Regular people

 Most of the Bible is about elites and rich people. From Abraham down to Jesus, it's all about the rich. Even Jesus was supported by rich women. Even that story about the rich man and the beggar Lazerus is more about the rich man's plight. Even David, supposedly a poor shepherd was from a rich family. And when he became king, regular people were just cannon fodder to him. What follows is about all I could find in the Bible that maybe has to do with regular people.

God made …….livestock. God created human beings…….male and female. Abel became a shepherd and Cain cultivated the ground.

Abraham welcomed some strangers with baked bread, roasted meat, milk and yogurt.

“Come on,” they said to Aaron,” make us some gods who can lead us. We don't know what happened to this fellow Moses, who brought us here from the land of Egypt.” (40 days and nights is just too long to leave people sitting around.)

Do not harvest the grain along the edges of your field and do not pick up what the harvesters drop. Leave them for the poor and the foreigners. Your scales and weights must be accurate.

If a man dies and has no son, give his inheritance to his daughters.(case of Zelophehad’s daughters)

The captain of the Babylonian guard destroyed the Temple and the walls of Jerusalem and took most of the people into exile. But he allowed some of the poorest people to stay behind to care for the vineyards and the fields.

Queen Vashti refuses to come to Xerxes’s feast. (Queen Vashti was an elite, but she set an example of not letting the king tell her what to do.)

Don't let anger control you. Think about it overnight and remain silent.

I would rather be a gatekeeper in the house of my God than live the good life in the homes of the wicked.

Oh, praise the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, you who serve at night in the house of the Lord.

To enjoy your work and accept your lot in life-this is indeed a gift from God. God keeps such people so busy enjoying life that they take no time to brood over the past.

There is hope only for the living. As they say,”It's better to be a live dog than a dead lion.” Whatever you do, do well. For when you go to Sheol, there will be no work or planning or knowledge or wisdom.

There was a small town with only a few people, and a great king came with his army and besieged it. A poor, wise man knew how to save the town, and so it was rescued. But afterward, no one sought to thank him.

Better to hear the quiet words of a wise person than the shouts of a foolish king.

Do what is right, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.

Public Ownership

 If cities like Portland are going to own entertainment venues, then they should demand that teams that operate in the city, should be publicly owned and can't move out of the city. Teams should have an ownership structure like the Green Bay Packers and no one entity should be able to own more than 2% of the stock.

250th

 I like celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Basically telling London, hey, you're too far away to tell us what to do. 3-4 months just to get an answer on colonial policy. And we should have left it at that. Setting up the Constitution in 1787 was a bad idea, that has let big money people and corporations control everything ever since. We need to go back to a loose grouping of states. Keep it low key. No need to play big power games. Let China do that for a while. See how they like it. Well, whatever you do, enjoy your celebrations tomorrow. We're going to the parade in Estacada OR.

Temple worship vs personal religion

 It's clear from the story of the tower of Babel that people should avoid building big monuments ( hear that Trump?), but people do anyway. You just have to look at D.C., Paris and the Vatican for examples.

Then there's the story of the Jewish exile. The Assyrian king Nebuchadnezzar sacked Jerusalem and took the rich and elite into exile to Babylon, but he left the poor to work the land and even redistributed some of the land so the poor could have their just rewards. And the land knew 70 years of peace. People could worship the way they wanted, setting up home alters and hilltop shrines.

But then the Persian king Cyrus, toppled the Assyrians. I suppose he didn't want the expense of supporting the exiled Jewish community and sent them back to Israel/Judah. And following in the ways of the elite before and since, they rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem, decreed that is the place for worship and re-instituted all ceremonies, festivals and Temple taxes. The regular people never get much of a break.

And religions have been following suit ever since. Building big churches and spending 80% of their money on buildings and salaries.

The thing that got me thinking about this post is the Pope came out with a speech on regulating AI. Regular people don't really need to hear this. The Pope and most other world leaders are just neo-babelites. Just go find a quiet monastery somewhere and turn the Vatican and Notre Dame in Paris into housing. Can autonomous cars be any worse than the human drivers? Can AI running things be any worse than the crazy governments we have now. The rich and elite just never want to give up any power.

Sleazy owners

 The Portland Trailblazers have a new owner, Tom Dundon. I call him Tom Dumdum. He made his big bucks screwing people out of their money with sub-prime auto loans. Since he bought the team, he's been firing people and generally making himself disliked in Portland. I'd hate to lose the Blazers, but we don't need this guy in Portland. 

I just read today, that the Chicago Bears were moving out of Chicago. There's nothing wrong with Soldier Field. The owners are just jealous of the other new stadiums.

In Portland, for some reason the city owns the big arena, the Moda Center. No reason for a city government to own a concert/sports venue, but they do and don't want to lose money on it. But do we really need these sports teams with their sleazy owners?

No. Half the people who go to games don't even watch the game. They're eating or walking around the concourse. Most of the other half are gambling on their phone. So what you could do is get an AI program to set up a league profile and play simulated games with simulated players projected as holograms on the court. It'd suit me. I don't like watching these $40 million players. Nobody is worth that much. They could do the same for concerts. All these artists, musicians, authors and sports players are whiners and so are their owners.

Surveys

 Every company wants you to do a survey now. You can't even buy a cup of coffee without them wanting a survey. I got a mail in survey the other day. I wrote in across the top: pay me $10. Why should I work for nothing? Most of the surveys come by email, so you can't respond, but if they get through to me: $10.

Jesus as Han Solo

 I always think of Han Solo as the ultimate independent. You have the Empire and rebels with all their rules and procedures and prejudices. Han is just trying to make a living, trading on the fringes with whoever and whatever. Like in our world, there is a lot of cross-border stuff that goes on because countries with their capitals far, far away have no idea how to make things work in the borderlands.

I was reading this book the other day, The Idolatry of God by Peter Rollins. Most of it is just drone-on to up the word count, but I deduced a few things about Jesus and the Resurrection. 

Jesus was the ultimate outsider.  He just wanted to make things work for everyone, without regard to party politics. He gave up any identity he had in his own religion and the dominant Roman culture and government at the time, because there were just too many rules. Of course, he ran afoul of the Empire. And unlike Han, with the Millennium Falcon, it's hard to do warp speed in sandals on a dusty road.

Crucifixion was the ultimate identity eraser. The ultimate ghosting. The culture is saying, you're gone, you never were, you were never any good, we won't remember you, you won't be missed. And Jesus decided that it wasn't worth the trouble to resist, so he went back to the ex nihilo, the nothingness, that he came from. 

But he resurrected. Because he had no identity, he could come back. Creatio ex nihilo, creation from nothing. And this happens. Cosmologists have found there are virtual energy fields, even in a vacuum.

So Jesus, the ultimate outsider, can do anything, help anyone, because he has no identity. And hopefully, people learn that lesson. Don't waste the energy to set up and fuel a cultural identity. Just use what energy is available to you to do something, anything. And in the end, you, too, go back to nothingness, the ultimate power source.