Give me your tired
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:date: 2021-10-09T21:26:59
:status: draft
:category: computer
:tags: tags
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
-- Emma Lazarus: The New Colossus (1883)
For all those who consider themselves to be my friends I have one
rather depressing message: couple times in my life somebody
pointed how many of my friends are losers. I have always found
among my friends people who were strangely unsuccessful in the
basic business of living their lives. People on the edge or
beyond the of being unemployed, people with mostly failing
career, people on the edge or beyond the edge of their divorce,
but also people whose disaster was pure force majeure: one of my
friends, really smart programmer and a good Catholic friend, had
his mother dying while their brain-damaged daughter was born.
I was contemplating this strange number of such people couple of
years ago when I was running between two hospitals were two of my
friends were in that time on the suicide watch.
I think about this whenever I read rather strange verse from the
epistle of Saint Paul to Romans (3:10b-12 NET):
“There is no one righteous, not even one, // there is no one
who understands, // there is no one who seeks God. // All
have turned away, // together they have become worthless; //
there is no one who shows kindness, not even one.”
We all read these verses and we all happily repeat how we are not
worthy and that everything we have in our life is just gift from
God without any merit. “We are all worthless.” Do we really mean
it?
Could we translate “We are all sinners”, which sounds too
religiousy to me as “We are all losers”? If so, how did you feel
when I was talking it is so, how did you feel when I was talking
about my friends — losers. Did you feel included among those of
my friends who have troubles to make their life working? Do we
really mean what we say?
Please, turn to your neighbour and tell him “You are looser. And
so I am.” or if you want to be closer to what the Bible says, say
“You are worthless. And so I am.” How does it make you feel?
However, that’s what the Scripture says, isn’t it?
So, in order to be slightly less aggressive let us return to
safer statement, that we are all sinners. What does it mean to be
a sinner? What is a sin?
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Cheit - This is an unintentional sin, crime or fault. (Strong's
Concordance :H2399 (חַטָּא chate). According to Strong it comes from
the root khaw-taw (:H2398, H2403) meaning "to miss, to err from
the mark (speaking of an archer), to sin, to stumble."
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1Cor 1:18-31 Foolishness of God. He declares that those who are
valued by the God are not those who are valued by the world. What
was the measure of value of one's life then?
“22. For Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks ask for wisdom,
// but we preach about a crucified Christ, a stumbling block to
Jews and foolishness to Gentiles.” (1Cor 1:22-23, NET)
The measure of worth of one's life was blessing and wisdom. And
the Christ base human value on either of these, because he is our
blessing and he is our wisdom
What is the measure of the life's worth today? I would say the
success. We do have tendency to worship successful people: Jeff
Bezos of Amazon, famous sportsmen, artists.
Explain meritocracy.
