Friday, August 24, 2007

PARABLE: The rich man with many sheep who stole Iraq's one

If you are familiar this story, it has some slight changes.
1 The LORD sent a prophet to the king. When he came to him, he said, "There were two men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. 2 The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle, 3 but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a daughter to him.

4 "Now a traveler came to the rich man, but the rich man refrained from taking one of his own sheep or cattle to prepare a meal for the traveler who had come to him. Instead, he took the ewe lamb that belonged to the poor man and prepared it for the one who had come to him."

5 The king did not see the point of this story, said he didn't understand hypotheticals, and sent the prophet away since he was waiting for some very important traders. 6 The prophet went to the people in the street who always sang the king's praises, and told them the story of the same crime. 7 Some of them had trouble with hypotheticals too, some said the poor man didn't deserve even one ewe since he was poor, but many burned with anger against the man and said to the prophet "As surely as the LORD lives, the man who did this deserves to be punished! 8 He must pay for that lamb four times over, because he did such a thing and had no pity."

9 The prophet said, "Your king, George W. Bush, is that man. 10 He rules a land of great and many riches, but when his oil company friends came to him, he killed the people of Iraq, stopped their running water and electricity, buried their grandmothers in rubble, and burned their children alive, and gave their one ewe, their oil, to his friends who were already wealthy."

11 And lo, suddenly nearly everyone had trouble with hypotheticals for they thought the king would give them some of the ewe even though he and his friends planned to sell it to them for as much as the market would bear, and even withhold the hindquarters so the price would go still higher 12 just as they did with everything else, healers, water, electricity, and soon the air that they breathed. 13 For the people saw themselves as the king's children, but he saw them as the poor man's ewe that was his to kill and give to his friends.

Portions from the New International Version of the Holy Bible.

Jesus talks to George W Bush at his ranch

IRAQ OIL THEFT RESOURCES

1 comment:

k said...

Thanks for your comment at Juan Cole's blog and your stuff on the Iraq oil law elsewhere on your blog. Suddenly everything's making a bit more sense.