Article: What if Satan had a plan? - A historically accurate little tale

The Watering Hole - Conversations on 21st. Century religion.

Satan's Grand Plan

Abstract

Is there a plan in effect to take over American for less pure interests? The facts stack up well... if you believe in fact stacking.

What if Satan had a plan? - A historically accurate little tale

Satan had won many battles in the years since Christ came, but no victory. In the first few centuries, he planted bad leaders in the church who loved money and power, and they corrupted many things and mistreated people, but eventually people got wise, rebelled, had several years of war, and overthrew the church. They began printing the Bible so people could read for themselves and not be fooled again.

He got people to focus on witches and other supernatural beings, and different corrupted teachings (Cathars), and to ruthlessly torture, kill entire communities of people, and burn their wives and daughters in the name of the Church. Finally the nightmare of the inquisitions burned itself out.

He got kings and their mighty leaders to focus on wealth, corrupt people, and sent them to the American continents to plunder and kill people who they considered inferior and subhuman, for their gold and crops. But eventually this burned out as new civilizations developed in the Americas.

He just couldn't win. Finally he settled on a grand plan. He called his minions together and explained it to them.

"I want you to go to the United States, this great and wonderful dream, the hope of all the world, this bastion of, yuk, freedom and prosperity, and use everything against them. The people are doing too well and its working against me. I want you to take that away so that they will resent everything. They have freedom and a political system that makes sure it stays free. I want you to use that against them. They have a thousand different kinds of Christianity. I want you to use that against them. Get greed into their politics and religion. Mix religion and politics and greed all together! I want you to prepare the way for the Antichrist. Let me whisper my plan in your ear, and you go sell it."

So they went to political leaders, and leaders of corporations, and religious leaders, and got them to agree. They would all work together, and they started around 1930, to get people to think of their country and role in a new way: Money. Power. Right. God. What a package. Everything was about getting more money and ruling the world - they were the best.

The rules for more money were simple. Make people want more and tell them it was godly to work like slaves for it. It was a new "work ethic." The wars helped because everyone got used to scrimping for their country and sacrificing and working very hard. This was preached heartily in the churches until everyone believed it. Nothing was worth doing, unless it made money, especially for the wealthy corporate master. For a while, everyone thought everything was beautiful. The economy improved, wages seemed to be on a steady increase, people bought new homes, clothes, appliances, and other things. Then came the 1970s, and the economy almost unraveled, but they survived, and so did Satan's plan. And around the year 2000, his plan started to bear fruit.

Included in Satan's plan came certain leaders who were willing to be taken in by this complex set of ideas that tied together country, work, and religion. A lot of the emphasis went to controlling others through politics - power - and power corrupts. Some of the views that got put forward were Christ-like, even if not perfectly formulated. They were about helping the poor, making the world a better place, etc. But some of the views were just people legislating about things that they didn't like, and saying it was against God.

And then the financial market resets came, and major recessions became more frequent and the economy stalled or tanked, and this was worldwide. Over-reach for more and more money in the financial markets created resets and bubble bursts. Countries are now on the brink of financial disaster. It doesn't matter because more money had to be had at any risk. No matter what happened, the wealthy rarely went hungry or lost their jobs or their homes. So if countries and the entire world crash into oblivion - so what - the wealthy and politicians won't suffer. It was a great game. Money, money, money! Greed. Satan's plan.

Part of the plan was to get people to believe that everything is about self. Your heart isn't important, and others aren't important. What you look like is important. You have to constantly compare yourself with others so you attract someone hot. What you have is important, and it's important that you have more than others. Get all you can get. Focus on your time, your money, doing what you want to do. Don't get trapped in marriage and family - those are disposables. Get the divorce rate up to 50%. You are all there is - only you are important. Be very self-absorbed. Everything has to make your life better. The key to what you want is making more and more money. You can't have enough money. There is always more to reach for. Money and having things brings happiness - the grand illusion of Satan's plan.

What people didn't realize is that money has only one master. It has to be fed. Everything has to be dedicated to it. The mathematics is very simple: Make more money by selling products for more money or at less expense, and inflation pushes it. It is a never-ending task master that constantly pushes for people to do more and more, or have fewer employees to do it for less. The leaders declare that layoffs and mergers that are destructive to employment, are "healthy." The price of everything has to go up so that wages supposedly can go up. But it's a lie. Real earning power hasn't gone up since 1950, no, real earning power has fallen steadily since 1970 so that it now takes two wage earners to support a family. And the poor are left deeper in the dust. Eventually it got to the point that jobs and wages are in decline, leaving more and more people out of work. So now 4 out of 10 employees say burnout is a motivator for a new job search, and breaks are becoming rare with about half saying they don’t feel like they can take a break at all. But the money monster doesn't care. It wasn't born to care, it was born simply to make money. Satan's plan.

In the economy, politicians pushed to cut, cut, cut, starving any program that helped anyone, and this put smiles on the faces of politicians who loved the idea of ending programs that helped people, especially those politicians financed and supported by the wealthy who wanted these cuts. It brought a steady focus on austerity, so that new spending could not be approved, and old spending always had to be cut. It's a lie. The actual truth is, shown by economists over and over, and in re-evaluating old studies, that austerity only deepens and prolongs recessions and hurts a lot more people, or it causes a depression - it never helps. But politicians like to use austerity as a way to get rid of programs they don't like, especially ones that help people. It's the perfect excuse. Despite the human misery and death they cause, politicians are giddy with delight at the wealth they are saving the wealthy, because they worship money and power. Satan's plan.

The laws that many religious people and their politicians were pushing were dehumanizing, oppressive, and very divisive. They were like laws that supported slavery. They hurt people. But they justified them by screaming, "God said." They caused more and more divisions in churches so that they began to decline in membership and couldn't stay afloat financially. People who saw these endless conflicts inside the church, thought they were all crazy people and didn't want anything to do with them. Church attendance dropped in half, and within another half century, it will be below 10%. The effect was, churches no longer had any power, and churches which once could help the needy, no longer could, and any positive message they had, had been replaced with a few vocal churches shouting negative messages. Satan's plan.

The industrialist leaders and wealthy, while some might have hearts of gold and promote many benevolent things, are not much help to the poor. Many in the highly competitive environment adopted a corrupt theory: It's a dog eat dog world and only the strong survive. Turn a blind eye to what you don't want to see. Focus on Adam Smith and Ayn Rand philosophies of greed centered economics. Satan's plan.

In reality, it's not true that only the strong survive. It's complicated. It is often the one that is most adaptable to change that survives. This would be the poor, not the wealthy. The strong are easily corrupted by power.

Money isn't evil. The love of it is. Elevating money to be more important than anything else is evil.

Satan was very happy. He had the church on its way to a quick demise by causing infighting within it, and displaying a bad image to those outside of it. It could not be effective. He had fooled people into turning themselves into slaves for money. He had economies poised on the brink of disaster as the money worshippers over-reached for more money, a quest that could never be satisfied. Politicians and financial leaders around the world were choking the planet to death with austerity measures that would eventually lead all economies to fail. And all of it in the name of God, who would soon be universally hated either for laws that oppressed or for letting an unthinkable financial tragedy happen. Lies and misdirection. Satan's plan.

At the right moment, Satan could slip in an Antichrist who would take over and take away freedom and lead the world into slavery and misery, and anti-God prejudice, and he had his choice of political and religious leaders who already followed all of his teachings: Worship money. Ignore the needy and sick and orphans, and they will either lift themselves up or go away or die. Cause division in God's name so you can rule. Life is about survival of the strongest, so win, win, win. Don't give money to anyone - drive them into poverty so they don't have power. Do everything to make the wealthy wealthier. Unrestricted Capitalism is God's plan. Satan's plan.

So, is Satan going to win this time? Who do you think the Antichrist will be?

Personal note: I am neither for nor against capitalism. Capitalism can be very destructive to both individuals and businesses, and can make enormous profits, especially for the wealthy. But many countries with blended capitalism and socialism do even better than us. We are responsible for making capitalism work for us. It's up to us. There are many of the Ayn Rand persuasion who believe in a completely free, unregulated, market. But businesses actually benefit far more from government regulation than individuals. Right now we are leaving the poor in the dust, and moving everyone except the upper 20% toward povery every year. I write a blog on economics for information: nationsagenda.com.

You might find these books illuminating as to the goals of some capitalists:

One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America
The assumption that America was, is, and always will be a Christian nation dates back no further than the 1930s, when a coalition of businessmen and religious leaders united in opposition to FDR’s New Deal. With the full support of Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s, these activists—the forerunners of the Religious Right—propelled religion into the public sphere. Church membership skyrocketed; Congress added the phrase “under God” to the Pledge of Allegiance and made “In God We Trust” the country’s official motto. For the first time, America became a thoroughly religious nation.
Provocative and authoritative, One Nation Under God reveals how the coming of money, religion, and politics created a false origin story that continues to define and divide American politics today.
New Free Market (conservative) Jesus Bible. The writers promise to remove objectionable social aspects of the Bible, which they believe are mistranslations caused by those 57 socialist translators of the King James, the Catholics, Anglicans and Puritans, and leave only those translations that support capitalism, or leave them out as outliers.

Note: King James 1, who had the Bible translated into English, told his son, "...merchants think the whole common-weale ordained for making them up; and accounting it their lawful gain and trade to enrich themselves upon the loss of all the rest of the people... the prices of their wares ever rise but never fall; being as constant in their evil costume; as if it were settled law for them." [Costume here probably means habit.] He goes on, "Behold then the true form and worth of foreign trade, which is the great revenue of the King, the honour of the kingdom, the noble profession of the merchant, the school of our arts, the supply of our wants, the employment of our poor, the improvement of our lands, the nursery of our marines, the walls of our Kingdom, the means of our treasure, the sinews of our wars, the terror of our enemies." From the book, Early British Economics. Not much has changed since King James time, when it comes to the overreach of those with money. King James speaks of the practicality of economics, and its holistic embrace, not that of capitalist or socialist with specialized interests.
Christian fundamentalism is a capitalist construct: The secret history of American religion
Jesus Was a Capitalist
Biblical Capitalism - The Sacralizing of Political and Economic Issues
The early influencers of capitalism in the US: Adam Smith and Ayn Rand were proponents of "rational self-interest," or "selfishness," which is defined as "Acting in the way that is most personally beneficial. Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, famously explained that it is possible to achieve the best economic benefit for all even when, and in fact because, individuals tend to act in their own self-interest." For Smith, sacrificing for others was thought to be simply a psychological condition, not a moral imperative. For Rand, who wrote The Virtue of Selfishness and books on economics, the idea of sacrificing for others was out of the question. These are pillars of economic thought, as is "Greed is Good."
The Staples Advantage Workplace Index: Measuring Workplace Trends and Work Culture

The Newsroom - Tea Party is the American Taliban

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