For the Love of God! (or mammon)

Google is smart. If you use Google to search, you will notice small ads that pop up on the right side of the screen that are based on your search. For instance, I do a search for "Astros" and on the side of the screen are these links (they may differ each time): www.mlb.com and, "Houston Baseball Tickets" www.cheappricedtickets.com . They are customized advertising links. That is how Google makes its money, advertising.

Gmail is also smart. Gmail is similarly set up so that these ads are related to keywords from the email that is being read. Gmail also has a special feature that scrolls news items across the top of your page. These are more general news items, but some are "sponsored links" that are related to key words from your emails. Since many of my emails are discussing Christian ideas with people, sending quotes and whatnot, many of the links are Christian in nature. Here is one below that made me laugh:

www.collect7keveryday.com

What's funny is that the word 'Christian' is nowhere to be found on the site except for the title, "Learn from Christian Millionaires." Maybe the "Make $7,000 dollars over and over again," is supposed to conjur up memories of the sacred number 7 from our Jewish roots. But I doubt it.

I'm going somewhere with this, I promise.

On the actual link on Gmail includes the following tagline: It's OK to be Rich...So Says The Bible. Learn To Make Millions And Spread The Wealth.

Here is a story that I got from The Drudge Report today: Oprah Winfrey: Wealth Is 'A Good Thing'. This article is ridiculous to me.

I just read an article yesterday in First Things by Alan Jacobs of Wheaton in which he quotes Kierkegaard:

“Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. . . . We would be sunk if it were not for Christian scholarship! Praise be to everyone who works to consolidate the reputation of Christian scholarship, which helps to restrain the New Testament, this confounded book which would, one, two, three, run us all down if it got loose.”

How did we get to the place where the Bible no longer speaks to us prophetically about wealth. We have somehow allowed the love of money to seep into our interpretation of scripture that allows us to read it without any consequences. I'm not saying wealth is necessarily bad, but should we assume that it is necessarily good? I think that is dangerous place to be.

Why are there Christain get-rich-quick schemes? Because there are Christians who will buy into that crap, literally. We listen to Oprah instead of Amos, I suspect.

http://www.reallivepreacher.com/node/723

Maybe it's unrelated, but The Preacher has just written a beautiful RLPDV (Real Live Preacher Dramatized Version) story of the Rich Man from Mark's Gospel. I think it is related.