An article in the Washington Post On Faith section in response to their question: Are the economy’s recent financial failures also moral failures? Are credit and debt religious issues? Do you have faith in the economy?
Money lies closer to people’s souls than they like to admit. John D. Rockefeller, Jr. destroyed other men’s fortunes as he ruthlessly built his own, but he assuaged his conscience by believing that God gave him every penny. Call it the Protestant work ethic gone berserk or hypocritical denial, the mechanism works. We manipulate our image of God to justify how the world is treating us. This is very far from Christ’s essential teaching that God abides in a higher world, but he left enough room for Christianity to believe that sin is punished by depriving the sinner of money while virtue is rewarded with a full bank account. Actually, Jesus went out of his way to warn his followers, in the Sermon on the Mount, not to store up riches on earth but in Heaven. The message has largely been ignored.
The great change today is that people expect sin to bring the greatest rewards. Who doesn’t feel at least a slight pang of envy to learn that Yasser Arafat, while ostensibly acting as a freedom fighter, secretly amassed billions in Swiss bank accounts, a pattern followed successfully by Saddam Hussein and the Iranian mullahs? The pious can point out that neither Arafat nor Saddam lived to profit from their stashed billions, but plenty of Mafia bosses died in bed after a lifetime of ill-gotten gains. Lest we limit this to the nefarious, almost every congressman expects to raise millions in re-election funds and earmarks once elected. This money may not go directly into their pockets — an open question these days — but they feel virtuous taking it.
On Wall Street we are told that the current domino effect of collapsing firms is the result of unbridled greed, a Christian sin, but not sinning meant a lower paycheck, if not getting fired. Traders are expected to maximize returns for their clients. The real problem was irresponsibility, lack of repercussions, and speed. Traders could move millions of dollars with the push of a button, no one cared if the institution they worked for was being pushed to extremes of risk, and now that Lehman Brothers has collapsed, the executives who skimmed millions off the top in bonuses will walk away whistling. At least they weren’t as bad as Enron. In this climate, it’s not how much you sinned but how much you took away before the bubble burst. None of this behavior reflects on God, however, or sin for that matter. As in Abu Ghraib, a climate of wrongdoing was created, morality became numb, and peer pressure did the rest.
We are divided about money because we are divided in ourselves. We hate Exxon for exploiting the general population as oil prices soar, but given the means, we’d buy their stock. The urge to covet wealth is shadowed by a rage that would tear the rich down. In India I was taught as a child that the deciding factor is Karma. Earn your money by good and virtuous means if you want your life to be good and virtuous. This is a reformulation of the biblical “as you sow, so shall you reap.” In our fantasies we hope that bad people suffer for their bad money, but the law of Karma — or Jesus’s sowing and reaping — doesn’t work that simply. To be honest, I have no confirmed idea how good is finally balanced with bad, or how karmic repercussions are timed. So I prefer to stick with what my mother told me and try to keep my gains as well-gotten as I can.
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posted September 18, 2008 at 6:46 pm
I don’t know why, but this sentence made me laugh with a little chuckle …
“So I prefer to stick with what my mother told me and try to keep my gains as well-gotten as I can.” ~Deepak.
Yes, it is hard to tell where we are in karma … at least for me!
Love, Char
posted September 21, 2008 at 1:02 am
Thank You Deepak:
[Hebrews 5:13-14]
Solid food is for the mature, who because of practice have their senses trained to discern good and evil. [ Religion, ethics, and philosophy, the phrase; good and evil refers to the evaluation of objects, desires, and behaviors across a dualistic spectrum, where in one direction are those aspects which are morally positive, and the others are morally negative. ]
The showdown between good and evil is the final battleground and the end of a dualistic spectrum of changing manifestations of the potentials, creating the illusion of shifts in a manifested reality and thereby realizing the actual nature of the Eternal [ Infinity ]. The finale, from Alpha to the Omega, the beginning and end, omnitude, and wholeness.
Such childlike vigilance knows what a true to life [tree-of-life] experience is … a constant… so for the attentive mind there is no measure of time … it is only the attentive mind that can be in a state of creation [constancy]… in creation there is beauty … a childlike vigilance has this beauty which is the appreciation of nature, the majestic mountains and the roaring stream … an ever-present beauty with which goes love … you cannot separate beauty and love … and with them is passion [ the one from Nazareth had GREAT passion but very few perceived ]… one cannot go far without passion … beauty can only be there when there is passion. An attentive mind, has a concentric quality of sapience… it is apart from all human endeavors… and receives that which is not measurable by the brain. A state of attentive grace [ stillness with dynamic observation ] If we are seeking something real – in the sense of time, something enduring, everlasting; know that which is truly eternal is beyond the measure of time; it is not to be found permanent within the experience of duality.
posted September 22, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Mr. Chopra;
I was originally not going to respond to this, as I felt I had little to say. Yesterday, during a class at church, we were discussing Job. The idea of people earning money through deceit came up. People were asking about where the equality and justice was. They surely didn’t see it looking at the deceit in our world. It seemed that there is a price with accumulating wealth in a negative way. I kept wondering “…at what cost does this exceptional financial wealth come? Who is paying the price?”
I thought of the people that are attracted to those who have become financially rich. I questioned why such people were a rich person’s friend and if this “friend” would still be there if the person wasn’t in such a financial position. Exactly how superficial are the bonds that one man would make if his wealth was gained unethically? Wouldn’t he attract those who are also unethical, and wouldn’t those people prove to be false?
I then reflected on the people who are often attracted to those who are not financially rich but instead spiritually rich. Wouldn’t that person attract people who are more genuine? Wouldn’t this individual, living honestly, attract others living honestly? I mean, when dishonest people come into a spiritually rich person’s life, isn’t the time limited that a friendship would occur? I would think the person would come and go quickly.
This may be oversimplifying things a wee bit, but it would seem that the one who lives honestly would be better off as time goes on, surrounded by genuine people. The one who became rich quick off at the expense of his own integrity will most likely experience a greater sense of sadness and loneliness, as he does reap what he sewed.
posted September 22, 2008 at 2:13 pm
I always get a chuckle when the economically ignorant try to blog about the evils of wealth.
posted September 30, 2008 at 7:34 am
Money is an inanimate object. It has little to do with paper and coinage but everything to do with the manipulation, domination, control and power over others. Just look around us, and what do we see? The continuous exercise of authority and control over the affairs of others.
Riches may enable us to confer favors, but to confer them with propriety and grace requires something that riches don’t usually provide.
Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Anyone..