A MASSIVE
DIVIDE
By Jim
Jordal
“Come
now, you rich, weep and howl for your miseries that are coming on you. Your
riches are corrupted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and your
silver are corroded, and their corrosion
will be for a testimony against you, and will eat your flesh like fire. You
have laid up your treasure in the
last days. Behold, the wages of the
laborers who mowed your fields, which you have kept back by fraud, cry out,
and the cries of those who reaped have entered into the ears of the Lord of
Armies. You have lived delicately
on the earth, and taken your pleasure. You have nourished your hearts….”
James 5:1-5
WEB, emphasis mine
A massive
divide is opening in the U.S. between the top 1 percent of the economic pyramid
and the remaining 99 percent of us. Recent figures show that the richest 400
Americans control more wealth than all 41 million African-Americans, and as of
2010 one percent of U.S. households own 35.4 of all our wealth. (Julie Polter, The Rich Get Richer, Sojourners, Aug.
2014).
The Bible
passage above describes the coming angst of the rich who gained their wealth at
the expense of others as their wealth becomes a testimony against them. Think
of the Wall Street bankers who gained wealth at the expense of millions of
foreclosed homes and shattered retirement plans, but have yet to darken any
jailhouse door. They thought they were laying up treasure for the future as their
crooked policies created a few plutocratic families at the top of the heap
while billions of hopeless, abject sufferers wallowed in poverty as
powerless laborers for industry and cannon fodder for militarists. They
are charged with living “delicately upon the earth” as they take their pleasure
at the expense of others. And no one but a few watchmen crying in the night
takes up their cause---not politicians, nor economists, not educators, and
especially not most religious institutions and clergy. It’s tragic if you
really think about it!
But the
cries of the laborers robbed of a living wage and good working conditions in
the endless search for profits have been heard by God. As I’ve said before,
it’s not a sin to be wealthy, but it is egregious sin to gain wealth by
manipulating finance, denying living wages to workers, or spending existing wealth
to further rob and oppress the people.
The natural
tendency of business is toward monopoly and the natural trend of wealth is to
beget more wealth. God said all along this would happen! The trouble is we aren’t listening. We
blindly pray for peace on earth when God says there will be no peace until
justice triumphs. We pray for the poor, but keep supporting the political and
economic policies that made them poor and keep them there. We pray for personal
financial benefits as we refuse to honor God with what we do have. The sum and
substance of the matter is that we pray for things that God can’t and won’t
give us until we surrender our minds and wills to him.
Wouldn’t it
be wonderful if American clergy across the land spoke out on the issues surrounding
the existence of a supposedly people-controlled Congress elected by and
operating to benefit, not the people, but a cabal of their wealthy corporate
masters? They could begin by identifying
exactly who is gaining and who is suffering as a result of recent legislation,
and could go on from there using the literally thousands of Bible verses
dealing with these situations.
How much
longer will it be until we make the connection between the worldwide chaos,
destruction, and misery we now experience and the fact that God says this era
of disaster is a direct result of our prideful and arrogant refusal to hear and
heed God’s word and will? It will not end until we as individuals and as a
nation turn to God with all our hearts and wills. Until then, hang on!
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