Do you view the person at the top of your organization as getting rich off the others down below? Where are you on the that corporate ladder—getting richer or getting poorer?
What
priority does the pursuit of wealth and work have in your life? Is
this necessary? What are your expecting your life's work will give
you in the end?
(Serendipity
Bible 10th Anniversary Edition, page 936)
My
concern is not with the Wealth of Nations but with the Abundance of
Nations. Material wealth unless undergirded by spiritual wealth is
ephemeral. Equality in the distribution of wealth is not important,
but a sense of justice surely is. Despite
the strong inertia of the status quo, explanations sooner or later must be tenable both intellectually and emotionally as to
why someone has more wealth than another. Human nature is vastly
susceptible to greed, envy, and lust. This makes the perception of a
state of economic justice hard to come by (by either party) even when justice
exists. It is clear that some minimal principles apply. As power
must be limited in a well-functioning society, there must also be
limitations placed on concentrations of wealth. Power must be
limited because of humanity's natural tendencies towards greed, envy,
and lust—unrestrained, we can never feel we have enough of it.
Since the New Jerusalem will not come until the Lord returns, we must
establish legal (rather than purely spiritual) limitations on the
accumulation of wealth and power. As over-concentrations of power
due to human nature leads to systemic degradation, so does
over-concentration of wealth.
As
the government of the United States was established with a jaundiced
eye towards human nature's ability to handle unwise concentrations of
power, it is with the passage of time becoming clearer the physics of
human systems does not abide unmetered concentrations of wealth.
A
State of Abundance clearly is distinguishable from a State of Wealth.
Abundance implies principled limitation—the quite intentional
reigning in of greed, envy, and lust. The accumulations implied and incited by a limitless State of Wealth give free reign to all of these.
(See related blog: http://www.wayneblogs.com/2012/09/help-wanted-goodness-fairness.html)Print Page
