They want you rootless, uncertain, susceptible, while they hold out the promise of eternal salvation, access to the kingdom of heaven, no less, but only through them, as if they control the only bridge over the chasm of hellfireand there's a toll to pay (of course there is) and the church bells ring: "Kerching! Kerching! "They might as well be selling property on Jupiter, yet they're legally allowed to get away with this fraudand to pay no taxes on the proceeds. And that's why the Catholic Church today measures its wealth in tens of billions, and if you live to be a thousand you'll never meet a poor televangelist. Yet Jesus never asked anybody for money. Jesus never passed around a collection plateor got people to tithe part of their income to him. Everything he did, he did for free. He had lepers and cripples lining up around the block, and not one of them had medical insurance (can you believe the irresponsibility of those people?) but Jesus didn't care. He healed them anyway, absolutely free. And when I say free, I don't mean free in a toll-free prayer line kind of way either, as in: "Call now, free, and there'll be somebody there to pray with you,"and take your credit card number, so that by the time you hang up"you'll be committed to making a regular monthly payment"to somebody who flies around in a private jet. "Not that kind of free. In exploiting Jesus to swindle humanity,they've also managed to swindle Jesus,because they've stolen his name and his identityand turned it into a commercial trademark. If he ever comes back he should sue. Now Jesus is like Colonel Sanders - they're just using his picture. The difference is Colonel Sanders was bought out. Jesus has been sold out. And so have you if you're a Christian. You've been framed for something that you didn't do.

Money is made at Christmas out of holly and mistletoe, but who save the vendors would greatly care if no green branch were procurable? One symbol, indeed, has obscured all others — the minted round of metal. And one may safely say that, of all the ages since a coin first became the symbol of power, ours is that in which it yields to the majority of its possessors the poorest return in heart's contentment.

While in the case of his iron money, as I have explained, Lycurgus arranged for heavy weight to be matched by low value, he did the opposite for the currency of speech. Here he developed the technique of expressing a wide range of ideas in just a few, spare words.

The gospel of St. Matthew told of the angry Jesus driving the merchants and money-changers out of the temple, knocking over the tables of the money-changers and spilling their coins on the floor. Jesus was not opposed to capitalism and the profit motive, so long as economic activities were carried on outside the temple. In the parable of the talents, he praises the servant who used his master's money to make a profitable investment, and condemns the servant who was too timid to invest. But he draws a clear line at the temple door. Inside the temple, the ground belongs to God and profit-making must stop.

Christ represents originally: 1) men before God; 2) God for men; 3) men to man.

Similarly, money represents originally, in accordance with the idea of money: 1) private property for private property; 2) society for private property; 3) private property for society.

But Christ is alienated God and alienated man. God has value only insofar as he represents Christ, and man has value only insofar as he represents Christ. It is the same with money.

those who were getting so much money from Caesar urged the senate to give him money as if he had none, nay rather, they forced it to do so, though it groaned over its own decrees.

I see from time to time coins that are tinted with red, having been handled by a butcher or a murderer, and the sight of that money makes me wonder. As I think about the probable origin of that sign of wealth, I tell myself that that is indeed its true color, the color which it should, which it must have, the color that was doubtless taken on by Judas’s pieces of silver, after which he ceased to recognize them and returned them at once to the egregious scoundrels who had given them to him. These, not recognizing the pieces themselves, did not want to return to the treasury of the Temple money so strange in its color. Everyone knows they used it to buy the field of blood, a generic name which I imagine can be applied to all bourgeois holdings ever since the Scourging and Crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

I fear just one thing : Money! Greed
was what motivated Judas to sell Jesus

What are the legends of the Celtiberian money? Are they the names of places, of chiefs, or of divinities? This question cannot be decided a priori and we are liable, like the ape in the fable, to take the Piraeus for a man's name. Are they a series of initials, or of abbreviated words? All these surmises suggest themselves before we engage in deciphering a legend in an unknown alphabet and language.

Imagine a man selling his donkey
to be with Jesus.

Now imagine him selling Jesus
to get a ride on a donkey.
This does happen.

Jesus can transform a drunk into gold.
If the drunk is already golden,
he can be changed to pure diamond.
If already that, he can become the circling
planets, Jupiter, Venus, the moon.

Never think that you are worthless.
God has paid an enormous amount for you,
and the gifts keep arriving.

Kings turn men into coins to which they assign what value they like, and which others are obliged to accept at the official rate, and not at their real worth

Decius A style like this becomes a conqueror. Cato Decius, a style like this becomes a Roman. Decius What is a Roman, that is Caesar’s foe? 40 Cato Greater than Caesar: he’s a friend to virtue.

When Shah Abbas of Persia, it is said, asked Aurangzeb’s ambassador to read aloud the words stamped on the coin on which was written ‚Sikkah zad dar JahÁn chÚn badr-i-munÍr, ShÁh Aurangzeb– i– ‘Alamgir (struck coin in the world like sun and moon, Aurangzeb, the conqueror of the world), he said that more appropriate words on the coin should be, ‚Sikkah zad ba-qurs-ipanÍr, Aurangzeb, barÁdar-kush-i-pidar gÍr‛ (struck coin upon a round of cheese, Aurangzeb, slayer of brothers, father seizer).

He adapted the words to the capacity of the Germans, often at the expense of accuracy. He cared more for the substance than the form. He turned the Hebrew shekel into a Silberling, the Greek drachma and Roman denarius into a German Groschen, the quadrans into a Heller, the Hebrew measures into Scheffel, Malter, Tonne, Centner, and the Roman centurion into a Hauptmann. He substituted even undeutsch (!) for barbarian in 1 Cor. 14:11. Still greater liberties he allowed himself in the Apocrypha, to make them more easy and pleasant reading. He used popular alliterative phrases as Geld und Gut, Land und Leute, Rath und That, Stecken und Stab, Dornen und Disteln, matt und müde, gäng und gäbe. He avoided foreign terms which rushed in like a flood with the revival of learning, especially in proper names (as Melanchthon for Schwarzerd, Aurifaber for Goldschmid, Oecolampadius for Hausschein, Camerarius for Kammermeister). He enriched the vocabulary with such beautiful words as holdselig, Gottseligkeit.