Witnessing the increasingly extreme disparity between rich and poor and the pervasive tyranny of money in these latter days, one is reminded how omnipresent the “natural man”1 remains—unable, in millennia of “spiritual” evolution, to control his instincts of oppression, excess, and celebrity—the sad tale of every age. An even sadder tale is how susceptible we so-called “believers” are to the persuasions of mammon—to selling our souls for a mess of pottage. Just look at our malls and mansions. Our storage- and tax-shelters. Our celebrities and seekers. Our investments and speculations. Our distractions and laissez-faire dogmas. (Dogmas that counter almost every essential tenet of every faith.)
WHY are we so enamored by the rich and famous? WHY so desirous to become (or be friends of) the rich and famous? If we believe in God’s word, why do we seem so focused on “deserved”2 prosperity and so discounting of admonitions to meekness, justice, and moderation? So willfully blind to forewarnings?
Here again, are two from two millennia ago;
And again I [Jesus] say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God. (New Testament | Matthew 19:24)Too many of us seem to have fallen into a “mine”-field (“It’s all mine and I deserve it;” or “It’s all theirs and they deserve it.”) that will inevitably maim us unless we awaken from the grip and rapture of Babylon and all her pretensions.
Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; … (New Testament | James 5:2-6)
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1. For the natural man is an enemy to God, and has been from the fall of Adam, and will be, forever and ever, unless he yields to the enticings of the Holy Spirit, and putteth off the natural man and becometh a saint through the atonement of Christ the Lord, and becometh as a child, submissive, meek, humble, patient, full of love, willing to submit to all things which the Lord seeth fit to inflict upon him, even as a child doth submit to his father. (Book of Mormon | Mosiah 3:19)
2. What is so “deserved” or earned about usury and dividends? Might this fit within “Moral Hazard”? Just asking!
