[What tha]

Sema,
Today I had a very interesting argument. I live in Australia and these sides we have Aborigines - the native population that was massacred and has been screwed over all through Australia's history. By now, they are pretty much lazy, self-destructive people that just do not fit into 'Australian society' ( or at least that is what the media and my experience suggests).

The person I was talking to suddenly said: "I cannot respect Aborigines" and gave reasons including their self-destructive behaviour and THE FACT THAT THEY ARE NOT WEALTHY OR MAKING ANY EFFORTS TO BECOME WEALTHY!

She then went on to explain that in the Bible all who were blessed ( and this does not include Christ, the prophets or people in Ministry) were those who had material wealth- Abraham, Solomon, David, Adam and Eve etc.

What this long post (sorry about that) is leading to is: Do you think that:
1) God blesses with material wealth and more importantly;
2) Wealth is an indication of a succesful Christian.

Thanks guys

[Delyteful]

ok first of all, HELL NO!

how can anyone think that God doesnt loves them coz they aint wealthy!! That girl does NOT know wat she's talkin abt.

as for ur questions:

1) i know many of u will disagree with me but being wealthy is not always a blessing. God may "bless" a person with material wealth to test him. A man who has wealth faces bigger challenges than one who doesnt. Wealth makes a person greedy and greediness is one of the things God hates in a man. i dont feel like going into too much detail so you think about it.

2) Wealth is an indication of a succesful Christian? How does that work? successful in what way? Jesus wasn't successful?

[What tha]

The way the person who argued put it to me was:

Basically in the bible there are:
1) Prophets (messengers of God); This includes people like Elijah, John thr Baptist and for the sake of simplicity, let us include Jesus Christ. Now these messengers tend to live in poverty and it is only reasonable that we should expect the messengers to live like this. However, there are also:
2) The Blessed: These are people like David, Solomon and Abraham, people specifically told by God that they were to be blessed and this of course translated to ernomous wealth.

I thought that was a pretty convincing argument though I still haven't bought into the whole idea she was promoting.