Quote:
Originally Posted by NeitherFirstnorLast
Amen brother, I hear what you are saying....
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I find this to be a very confusing response. The path that Solomon took resulted in the Kingdom of Israel being split and then to them being defeated by the Babylonians and carried off to captivity. I would think, as king, that Solomon would be held accountable for that.
You then describe the hardships of our current life in which we are benefitting from the industrial and technological revolution. I think if you compared our hardships with that of the hardships at the time of Solomon it would sound like a farce. Our lilfe expectancy is 70 years old, at the time of Solomon what was it? 25? What was the likeliest cause of death at his time, infection from a cut? What was the life expectancy of babies, less than 50% made it to the first year? How many women expected to die in childbirth?
But to be fair, you are comparing our standard of living. Oil has a EROEI of around 100. (EROEI is energy return on energy invested) this means that oil is like having all kinds of energy slaves that serve us. A car having 300 horsepower is in fact a reasonable calculation of power. The reason slavery has been widely eliminated relative to Solomon's time is because of the energy stored in oil.
So then you talk about poverty and enslavement in our modern world. If Israel controlled all the oil of the Middle East they would have had the wealth of most of the Opec nations. Even the poorest of poor in Israel would have had a standard of living far above that of any contemporaries of the time and above most Americans. If someone from Africa, as you referred to in your story, knows that they need God, you can imagine what people would have thought 3,000 years ago coming to technologically advanced Israel. That would have been a powerful testimony.
So finally you give a super spiritual response that it is easier to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. I would argue that the proof of that is Solomon. He was the richest king of the day and he was "rich" in wisdom. As a result it was very hard for him to obey the word of God.