It is clearly so that the love of wealth and power harms those infected with that particular affliction. Exponentially wider harm results for the millions (in the USA) and billions of people worldwide who are damaged or killed by the consequences of this disorder. We are all in This together; thanks be for Cameron’s counsel, and for the compassions - divine and human - stirred in response to all she has described here.
I so appreciate your courage in speaking truth to power and to call us to responsible Christian stewardship and citizenship. For the previous commenter, have him check out how MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, has used her money since leaving Bezos. She has committed to giving half of her $42 billion to charity and as of December 2022 had given $14 Billion to over 1600 organizations. And Melinda Gates who got 12.5 billion for charitable work as part of her separation agreement. I think it is good to mention some of the wealthy people like Bill Gates who do use some of their wealth for charity.
Why is it wealthy men? There are wealthy women as complicit in this as are men. And why no mention of institutionalized religion? The LOWEST number I can find for the holdings of the Catholic church is 73 BILLION dollars.
Dwight, good point about the Catholic Church (as patriarchal an institution as it gets). And perhaps that observation gives some insight as to why I didn’t name wealthy women directly. Of course, women in proximity benefit from the wealth gained by the billionaire men who are currently grabbing both the wealth and power of the world. But when you look at the top 25 billionaires in the US (see referenced article), the only woman on the list is in the inheritor of wealth developed by her father. Generally speaking, women do not have access to the resources needed to accumulate billions of dollars on their own. Similarly, when they do have access to wealth usually gained through either inheritance or divorce, they tend to use that power and influence much differently than what we are currently seeing in our public political sphere. This is not to suggest that they wouldn’t or couldn’t if such influence existed at greater scale. But at the moment, the statistics don’t bear it out.
Perhaps for clarity sake I should also add: this isn’t a meditation about men are bad and women are good. This is a meditation suggesting that power in the hands of a few, supported by enormous wealth, is inconsistent with the teaching of all the major world religions, and historically causes great harm to the common good.
I know. I believe the meditation would have been more directed to meditation if not posed in the title as gender specific. Look for Diane Hendricks, Miriam Adelson, and Julia Koch for beginners.
I appreciate the topic and especially the meditation questions. Thank you. One of the many threads to pull here is the thread of economic justice and structure. I notice that nearly the entire self-identified Christian church is bound up in the Neoliberalism that will not tolerate the teachings of Jesus or the practices of the early church to shape either current church practice or our larger culture. For example, when Eisenhower was in office as POTUS the taxation rate on corporations and wealthy people was very, very high. This way much of the great income that wealthy people incurred by virtue of particular fortunate circumstance - often inheritance - went for the common good. These folks were still wealthy, of course.
I have to laugh at the old joke often told about John Rockefeller. When asked how to get rich, he very seriously said, “You must do these three things! One: get up early every morning! Two: work hard! And three: strike oil! And you don’t really need to do the first two, just the third one.” The story may be apocryphal, but it makes a point. I recommend Darren Dochuk’s book “Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America.”
Christianity has not shaped our economics. Rather, rapacious and avaricious economic philosophies have removed Christian values, Christian prophetic imagination, and the Christian prophetic voice from the American Christian churches. We ought not to have billionaires and oligarchs. We ought not to have masses of people poor through generations of systemic oppression. We each can give all that we have to God. This way we check with God about what is truly a wise and worthy use of our money. But we also need to challenge the economic system that still rests on ecocide, genocide, and slavery for its success. We still choose to hide our sins of injustice rather than to confess them, turn from them, and engage in relationship repair. That is where we need to focus. My life experience shows me that comfortable people refuse to see the need for change until it is too late to make them. I’m not holding my breath. But I do embrace poverty and humility and the wealth of our living biosphere. We are not here for long. We have a short while to love, and then we are gone.
It is clearly so that the love of wealth and power harms those infected with that particular affliction. Exponentially wider harm results for the millions (in the USA) and billions of people worldwide who are damaged or killed by the consequences of this disorder. We are all in This together; thanks be for Cameron’s counsel, and for the compassions - divine and human - stirred in response to all she has described here.
I so appreciate your courage in speaking truth to power and to call us to responsible Christian stewardship and citizenship. For the previous commenter, have him check out how MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, has used her money since leaving Bezos. She has committed to giving half of her $42 billion to charity and as of December 2022 had given $14 Billion to over 1600 organizations. And Melinda Gates who got 12.5 billion for charitable work as part of her separation agreement. I think it is good to mention some of the wealthy people like Bill Gates who do use some of their wealth for charity.
Why is it wealthy men? There are wealthy women as complicit in this as are men. And why no mention of institutionalized religion? The LOWEST number I can find for the holdings of the Catholic church is 73 BILLION dollars.
Dwight, good point about the Catholic Church (as patriarchal an institution as it gets). And perhaps that observation gives some insight as to why I didn’t name wealthy women directly. Of course, women in proximity benefit from the wealth gained by the billionaire men who are currently grabbing both the wealth and power of the world. But when you look at the top 25 billionaires in the US (see referenced article), the only woman on the list is in the inheritor of wealth developed by her father. Generally speaking, women do not have access to the resources needed to accumulate billions of dollars on their own. Similarly, when they do have access to wealth usually gained through either inheritance or divorce, they tend to use that power and influence much differently than what we are currently seeing in our public political sphere. This is not to suggest that they wouldn’t or couldn’t if such influence existed at greater scale. But at the moment, the statistics don’t bear it out.
Perhaps for clarity sake I should also add: this isn’t a meditation about men are bad and women are good. This is a meditation suggesting that power in the hands of a few, supported by enormous wealth, is inconsistent with the teaching of all the major world religions, and historically causes great harm to the common good.
I know. I believe the meditation would have been more directed to meditation if not posed in the title as gender specific. Look for Diane Hendricks, Miriam Adelson, and Julia Koch for beginners.
I appreciate the topic and especially the meditation questions. Thank you. One of the many threads to pull here is the thread of economic justice and structure. I notice that nearly the entire self-identified Christian church is bound up in the Neoliberalism that will not tolerate the teachings of Jesus or the practices of the early church to shape either current church practice or our larger culture. For example, when Eisenhower was in office as POTUS the taxation rate on corporations and wealthy people was very, very high. This way much of the great income that wealthy people incurred by virtue of particular fortunate circumstance - often inheritance - went for the common good. These folks were still wealthy, of course.
I have to laugh at the old joke often told about John Rockefeller. When asked how to get rich, he very seriously said, “You must do these three things! One: get up early every morning! Two: work hard! And three: strike oil! And you don’t really need to do the first two, just the third one.” The story may be apocryphal, but it makes a point. I recommend Darren Dochuk’s book “Anointed With Oil: How Christianity and Crude Made Modern America.”
Christianity has not shaped our economics. Rather, rapacious and avaricious economic philosophies have removed Christian values, Christian prophetic imagination, and the Christian prophetic voice from the American Christian churches. We ought not to have billionaires and oligarchs. We ought not to have masses of people poor through generations of systemic oppression. We each can give all that we have to God. This way we check with God about what is truly a wise and worthy use of our money. But we also need to challenge the economic system that still rests on ecocide, genocide, and slavery for its success. We still choose to hide our sins of injustice rather than to confess them, turn from them, and engage in relationship repair. That is where we need to focus. My life experience shows me that comfortable people refuse to see the need for change until it is too late to make them. I’m not holding my breath. But I do embrace poverty and humility and the wealth of our living biosphere. We are not here for long. We have a short while to love, and then we are gone.