The Dolphins Make Me Cry.com - Forums

He was a good man and a good leader. While I didn't agree with all his stances, he was leading his flock in the right direction.  I hope his successor continues his legacy.

Agreed.

Pope Francis was one of the few major religious leaders of my lifetime that seemed to prioritize helping the needy and poor over punishing sinners.
It is more and more rare to find a self-proclaimed Christian who tries to live up to the more admirable teachings of Jesus, but Francis was one of the few.

Who are these religious leaders punishing sinners? This I've got to see. Is this something I can volunteer for?  I can actually use a whip. Hahaha

I love non Christians pretending to know Jesus better than the people who spend everyday reading or meditating on the word. What you meant to say is that he is one of the few "religious leaders" who fits into the box Spider has created for himself.

If you read the new testament once you will easily conclude the Jesus would fully support giving children free lunches in school.  It takes thousands of hours of difficult distortion of his message to conclude that Jesus would want to eliminate all handouts to the poor.

That is why us non-Christian feel we understand Jesus better than so called Christians,  we take Jesus's message about helping the poor and forgiving sinners at face value, we don't spend hours looking for ways to distort it. 

As a non-Christian when I read Matthew 25:25–36, it is obvious to me that Jesus would be pro-immigrant.  However, only through many hours of distorting and reconstructing the teaching of Jesus can you conclude he would have wanted a wall on the Mexican border. 

CF, it is incredibly appropriate that, among questions of whether self-avowed "Christians" are living up to their values, your go-to retort is not, "Look at how much I've volunteered and helped others in my community," but rather, "Look at how much more I read the Bible than you."  Absolutely flawless, sir.  And this works perfectly for exactly the sort of "Christians" I was referencing: they can use their superior command of Scripture to justify whatever new injustice they are perpetrating.

But this is nothing new.  And this is evident in your idea of conservative Christian values:

Your hand-picked example is an organization that you cite not for how many hungry people they have helped feed, or housing that they have helped people find, or even jobs that they've helped people get.  No, no... the "help" that they have provided people is getting them off of the government dole.  That's the only type of help you approve of: helping them stop taking taxpayer money.  This is your idea of being a good Christian.

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Agreed. He was a humble man who prioritized helping the weak and needy, and made a point of being of service to others and not himself.

Once again, like CF said, it has to fit a box you created for yourself or it's no good.   The whole point of the Bible is people being charitable and having a willingness to give and help others in the community.   The big difference is, some governments force you to do it.   That's not Christianity.  That's SOCIALISM.

Any honest reading of the New Testament would conclude that Jesus would be a strong proponent of social welfare programs.  There is zero evidence to suggest that he would have opposed the Roman government aiding the poor.   

In Matthew 25, Jesus speaks through parables and teachings about the importance of being prepared for his return and the need to be compassionate and serve others. I have no issue with giving needy children free lunches. In fact, I was one of those kids growing up as was a lot of us Republicans who worked ourselves out of the lower class.

But I've read the whole Bible and no where does He call for the ":government" to provide handouts. In fact, he says to “give back to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.”.  This means he is calling for his church (God's people) to provide for what they can.  He also says "The poor you will always have with you". Paul also said in 2 Thessalonians "If a man will not work, he shall not eat.". Other verses say similar things which to me is saying that handouts are not to be just given willy nilly.

By the way  ... this is exactly what Hope Florida is doing. Taking away the responsibility from the government and helping the people take care of themsleves.

Pope Francis was a really humble, decent man. He will be missed.

RIP, Papa Franciscus.

1.  The Roman government did not aid the poor.   In fact, it taxed the poor heavily.

2.  Nowhere in the Bible does it say that the government is to provide for the poor.   Matter of fact, it says both in the Old and New Testament that if a man doesn't work, he doesn't eat.

Again, the impressive thing about Pope Francis was that he didn't subscribe to this anti-poor "just give them some bootstraps" mindset that the loudest Christians in America are devoted to.

Don't undersell his stance on LGBTQ either. No, he still wasn't ready for priests to start marrying them but at least he started to accept them which is a 180 from past history.

I hope you're not suggesting that the poor is made up of non working people because that doesn't seem to be the case at all. There are those that don't work and some of them are poor for sure, but in my humble opinion the poor overall tend to be the hardest working people you will find. I think your rationale may need some work.

In our society, the people who make the least money almost always do the most labor, and the more money you make, the less you physically work.

All this "poor people just don't want to work" talk is not only wrong, it's the opposite of the truth: it is rich people who do not want to work.  They feel entitled to profit off of others' work.

I haven't spoken much about this because I'm super conflicted.  I don't care for the Catholic Church, so it's hard for me to celebrate its leader.  But it's also the kind of situation where he's about a decent a guy as you could ask for to be in the position he is.  It's a weird way to feel.

So according to you, only manual labor constitutes work? Does that mean your lazy because I don't think your job requires manual labor?

I've been on both ends as I started as a laborer on a bridge crew in the late 80s. Fast forward to now and I only leave my house once or twice a week because most of my job is on Teams meetings or through email. I can assure you sometimes the "stress" of management is worse than just having to go out and do manual labor.

Is it wrong that I am completely indifferent to his death? I have no connection to the Pope or Catholicism. It's unfortunate that he died but we all will eventually. It really doesn't move me in any way.

No, it's just more work than jobs that don't require manual labor.

So if you could make the same amount of money swinging a hot tar mop up on a roof in the summer Florida sun, or perhaps out in strawberry patches picking knee-high berries all day, you would prefer that to the "high stress" of management?  Please.

It is exactly this kind of wealth worship that drives the spite towards the poor across this country.  It's not enough for you to make much more money doing an easier job; you also have to insist that your job is Actually Much Harder than literal back-breaking labor.

Pope Francis had his priorities correct: the poor deserve our respect, sympathy, and help, not our hatred and scorn.

I've actually done that and it was the worst job I've ever had. Fun guys to work around but brutal work. I worked for a roofing company for a few weeks in the summer before I started building bridges. On the "hot tar" roofs, I was the one shoveling rock out of the back of the dump truck to be placed on the hot tar roof. The more I dug the lower it became and higher I had to throw it into wheelbarrows. It made me look forward to tearing off shingles which I had previously thought was the worst. hahaha

Making more money is the goal for all of us. Well, most of us anyway. I do know of people perfectly content with their minimal lives. If we are being honest ... it's the pursuit of women who motivate most of us. The drive to have one, or many, motivates guys to work hard to achieve financial goals. If that wasn't the case I think fewer guys would care to work hard.

Nobody has a right to a management job or an office job or a job that is deemed easier than one that involves manual labor.   It's really simple.  If you want one of those types of jobs, get yourself the education, training and skills that will make you marketable to get one.   Don't sit around and complain about how rough your life is.

I'm not even talking about people having a "right" to an easy job, or a "right" to a higher-paying job.
What I'm talking about is people who are fortunate to have higher paying jobs that are far less labor intensive, yet feel the need to add insult to injury and insist that actually they are also Working Harder than the poors because of the "stress" or some other BS.  Like it's somehow stress-free to be at the bottom of the totem pole and treated like you are worthless & easily replaceable while you're also doing intense physical labor.

Just because you are not doing intense physical labor doesn't mean you're not working hard.   If a job is mentally and emotionally taxing, it can be just as draining as physical labor.   I'm my own boss but to run my business, I need to do physical labor and mental labor as well.

Any person who says this is lying to you, and perhaps to themselves as well.

As I just said...


And again:  jobs that are physically brutal can also be mentally exhausting at the same time.

I'm guessing you have no personal experience with this. It's much easier to recover from being physically tired than mentally tired. Many times the mental things are what carries over into your free time and even sleep. Most physical jobs are left at the door when you head home. Not so much for the ones having to play mental gymnastics all the time. This doesn't even account for the jobs where you're literally a phone call away at all times, yet only get paid for 40 hours a week. Not that it's a huge deal ... but I've had to deal with an emergency on a project while I was at a wedding, in the middle of the night, and on weekends. When I did manual labor I didn't have to to deal with any of that but now the buck stops with me.

CF, would you prefer to be back up on the roof for the same pay?
Back on "the worst job you ever had"?

I've had to leave a superbowl party mid-way to go home and fix a server issue. but I'd rather do that than lay down a new roof somewhere.

Agreed.   Thats a very tough job.  My issue is that this Spider guy is shaming us for having jobs that are not as physically demanding as that one.   Just because you're not exerting yourself doesn't mean you're not working hard.

In my business, I have to constantly dust and straighten out shelves, not to mention carry whole cases of beer, wine, or liquor out onto the sales floor and either stretch up or down to put each bottle in its correct place.

So when I say that people who have more labor intensive jobs are "working harder" I am shaming you, but when you say that your management jobs are "actually harder work" than the labor intensive jobs, you're not shaming them?

Snowflakes, as far as the eye can see.  Conservatives are such whiny babies; your feelings are always incredibly important and must be Protected At All Costs, but everyone else's feelings are meaningless.

Obviously not but it doesn't' make me lazy. It' makes me someone who has earned something.

I honestly don't give a shit how you feel.   I worked hard to come up with the idea for my business and I pour my blood, sweat, heart, and money into it.   That, to me, is working hard.   If you're putting max effort into whatever job you have and feel drained at the end of the day, IMO you've worked hard.  Those who are in management at one point were lowly employees and had to earn their way in.   Shaming them for working hard to earn their way to the top is what makes you a whiny bitch.

The mere mention that poor people almost always have harder work is immediately interpreted by you as an accusation of "laziness" on your part.

It would be one thing if your position was that every job in our society needs to be done by somebody and we shouldn't pit people against one another as some sort of "who works the hardest" competition, because all work deserves respect.  But that's not it at all!  There is not the slightest doubt in your mind when y'all proudly declare how you work much harder than all these day laborers making minimum wage.

See, I have no problem happily acknowledging that my much-higher-paying job of today is FAR easier than the low-paying jobs of my youth, working retail or in a call center.  I've put in decades of work and - with a bit of good fortune, as well - have earned my way up the ladder.  I see no shame in conceding that I don't have to work as hard today as I did when I was younger and making less money.  That's the GOAL: work less, make more!

But you seem unable to settle for that arrangement, and are stuck clinging to the idea that you also somehow work harder now; that it's offensive to say that someone making less money than you actually works harder than you do today.  It's ridiculous.

Yeah, that's the point: y'all don't give a shit about anyone else's feelings, yet expect your own feelings to be treated at all times like the most delicate silk.

Again, this is what made Pope Francis unusual: unlike the extremely loud American Catholic authorities who seem to focus on all sorts of imagined slights without a word to say about the poorest and neediest in our society, Pope Francis seemed to be sticking up for the downtrodden.  It's not enough to make me a fan of the Catholic Church, but I was a fan of his.

I expect our CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS to not be trod on.   Because last I checked, the Constitution was not written with hurt feelings taken into consideration.   That being said, perhaps we should build more prisons for the poor.  Better yet, build more prisons for the leftists.   Everyone there has equal housing, equal treatment, free food, free healthcare, and no one has a gun except the guards.

Wow.  You went from constitutional rights in sentence one to imprisoning people for being poor or because of beliefs.  You do realize the 1st, 5th and 14th amendments are apart of the constitution.

Exactly the point.

I'm not sure why you felt the need to add this into your argument. I get that it's a part of your job that you probably spend a fair amount of time doing, but it didn't help your argument at all, in fact it sounded ridiculous.

This is a little better and yet I can't help but think this is exactly what my 16 year old son was doing stocking shelves for Target. I have no doubt this is indeed hard work, but I never once asked my son if he was ok after coming home from a hard day at work.

I'll be honest, I have no idea what you do and I'm sure there's a good bit of anxiety associated with running your own business, but honestly these things above seem like the easiest things you do. My daughter works in retail too and never complains about these things it's always about trying to find and train good workers, working with customers who can be rude and entitled, etc. These are mentally taxing and I'll never belittle the work that retailers do and yet I still think that the lowest working class in our society are still some of the hardest working people I've ever met.

No offense to you, but I don't think you are giving others the credit they deserve. Poor does not equate with lazy. If you think it does you have some serious soul searching to do. That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

It is part and parcel of the wealth-worshipping mindset, where those who have more money are more deserving because they are better people (harder working, etc).

No one here probably cares but "the real pope" says he is the reason the pope was killed. Abdullah Hashem claims to be the successor of Jesus Christ, Simon Peter, Muhammed, Mahdi, and the true and only legitimate pope. Oh ... and he says he is NOT the antiChrist.

https://youtu.be/rgQhvkB6F1I?si=vXH99SbAunUHD_iP

(https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/0*BIFmY67y_gvYzHMq.png)

I own two liquor stores.   One in Orange City, FL and one in Deland, FL.   I'm constantly shuttling back and forth between each one trying to take care of business.   I never equated being poor to being lazy.   The issue between Spider and I is what constitutes "hard work"?   To me, it's putting everything you have into whatever you do, regardless of how physical or mentally demanding it is.