, if Grandma Lillie were alive today, she would not waste her time hand wringing, nor pointing fingers. She would roll up her sleeves and get to work -- doing whatever was being asked of her. And she would never complain about it -- instead she would proclaim: Elbow grease! That's all we need!
As Americans, I think our time for hanging our heads is all over. No more: "why me? why isn't my shallow life of shopping and overspendi
I am going to take a lesson from Grandma Lillie and spend my energy in ways that will get my own life on track. Hopefully if enough of us do that, our country's fortunes will follow
But, I had no idea until leaving how difficult/
Some say the government can't do healthcare well. I, for one, am reasonably happy with government
What if the police were a private enterprise
We have no problem expecting and paying for the government to provide these basic and universal necessitie
If you have great, cheap insurance through your employer, congratula
After all, part of your premiums pay for their care!
If someone without insurance goes to the ER, the hospital has to treat them, even if they can't pay, even if they are an illegal alien. Joe Wilson was correct, Obamacare will pay for illegal aliens, just like the current system does.
Of course, ER care costs a lot more than seeing someone when they first get sick, that is why we pay $7000 each per year for $3000 of coverage (well, that and paying huge administra
Universal health care would cut the cost of insurance to folks who have it (as long as there is a public option to keep the companies honest, otherwise the insurance companies will just pocket the savings).
But Michael is off base, too. Jesus is talking to those who take up their cross and follow him, not everyone, and certainly not to an entire national government
We have a clash of worldviews going on, and I agree that we need to be asking ourselves whether this is really the kind of society we wanted. As a Jesus-foll
I saw your new film, "Capitalis
I just want to thank you so much for making your films and doing what you do. It makes all the difference in the world, and I wanted to tell you that personally
Don't ever give up, don't ever stop speaking out and making your wonderful films. You are making a difference
He had a 98% blockage.
We had no health insurance.
The hospital still helped us.
The bill was a $110,000 and we didnt have to pay a dime b/c we were a tax right off.
If obama really cared abou the uninsured in America, he could have use that 787 billion stimulis plan to pay for the small uninsured Americans !!!
This is about gov. control !!!
Part of why costs keep going up is that insurance gets less and less affordable
Eventually only the rich and goverment employees will be able to afford health insurance, and then the rich will agree to socialized health care so they can stop paying more than their share...