I Don't Even Know, Y'all

[Content Note: Christian Supremacy.]

Via Shaker rosenleaf comes this amazing story about a possible Republican gubernatorial challenger in Montana who has some totally terrific ideas about retirement:

In a February talk at the Montana Bible College about how to find "godly purpose" in work, [Greg Gianforte, a multi-millionaire tech entrepreneur] explained why retirement isn't consistent with biblical teachings.

"There's nothing in the Bible that talks about retirement. And yet it's been an accepted concept in our culture today," he said. "Nowhere does it say, 'Well, he was a good and faithful servant, so he went to the beach.' It doesn't say that anywhere."

"The example I think of is Noah," he continued. "How old was Noah when he built the ark? 600. He wasn't, like, cashing Social Security checks; he wasn't hanging out; he was working. So, I think we have an obligation to work. The role we have in work may change over time, but the concept of retirement is not biblical."

A couple of thoughts:

1. LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL WHUT.

2. Okay, to treat this seriously for a moment, if I am able to stop laughing long enough to do so, not every person in the United States finds the Bible to be a document relevant to our lives. I honestly don't give a fuck what the Bible says about anything, especially when it comes to developing legislation governing the lives of a diverse population. So whether Noah was chilling in a retirement community in Boca or building a giant boat with a massive poop hold doesn't really matter to me.

Further, lots of shit that we consider to be useful these days wasn't in the Bible. Like, presumably, the very technologies that have made Greg Gianforte a millionaire. That's kind of why using a 2,000-year-old document as a literal guidebook for modern life isn't a great idea. Noah wasn't collecting Social Security because it didn't exist. And also because there is a slim chance that a 600-year-old man who constructed a seaworthy vessel large enough to contain a mating pair of every animal on the planet (except fish! and sea mammals!) didn't exist, either.

3. LOL.