James 5: 1 You rich people, listen to me. Cry and sob, because you will soon be suffering.
2 Your riches have rotted. Moths have eaten your clothes. 3 Your gold and silver have lost their brightness. Their dullness will give witness against you. Your wanting more and more will eat your body like fire. You have stored up riches in these last days.
4 You have even failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields. Their pay is crying out against you. The cries of those who gathered the harvest have reached the ears of the Lord who rules over all.
5 You have lived an easy life on earth. You have given yourselves everything you wanted. You have made yourselves fat like cattle that will soon be butchered. 6 You have judged and murdered people who aren't guilty. And they weren't even opposing you.
Proverbs 22: 2 The Lord made rich people and poor people. That's what they have in common.
There is a great disparity in the world between the rich and the poor, and the gap may be widening. This is even happening in the U.S. Consider some statistics:
1. The richest 1% of the world's population owns 40% of the world's wealth.
2. The richest 5% owns 70%.
3. The assets of the world's 3 richest persons exceeds the combined GDP of the world's 48 poorest countries.
4. In 2000 the world's developed nations contributed 3% of their GDP to aid developing nations. In turn, those nations had to pay back over 6% of their GDP in debt repayment, more than twice what they received. The result was that the developed nations gained from the transaction while the developing nations lost ground.
5. Africa is worse off than it was two decades ago.
6. 1 billion of the earth's poor face a decline in their current living standards.
7. The US is in the bottom 25% of all nations in terms of wealth distribution, and dead last among industrialized nations.
8. In 1960 the average American CEO made 12 times more than the average laborer. Today he/she makes more than 300 times more.
And such statistics go on and on, revealing the sad disparity in our world. And, of course, the rich are richer and getting richer because they work harder than everybody else ~ harder than the miners and the factory workers and the kids in the sweatshops and the field hands. Surely Jesus is proud of their accomplishments.
James, the Lord's brother and apostle in Jerusalem, was tough on the rich. Why? Was he against them having money? Didn't he realize how hard they worked to get their holdings?
I don't think it was that. He was pointing out the injustice of gross inequities, of people and nations hoarding wealth while exploiting the poor. In other parts of his epistle James says, "Isn't it the rich who throw you in jail and stack the cards against you in court?" He was telling the people of the church they were favoring the rich and dishonoring the poor in the way they treated them. He was pointing out hypocrisy and injustice, not just in the world at large, but even among the people of God.
Greed is the source of all evil, according to Proverbs. And greed dwells at the core of our beings. By it we rationalize, create injustice, wage wars, exploit labor, neglect the poor, sequester the rich, bend laws, and ignore our neighbors be they individuals or nations.
When empires do this for too long, the poor rise up, destroy their captors, and then repeat their mistakes. It is like a historical vicious cycle.
In Kenya, at this writing, this is the very dynamic that is taking place. Even men of the same race and color hate each other, kill each other, and the central problem behind it all is greed.
Jesus was the antithesis of greed. He became poor to make us all rich. He identified with the lowest and died with the malefactors with whom he had been compared. It wasn't because he was lazy or rebellious: it was because he was a lover of justice. It was because there were no rich or poor in his kingdom: no disparity between the high and mighty and the rejected and low. Jesus was outside of that whole system.
We say sometimes, "What would Jesus do?" I guess we ask it because we really don't know. We usually think what we are doing is what he would do. He deserves a closer look. Because the church today still favors the rich and even teaches doctrines that encourage us toward greed.
It isn't that we are to all become monastics. We need to understand justice and pursue it, though, because God is just. We need to really seek parity and equity in our churches, in our businesses, in our government, and in our world. We need to defend the downtrodden. We need to demand equality and practice fairness wherever we go. We need to seek to end the systems we create with our greed.
Above statistics taken from Everything Must Change by Brian McLaren.
6 comments:
There is a reason why God doesnt just take everything form the rich and give it to the poor. Brother walk through the tenements in any major city. They were once nice but now they are run down because of neglect not from the government but the people just don't care. They have become the product of the state. a State plantation dweller with no incentive to better themselves for the most part. A few make it out but not many. There has got to be a happy medium, like Jeannie Dixon. The Church should do what the Gov has so ineptly done. When I was with the Union Mission they would not accept Government money for the work because they did not want restrictions on what was preached there.
Good comment, and I know it's all true. But, we need to find a way out of this conundrum. Like saying, "You have the poor with you always." But that is not a reason to ignore "pure religion in helping widows and orphans" or "I was thirsty and you gave me no drink" or "here's the gospel, my friend, be warmed and filled."
I don't doubt the church itself is the most charitable organization on earth. But the government we seek to influence is dropping the ball. We aren't holding their feet to the fire on foreign policy. Most of the church is, I think, blissfully ignorant of what our government is doing with our money.
Why not get mad? Why not raise your blood pressure through the roof? We can't preach hellfire and brimstone any more. That was always good for a coronary. So let's tell Congress we want them to actually have a Christian attitude of charity, not just operate a tax-supported country club.
I would rather have the Government do what it was ordained to do,
WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. Keep us safe. We the people need to do the rest. You are the Government and its a free country you can knock yourself out giving to the poor until your one of them. Many missionaries thought that was how to show the love of God. I think it is giving them bread from Heaven to eat so they have faith and can secure those blessing from God themselves. Same desire different method. The Government is not the answer Jesus is.
"Promote the general welfare..."
What does that then mean?
I think that's what we're talking about. We're talking about the church's responsibility in representing justice in the world. We seem to be very poor at it.
I'm not talking about "knocking yourself out." I'm talking about where your hard-earned tax dollars go. I may be offering more criticism than answers: but you first have to identify the problem and then try to solve it.
We pray for those in authority, right? That's one place to start. We can start pleading with God to help our leaders value equity and recognize the eroding factors of greed in government that will turn the forefather's dream into a mockery.
We couch our debates in political theories that are meaningless in many ways: theories that have been tested and found wanting. McLaren's point hinges on the observation that Jesus' politic, if you will, was outside of the whole empirical narrative of His day. Yet, many of His teachings and parables suggest that we also engage in a kind of justice-activism, like MLK Jr. did. As God leads of course.
I'm not saying I'm not as greedy as you or not a hypocrite in these matters. I'm considering the problem and wondering what I can do, though. I'm waking up to the fact that this is injustice, and I may be taking part in it by being unconcerned about it.
I'm no political activist. I'd probably be a joke at it. Consider the movie about Wilberforce and slavery, "Amazing Grace." That's an example of Christian activism that addressed an injustice. You don't think the abolishment of slavery was pleasing to God?
Jesus said to take good care of your slaves he didn't say free them did he? Slavery is what the Government does when it put people on a welfare system that never helps them get better. The US government should run the military and make sure the states arr treating each other fairly when it comes to interstate commerce. That's it. The states should make sure the schools work and keep the laws by protecting its people. I don't want the Government to give our resources away to other nations and I don't want our nation to take the resources with out paying for them a fair market price from other nations. Make nations and peoples and politicians accountable to one another. Give back to the church the care of the poor.
God sent Moses to free the slaves. I think that tells us something. Paul just gave slaves some wisdom while they were still in slavery. I'm a slave to the people I work for.
The kind of slavery we had in this nation was wrong. It is nothing less than the rich oppressing the poor. "Your flesh shall eat you like fire," said James. I don't believe God sanctions any kind of oppressive slavery. Love your neighbor as yourself. Your slave is also your neighbor. He will likely wind up better than you will when the dust settles. What God wants is justice and mercy.
America is not an island in the sun any more. We are part of an international matrix now, and increasingly so. We will soon not be able to function on our own. We should not only seek to help our neighbors, we should be careful how we do it, that we don't waste it on, for instance, military excess.
This new world order is surely God-ordained. The blood of Jesus is not just for Americans but all men. The mind of God is charity, not hoarding and seeking security to keep our hoard intact. If we could shift to loving our enemies, our enemies would no longer have reason to hate us and desire our demise. That's the reverse-logic of the Kingdom.
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