How wealthy can you be before you are no longer a Christian ?

Judge ye not...?

But what is the basis for your decision that he is 'obviously untrustworthy' or 'obviously wicked'? And there is a fair bit of difference between those two descriptions.

Yes there's a fair bit of difference.

First of all its bad that he is looked up to at all. There have always been rapacious businessesmen who built monopolies but until circa 1990s they were not admired by Irish people but seen as the worst excesses of a certain kind of Yankee money culture. That's how I remember it anyway but maybe my own feelings have overwhelmed my memory I'm not sure.

However we've been absorbed into this financial culture somewhat because of MNCs enriching us, the proliferation of mass media and the abandonment of previous values.

Gates is currently buying up huge amounts of farmland all over the US. If you have read my posts in other forums you know I am very against the business practices of corporate farms in deliberately destroying smaller farmers, buying up their assets and assimilating their farms.

But in any case these people are almost never what they seem.

Gates comes from a banking family. His maternal grandfather was a prominent banker in Lincoln, Nebraska. He comes from money.

Elon Musk's father owned an emerald mine in South Africa.

Facebook was set up with seed money from the CIA. That came out in Senate hearings. Marc Zuckerberg is the CIA's man - the very opposite of a 'self-made man'.

How can anyone champion these people and admire them and claim they are great businessmen who worked themselves up from nothing? The magic words 'self made' ought to be the occasion for laughter at this point. I'm not saying it never happens but when it is the lead-off for a PR campaign some scepticism is required.

Then Gates is mixed up in this Lolita Express thing, and his wife separated from him over it. That is very suss, its not a small thing,

Remember that in the last decade it was revealed that Jimmy Saville was in fact a serial paedophile. Before that he had been celebrated by all levels of the British establishment, made a Papal Count by the Vatican, given countless awards for his charity work etc., etc. He did this for charity, he did that for charity etc., etc.

Without the memory of a goldfish, this hugely affects my response to contemporary culture, elite culture and celebrity. A person should be capable of learning from experience. We should all be less naive than we were in 2010.

Then, so much of the Bible, especially the Gospels, has the theme of wicked people making lavish displays of their own goodness and chartiableness. Jesus spends so much time talking about this that a Christian in particular ought to be inoculated against it. Jesus goes around embarrassing people over it, back-talking them constantly, and then just straight out tells his followers to give to charity in secret without publicity.

"So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." - Matthew 6

Most people haven't read the Gospels, don't know what a Pharisee is so they have invent new phrases like 'virtue signal' to try to express their feelings about this kind of deliberate display of false goodness and are struggling to make sense of it amidst cultural confusion.

I hope this explains where I'm coming from. Do you see how I am responding both to recent cultural events and Biblical injunctions in a kind of synchronous way, or trying to?

In a legalistic sense there is 'not enough evidence' to say that Bill Gates is 'bad'.

However would a wise and cautious person, because of that, hold such a person up an example of goodness because he's funneled money to the poor? I really hope not.

Of course I probably shouldn't use the word 'wicked' I admit. I let my feelings push me too far. But untrustworthy/not deseving of the benefit of the doubt I am comfortable with.

@smacl 'I think when you start accusing someone of being wicked, or even untrustworthy, you take on a burden of proof to back up your claims.'

I'm not comparing Gates directly to Jimmy Saville. I'm saying the phenomenon of Jimmy Saville and multiple others should influence how we treat these things, with caution.

We should not give an automatic free pass to wealthy givers to charity. How much he gave to charity is not relevant.

Its like if I said after the Ryan Report came out we should not automatically brush away rumours about this or that priest. It doesn't mean that I'm comparing this or that priest to Brendan Smyth, but I know that there was a Brendan Smyth who got away with crimes under people's noses and that informs my whole approach which is to remain alert.

In this case Gates' wife left him partly because she was concerned about his friendship with a procurer of young girls (Jeffrey Epstein). She said this to one of the biggest newspapers in the world, the Washington Post. This is public knowledge and his reputation is "permanently shattered" as one journalist put it.

I am not back-biting or putting the boot in, I'm saying be aware of this stuff and have both eyes open.

Yes its possible it may be tabloid gossip in which case he should sue his ex-wife for MILLIONS for she has basically ruined him with what she implied about him through her statements.

'I would have thought that providing people with the benefit of the doubt would constitute basic Christian charity here.'

Not as such imo.

I would say be on your guard, listen to you intuition & your instincts, use your BS detector, weigh your knowledge of the situation, pray for guidance if it helps, and then if you're happy to give someone the benefit of the doubt do so but continue to be careful.

"Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves. Be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves" - Matthew 10:16

@smacl 'I largely agree with most of the above, though would still take caution about labelling any specific individual as wicked based solely on guilt by association.'

I went too far there I already admitted that, but the association in this case should put people on their guard. It doesn't prove anything but we have a right to regard that as a 'red flag' and say "Hang on here a second..." Again not randomly, but because his wife 'flagged' it specifically.

Melinda Gates told the Washington Post that Bill Gates' friendship with a serial procurer of young girls was part of the reason she divorced him. This is public knowledge and you've posted one news story which doesn't mention it, which ignores the several other interviews and stories that do mention it.

The thing is people are still "celebrating" Gates and talking about his public works of charity. It puts people in difficult position then if he's claimed as an example of goodness.

Again, I am not comparing him directly to Saville - I'm saying that knowing that Saville gave £40 million to charity and was a serial abuser ought to inform our attitudes to questions like whether people at the top of society (the most respectable public figures) who give to charity are regarded as totally above suspicion or not.

The whole "I give to charity, therefore I am good" thing is exploded imo. There have been too many charity scandals in the last decade. It isn't 2010 anymore.

@smacl 'If we hold these actions distinct'

'Acts of charity that help others who might not otherwise be helped are, in my humble opinion, good regardless of motive.'

I don't think you quite grasp what goes on. If a corrupted person gives money while committing evil acts these are pay-offs to grease the skids or buy publicity or favour. Its not "good regardless of motive" - do you seriously not understand that the money can be used as a smokescreen, or a series of bribes? Its pay to play corruption. The money is like blood money even if does find its a way to poor person, which it might or might not.

^This is in the case of someone like Savile. It is not always the case that throwing money around genuinely constitutes an "act of charity". Its 'charity' in inverted commas.

'We could argue that while doing good things does not make someone a good person, it does make them a better person.'

It could make them a worse person depending on what the money is really being spent for and what they receive in return. This is in the most extreme cases of corruption, and obviously I'm not saying that it applies to most people.

We have seen in recent years, by any historical standards, some of the worst charity scandals to do with corrupt 'giving'.

I'm not suggesting that

Let me say now for the third or fourth time, I'm not directly comparing Gates to Savile.

I'm saying that the Savile stuff should affect our responses and how we treat these things overall. That is the context since 2012.

Just like you wouldn't automatically bat away a rumour about a priest as impossible, without necessarily convicting that priest, because you know from the context of the Ryan Report what is possible - what the worst case *can be*.

net assets of more than €175000 not counting family home preclude admission to Heaven.Might as well start the rumour.

The “eye of the needle” referred to a gate in the wall of Jerusalem.

For those who saw a camel as a mistranslation, they probably see the saying as a rope through a needle.

A commonly-repeated story, but there is no evidence that such a gate existed in Jerusalem at the time the gospel text was written, and the explanation involving a gate doesn't appear until about a thousand years after the time of Christ.

Another reason for discounting the "gate" explanation is that the "eye of the needle" figure of speech isn't unique to the gospel. It also turns up in the Talmud and in the Qu'ran as a metaphor for impossibility . The "gate" explanation for the gospel use of the phrase is that the camel has to be unloaded before it can pass through the narrow gate; thus a rich man must be willing to dispense with his wealth in order to enter heaven. But this doesn't work for other uses of the phrase; in the Talmud an elephant going through the eye of a needle is a metaphor for the truly impossible; there's no implication that an elephant can do this if it sheds its load. An in the Qu'ran, an apostate can no more enter heaven than a camel can pass through the eye of a needle — again, there's no implication that any kind of load-shedding will make this possible.

The gate/load-shedding explanation really only became popular in the nineteenth century, when tourist guides in Jerusalem would offer it to visiting Europeans and Americans, who found it comforting because of the embarrassingly obvious contrast between their wealth and the poverty of Jerusalem at the time. The tourist guides would point to a particular gate and claim that it was known as "the needle's eye", although in fact it hadn't existed at the time of Christ and had never been known by that name. The implication of this explanation is that being wealthy isn't a problem for the Christian as long as you're not excessively attached to your wealth. But, awkwardly, that's almost certainly not what Jesus was saying.

It is not up to anyone to determine whether someone is a "Christian" or not based on their wealth or material possessions. Christianity teaches that faith in Jesus is what makes a person a Christian, not their wealth or social status.

There is no specific threshold of wealth that would disqualify someone from being a Christian. Some Christians may choose to live a simple, humble lifestyle and may not have a lot of material possessions, while others may have more wealth and success in their professional lives. What is most important is how a person uses their resources and treats others, rather than the amount of wealth they have.

There have been many wealthy people throughout history who have been Christians, including billionaire businesspeople, politicians, and celebrities. At the same time, there are also many poor and humble people who are Christians. Ultimately, it is not wealth or material possessions that define a person's faith, but rather their relationship with God and how they live their life according to Christian principles.