Lunch Break: Sweden moves toward cashless economy
by LauraLoo
I wonder when the United States will follow suit? Will it be in our lifetime or our children’s lifetime? All I know for sure is that it’s coming – just as surely as the Lord Jesus’ second coming.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4q7iRmEwKs[/youtube]
Interesting side note:
Here are the main verses on 666, the mark of the beast:
Revelation 13:16 – And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
Revelation 13:17 – And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Revelation 13:18 – Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six. (666)
Revelation 13:16 – And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
Revelation 13:17 – And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.
Revelation 13:18 – Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six. (666)
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Mar.22, 2012 12:00 pm |
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Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Gah! Please, not the King James. ;-)
Bear in mind, however, that there’s nothing intrinsically evil about a cashless society. Oh I think an argument could be made that it could be tyrannical — but it would have to be made. Merely because a cashless society seems to coincide in the Bible with the rise of great evil does not indicate something intrinsically wrong with cashlessness.
I think that’s important for Christians to remember. Why? Because arguing against it reflexively from a standpoint of such scriptures will be seen as lunacy — and it does, indeed, border on it. It simply doesn’t follow that because a tyranny will be operating in such an economy, that such an economy itself is evil. And if people perceived as loonies argue that it IS intrinsically evil and the only source they can cite in defense of such a notion is Biblical passages that don’t, themselves, in any way condemn such an economy as intrinsically evil (merely instrumentally so in the hands of a tyranny) — well then the adoption of such a system will be hastened because the most strident voices arrayed against it seem to be bonkers.
The best arguments against such a scheme are secular and libertarian. Christians do well to acquaint themselves with arguments that persuade non-Christians. Truth is, there are myriad such arguments for any of a number of things Christians value, and which Christians find valued in the Bible. Anything that’s true, good, or beautiful will be surrounded by a cloud of witnesses. All their voices — not just those in special revelation — are worth hearing.
What is the connection between cash and the “mark of the beast?” Do Christians believe that cashless transactions are inherently evil? If Sweden was the first society to introduce a cash system – centuries after Christ lived – could the transition to a cashless society really be a sign of end times, or just one of many slow cultural financial shifts? By that I just mean, like, if societies didn’t have cash for a long time, and then suddenly cash was introduced as something that you “need” in order to buy things, couldn’t cash itself be considered the mark of the beast per these verses, every bit as much as a credit card or paypal account or whatever?
I’m asking all of these questions earnestly. I’m not a Christian and when I considered myself one, I never heard or read anything about “end times” stuff.
For what it’s worth, I don’t think societies will go officially cashless anytime soon. Use of cash dwindles every year but that is a voluntary choice on behalf of the consumers and producers, and people opt for cash when they need to or have reason to. Those needs and reasons are pretty strong, if covert (ie wanting a purchase or a side income not to be tracked, not wanting to be “taxed” to spend your own money as with credit card fees, etc; as well as simply not having the resources for cashless forms of payment), so cash would probably get some pretty strong defense if it needed, but I don’t really think it ever will.
Cashless will make a lot of sense where governments are in financial crises. On the other hand, citizens in such countries also depend on cash transactions because of such crises.
Cashless could work for most transactions — the difficult part that probably keeps it from arriving is what to do with the relatively small number of things in a society that cashless just wouldn’t work for.
But with convergence happening at a breakneck pace (the merging of technologies, hardware, applications, and mobility), such prospects are coming into view as potentially practical.
I’ve done over $30,000 in on-line purchases. The number of such transactions has increased dramatically the last couple years. I’m on the cusp of doing hand-to-hand sales on my phone, using the Square. Paypal experimented with Bump a while back.
Things are becoming possible. Whether they become apocalyptic merely because they become possible is the question, as you note. In every generation there’s some folks who can’t help picking dates when The End will come. And which country is Gog and Magog, etc etc. It gets old after a while — but like a well-worn movie, to some folks it’s their first exciting time experiencing it. All the old geezers over the years have been wrong — of course! — but this time, we noobs among this generation’s prognosticators are surely right! ;-)
rasqual,
I reiterate: Why Wub Woo. <3
I do most of my transactions cashless. However sometimes I wonder what would happen if there is a big electrical loss or huge data error where suddenly all the banks loss their data???
Rasqual: Gah! Please, not the King James. ;-)
I like that old dude….
Whats wrong with the King James?
“And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.”
Under a totalitarian government, a person who refuses to join “the Party” can be jailed. Hypothetically, in a cashless society, a person who refuses to join ”the Party” (mark of the beast?) could receive an even greater punishment: denial of the ability to carry out any financial transactions, ie buying or selling. Buying/selling will require a checking account, which can be frozen by the government.
At least in jail, a person would be sheltered and fed. Outside of jail, a person could starve. S/he could not panhandle or receive charity cash. If the society were totalitarian, soup kitchens might be run by the government which would require identification. Direct charity of food would be the only way to live. Of course in a totalitarian society, feeding a non-Party member would be against the law.
All of this is hypothetical of course … for now.
Excellent, Eric, I totally agree with your comments.
Biblical history trivia, folks: the number of the beast refers to a popular activity during the first century. They converted names to numbers. Emperor Nero’s name could be converted to the number 666 and back in the day, people understood that John was referring to Nero in The Book of Revelation. In other words, the anti-christ has been and gone.
However, plenty of people since his lifetime have acted in an anti-christian way and it could easily be said of many corrupt and deadly people that he or she is an anti-christ.
Give me a patch of ground, some seeds, a rabbit snare, and a knife. Oh, and my AR-15.
I’ll get all “My Side of the Mountain” on ya. ;P
Exactly ninek, a preteristic interpretation of the Book of Revelation holds that at least some of the book’s references are to specific persons and events of the first century. The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod (LCMS) leans toward applying 666 to many persons, to include Nero Caesar. The number 666 applies to the Second Beast who, as a false prophet or man who makes himself divine (Caesar), rises from the Earth with the authority of the First Beast (Revelation 13:1-10), who rises from the Sea as a world power (Rome?) or powerful world government (when sovereign nations give up their sovereignty?)
LCMS holds that the book describes many events, both current at the time of writing and in the future. Martin Luther wrote that although the book includes portions written as prophecy, it is not intended to predict specific future events like a fortune teller but to offer encouragement to oppressed Christians, including those in the first century, as well as to offer warning against many false prophecies.
Has anybody informed Planned Parenthood? The trouble with a cashless society is that nearly everything can be traced; i.e. credit card and bank statements. Much of PP’s business comes from customers who pay in cash…boyfriends and unfaithful husbands want no trace of their dirty deed. At our local PP the Brink’s truck comes twice a week to collect the filthy lucre.
xalisae,
My Side of the Mountain. Ooh, I loved that book. I’d expect I read it a good 20 years before you, though. :(
Rasqual’s right. A cashless society is only the means to the end. It’s “New World Ordering” of nations that should be first on our radar.
Then it may be time to live in a tree somewhere.
Sydney M: In my opinion, use of the King James in our day is against the spirit of Christ, who incarnated himself as one of us and used the common language of the day. His disciples wrote in marketplace Greek — the everyday language of the people.
The KJV, where used, inculcates the idea of a dichotomy between normal and religious language — and it’s an utterly unscriptural dichotomy. Love of its literary beauty is no damn excuse, either. God’s word to humankind is not first an aesthetic appreciation of one particular translation panel’s excellent work. It’s first an appreciation of the simplest meaning of what God wants us to know in the language that is most accessible to all people in a particular language group. Incarnationally speaking, I’d add “at a particular time in history” — thus the archaisms in the KJV are intolerably against the incarnational spirit of Christ.
There’s nothing “wrong” with the KJV as such. There’s something absolutely wrong with those who believe it’s the best translation around, in English. It’s not, and its use is destructive of the spirit of the gospel of Christ. Against an incarnational view of the Logos, it fosters a Docetic view of God’s word — some sense that were it to sound less “elevated,” somehow what God has to say would be profaned. And that’s insane.
That might sound a bit reactionary, but over many years I’ve met and discoursed with some really confused people who’ve been suckered by stupid arguments into revering a translation which was unsurpassed in its day, but which is stunningly well-surpassed by contemporary versions in our own day, and which aim to reach the common man in the common tongue — as in Christ’s day.
The gospel is huge, the gospel permeates, the gospel meets people where they are. Wycliffe translators give their LIVES so that some remote people group can have the Bible in their own language — and some English-speaking yahoos imagine that English speakers have to adapt to the KJV’s archaic idiosyncrasies because they hold to conspiracy theories about modern versions, or because they ludicrously believe the KJV is the best version around? No. Balderdash. They’ve just bought into the Docetic, anti-incarnational temptation that the Bible needs to “sound elevated.” Their other arguments are just sublimating that base heresy.
Not that I have a strong opinion on the matter. ;-)
Hans, xalisae:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teS11jE95WM
LOL
“I hate spruce bark beetles!” (Rifftrax quote)
Rasqual,
Along those lines, I thought using Aramaic in The Last Temptation of Christ was going even one more bridge in that direction.
Ha! Only Saguaro-huggers would impress me.
Hans — ooh, but what they actually DID with language in that film was awesome. Did you ever see any interviews with the language guy they had on board? For example, the scene with the Jewish mob at the Praetorium: they went for some realism where the soldiers — doubtlessly given sparing language training before leaving for duty in Palestine — would not understand quite perfectly what some Jews near them would be hollering, and might react in a non sequitur way — thus causing some of the Jews to react with a WTF? look on their faces. And then some soldier would respond with hacked and lousy Aramaic and a couple Jews would look at him like he was an idiot. And so forth and so on. They had a LOT of fun with language. The masochistic guards beating Jesus were being insanely crude in their language, as you might expect.
They did the kind of attention to detail they didn’t need to do (witness “pseudo-Latin” in much scored music in film). Audiences don’t care about such details as a rule. But this did with language much like Weta Workshop did with details in LOTR. It was a labor of love.
Rasqual,
It was an interesting time and place. It must have resembled the nascent Babylon in that way.
The violence in the film that was so criticized was tame compared to the actuality. I timed the scouraging at less than 15 minutes, while it is said it often went on for an hour.
An Iranian View says:March 26, 2012 at 7:48 am