Got this via email. Made me laugh, so I’m posting it. Enjoy!
OLD VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter. The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.
The grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be responsible for yourself!
MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks the ant is a fool and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others are cold and starving.
CBS, NBC , PBS, CNN, and ABC show up to provide pictures of the shivering grasshopper next to a video of the ant in his comfortable home with a table filled with food. America is stunned by the sharp contrast.
How can this be, that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so?
Kermit the Frog appears on Oprah with the grasshopper, and everybody cries when they sing, ‘It’s Not Easy Being Green.’
Jesse Jackson stages a demonstration in front of the ant ‘s house where the news stations film the group singing, ‘We shall overcome.’ Jesse then has the group kneel down to pray to God for the grasshopper’s sake.
Nancy Pelosi & John Kerry exclaim in an interview with Larry King that the ant has gotten rich off the back of the grasshopper, and both call for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his fair share.
Finally, the EEOC drafts the Economic Equity & Anti-Grasshopper Act retroactive to the beginning of the summer.
The ant is fined for failing to hire a proportionate number of green bugs and, having nothing left to pay his retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.
The story ends as we see the grasshopper finishing up the last bits of the ant’s food while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant’s old house, crumbles around him because he doesn’t maintain it.
The ant has disappeared in the snow.
The grasshopper is found dead in a drug related incident and the house, now abandoned, is taken over by a gang of spiders who terrorize the once peaceful neighborhood.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Be careful how you vote in 2010.
It’s curious to find this on a site billing itself as unapologetically Christian *and* Conservative. I’m not really sure what Conservative is supposed to stand for these days, but I sure know what Christianity means. I don’t know of anything in the new or old testament that could be interpreted to support the original fable. Nowhere does it say “*judge* other people”, as you’d have to judge the grasshopper to say that he frittered away his time and doesn’t deserve help. Nowhere will you find the idea subordinating charity to property rights.
On the contrary, you’ll find that sacrifice is presented as the highest virtue, reason and judgement (particularly when directed at other people) are human frailties. What better illustration of the Biblical view of reason than the story of Abraham. God didn’t say “Abraham, you idiot! Use your own brain – does it seem like a good thing to execute your own son?” – no God says “Good job, you’re completely obedient when it really counts – when what I tell you to do makes no sense at all and every fiber of your being cries out that you’re about to commit a horror – but you do it any way”. That is faith. That is the kind of mentality that all the Obamas through history have counted on in order to get huge populations to submit to plans that make no sense.
And the crux of the New Testament is the virtue of sacrifice. What part of the New Testament would the ant cite to justify his claim that his house and his food are his property by right because he earned them – even if retaining his property means that the lazy might die? The New Testament is certainly the very *opposite* of this sentiment. There is nothing in the Bible to give moral support to the ant’s actions – Biblical morality is on the side of socialism which also holds that service to others is the highest virtue.
Most religious conservatives I’ve talked to will agree that yes, according to the Bible, what the ant did is morally wrong, but we shouldn’t use the government to *force* the ant to help the grasshopper. They may even say that it’s important to let the ant refuse to help the grasshopper and morally taint himself of his own free will, because then the ant can be judged by god based on actions he freely chose – and the dead grasshopper will get his reward in heaven, so we don’t need to worry about his death as a result of the ant’s immoral choice to be selfish and to judge the grasshopper as unworthy of a sacrifice.
The Biblical version of the story would be: How the selfish immoral ant killed an innocent grasshopper and thus went to hell for eternity (unless he repented at the last minute), while the innocent grasshopper received an eternal reward. Obama and his Marxist buddies just want to change the system so this injustice is prevented – so the grasshopper doesn’t have to suffer needlessly at the hands of the selfish ant. The jesus freaks of the 60′s understood that the New Testament lines up with their doctrine, not Capitalism. Obama knows it too. There’s nothing in the Bible that will stop them – it’s morality of altruism is the foundation of Marxism.
I’d agree with “Steve” (Sept. 16, 2009, 2:23 PM): the “Old Version” above sounds selfish…but Christianity is about being altruistic, about sacrifice, about giving up material wealth, about renouncing this earth.
I was raised Christian, so I’d know. I was taken to Church by my parents every Sunday, and we’d all hear the sermon by the preacher (or “Father,” as he was called in the Catholic religion). I heard about renouncing, about sharing, about the “Giving Tree.”
Selfishness good in Christianity? How far from the truth is that! Yes, you try to achieve the salvation of your own soul — but you do so by sacrificing and caring for others. (Don’t know why people try, though — it’s all supposed to be preordained, after all…)
Mother Teresa is a saint in Christianity; the ant is not. The productive ant sounds more like a character you’d read about in a Rand novel, not be Bible.
Besides my own experiences (being raised Christian), I don’t see in history any warrant for the ant being Christian. Jesus did not work, did not run some big business; and he is the moral exemplar of Christianity. Early Church Fathers renounced wealth and the pleasures of the earth.
Geez…if Christianity led to capitalism, why did we have a Dark Ages…and why the hell did it take so long???
Here’s some New Testament Scripture for you:
For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. 2 Thessalonians 3:10
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As far as the New Testament: “For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat.”
This doesn’t really conflict with what I’ve said above. Stalin was infamous for his maxim “no work, no food” – that verse is fully consistent with Socialism as the Stalin practiced it. If you wanted to take that literally, you might say that the Bible supports letting people starve if they don’t work *at all*. But that doesn’t happen very often in real life, and that’s not the intended meaning of the story. What the verse and Stalin meant is that there can’t be any slackers in the collective – this is not at all the same as the idea that you own the product of your own labor.
In real life, the “grasshoppers” work a little. What Stalin, Obama, and the Bible all support is taking from those who really hard and giving to those who work less hard, or less effectively. Conservatives sometimes posit welfare reform based on a requirement to work, which probably stems from this very issue. But that wouldn’t make the system better, it would simply “close the loop”, making welfare recipients slaves of the state, as well as the contributors.
Ask yourself why the Right looses in every conflict against the Left – why a Leftist like Ted Kennedy who killed a woman is treated like a minor deity while someone like Newt Gingrich, whose crime was taking an early advance from a publisher on a manuscript, is treated like a demon? Why can figures like Ted Kennedy, Clinton, Obama, etc. get away with anything while Republicans are pilloried? It’s because the Left has the moral high ground – the morality of socialism *is* the morality of the Bible. The Dark Ages, Hitler’s Germany, and the USSR are but a few examples of what that morality looks like when put into practice. That morality is *not* the basis of America. Conservatives will continue to aid America’s destroyers until they figure this out.
SHAME ON YOU THAT PUT THIS MAN IN OFFICE !
HEALTH INSURANCE ? MOVE NORTH OVER THE BRIDGE .
I WOULD BE DEAD NOW IF I DID NOT PAY FOR MY HEALTH INSURANCE.
PRETTY BAD WHEN THE DEMS CAN’T MAKE UP THERE MIND .
IF I DIE WITH WHAT I HAVE I KNOW I HAD THE BEST !
PISSING OFF A DOCTOR WITH RULES IS LIKE TELLING A COP TO SUCK DIRT.
NO NEED TO MAKE ANY THING WORSE .
WHEN HAS THE GOV EVER TRIED TO DO SOMETHING THAT WE COULD DO BETTER & SHOW A PROFIT . OUR REWARD TAX THE CRAP OUT OF THE PERSON THAT WAS SMARTER THAN SOME ONE ON THE GOV PAY ROLE . IQ REQUIRED FOR EMPLOYMENT 70 BUT NO HIGHER THAN A 99 .100 OR ABOVE MIGHT BE ABLE TO THINK .
GOD HELP US .
For a different perspective on “The Ant and the Grasshopper” check out: http://wp.me/pClhD-c