@kellyjay said
True which is why pleasure destroys more people’s lives than pain.
A wise man once said that love is a mixture of pleasure and pain.
Are pleasure and pain evil?
Is not the promise of an eternal life without pain, tears, and death a most pleasurable one? And the promise is made even sweeter than honey by being offered free, through grace. Why work if you will get paid just the same as those who do? Even Jesus did not go that far, as in his parable one had to work to get paid. All the workers got paid the same, whether they had worked 8 hours or just one hour. But the point that gets overlooked is that they all had to work. Jesus did not pay (Grace) them just for standing around in the town's square.
If you want to get into the Kingdom you have to work for it, more or less. So the last will be first, and the first will be last, which will be based on more or less the work we do as detailed in the parable of Matthew 25:31-46.
Matthew 20:1-16 The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard.
"For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.
“About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went.
“He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’
“‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered.
“He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’
“When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’
“The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
“But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
“So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”
Come now, don't tell me Paul was not a good salesman of pleasure? He stopped being a pursuing hunter of new Christians, and became the greatest trapper of all time. A smooth operator which made for himself the greatest sheep costume any bad wolf could want. Free Grace is the greatest lure a wolf can use to trap sheep, and also any sheep in the making.
Yes, pleasure and pain can sometimes easily overcome common sense. Our Jimi here was one of those, where the pleasure and pressure of success and fame overwhelmed him to the point of drug addiction and overdosing to ease the pain of trying to cope with such strong emotions, prematurely destroying his physical life. And we were deprived of the pleasure of many more years of his God-given musical talent.
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05 May '24 16:03
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