Income
Inequality and Jesus Christ
by
Rev. Paul J. Bern
I
have always vigorously maintained that the gap between the rich and
poor is a moral problem as well as a socioeconomic problem in
desperate need of solutions. Yes, it's a religious problem too, and
religious people are causing it. They come to church faithfully every
Sunday, dressed like fashion models, and go through all the motions
of worship and praise. Sometimes there will even be some tears or
some healing that takes place. But, as the Bible says, if we do all
that and even more without compassion for all humankind, none of
those church services I just mentioned will mean one stinking thing.
Neither will the people at church, particularly the rich or
comfortably well off who do nothing to help those less fortunate than
themselves. All their praising, worshiping, preaching and their
exclamations of, “Thank you, Jesus!!” will be meaningless.
Regarding this the apostle Paul wrote, “If
I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames,
but have not love, I gain nothing. Love is patient. Love is kind. It
does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it
is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of
wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It
always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.”
(1st
Corinthians 13, verses 3-7, NIV)
So
we can see that at least part of the reason for inequality is people
who keep all they own and all they earn completely to themselves.
They won't share anything – nothing! Despite near-record levels of
economic inequality, many politicians and pundits still don't think
this widening chasm is much of a problem in a country supposedly
dedicated to egalitarian ideals. Inequality, the logic goes, is a
natural result of different degrees of work and creativity. Some
people strive harder and have better ideas, as well as take more
risks, and giving them out-sized rewards is a good thing, since it
encourages others to emulate this behavior and makes us all wealthier
in the end. The only problem with this story, of course, is that it's
persistently contradicted by the actual facts about inequality today.
In truth, inequality in America tracks more closely with a classic
Marxist analysis whereby the owners of capital exploit a surplus of
labor to keep wages low and generate high profits for themselves –
depriving workers of a fair share of the value they are creating for
companies. Yes, there are smart entrepreneurs taking big risks in
America, but the more dominant face of the economy is
well-established corporations run by professional managers who keep
finding new ways to drive labor costs down and profits up.
The
big losers are the people who are actually creating most of the value
of these companies -- i.e., the workers who make the sales, prepare
the food, stock the shelves, handle the phones and so on. Many of
these people are paid under $10 an hour, which is not enough to live
on – and certainly not enough to save for retirement or buy health
insurance, which is not offered to most low-wage workers. All of us
are hurt, too, by the way that the low-wage model drags down economic
growth. If you give a low-wage worker higher wages, they immediately
pump that money back into the economy through more spending. But if
you give a CEO another few million dollars in compensation, he'll
most likely just plow that money into his stock portfolio or other
savings vehicles, which doesn't do much for the economy since capital
is cheap right now and customers are scarce. If we want an economy
with robust consumer demand, workers need to a bigger slice of the
pie. Business leaders once understood that elementary fact.
Jesus,
Pope Francis, and brain scientists have asked what happens to a
person who is repeatedly given a larger and larger portion of the
economic pie at the expense of the workers, and the answers are clear
if unnerving. Wealth and power are dangerous for your mental health,
your spiritual condition, and for society in general – especially
when they contribute to the neglect of the poor. Ridding the world as
it exists today of poverty is currently a fantasy. Jesus spoke of
this: "The
poor you will always with you, but you will not always have me"
(Matthew 26:11).
He also said, "Blessed
are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God" (Luke
6:20).
Only a few verses before this moment in Luke, he cries (quoting
Deuteronomy 6:13): "The
Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to preach the
good news to the poor." (Luke 4:18). Jesus
also noted, famously and controversially, that it is easier "for
a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to
enter the kingdom of heaven." (Matthew 19:23-24).
Jesus
discouraged the accumulation of wealth, worried about its effects on
those who had it, and took special pleasure in helping the poor,
dedicating His efforts to them. He must have shaken his head at the
large gaps between rich and poor throughout the Middle East in the
first century. Pope Francis has taken up Jesus' call on this. During
his 2014 visit to South Korea, he repeated a cry that has become a
central theme of his papacy, telling hundreds of thousands of
listeners in Seoul that the gap between the rich and poor in Korea
was a problem, and they should think back to early Christian martyrs
in Korea. He said: "Their example has much to say to us who live
in societies where, alongside immense wealth, dire poverty is
silently growing; where the cry of the poor is seldom heeded and
where Christ continues to call out to us, asking us to love and serve
him by tending to our brothers and sisters in need." Now, I'm
not a fan of the Catholic church, but I must admit the pope has a
good point here.
Everyone
knows that the wealth gap in the U.S. has increased dramatically.
"The top 10 percent took more than half of the country's overall
income in 2012, the highest proportion recorded in a century of
government record keeping," the New York Times reported in April
2014. It's a problem that makes you dizzy, and one that will never be
easily solved. Indeed, the concentration of wealth at the very top of
American society recalls the early 20th century, before the
income-leveling measures of the New Deal kicked in. The growing
income gap is perhaps the most pressing issue before the world, not
just the United States, as the level of misery rises among the
world's poor. Even those formerly known as the middle class, who have
struggled mightily to make ends meet for decades now, face an array
of problems that create mental and physical pain on a vast scale. So
let's go back to Jesus and Pope Francis and their concerns. Do people
on the other end of this inequality equation really fare better? Does
wealth make you happy? Jesus certainly didn't think so, and neither
do I. Although I've never been really rich, there was a time in my
life during the 1990's when I owned and operated a small computer
repair shop. For the last 4 out of 8 years that I was in business, I
earned a 6-figure income. But in the process, my life had sped up to
a frenzied pace. By the time I closed that business in June 1999, I
was so exhausted that I took a couple of months off to recuperate. So
I know first hand that money does not necessarily solve all problems.
Indeed, it can sometimes create more problems than it solves.
Three
Canadian neuroscientists have suggested that being rich and powerful
actually makes you less happy and, even worse, incapable of
sympathizing with the poor. They find that the rich and powerful
among us show less brain activity in that region of the brain where
human sympathy is excited. Power diminishes all varieties of
sympathy, and it drowns empathy in a sea of greed. Conversely, those
who feel poor and marginalized in society show a great deal of
sympathetic activity. The ability to sympathize with those around us
seems crucial to our survival, and it's connected to the mirroring
functions of the brain. As the research now suggests, the richer and
more powerful we feel, the deader will be that area of our brain
where this crucial activity, which generates empathy, occurs. In
fact, power fundamentally changes the way we respond to those around
us.
Is
it any wonder that when a rich young man came to Jesus asking for
spiritual guidance, Jesus said what he was not expecting to hear.
“'All these I have kept', the young man said. 'What do I still
lack'? Jesus answered, 'If you want to be perfect, go, sell your
possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in
heaven. Then come, follow me.' When the young man heard this, he went
away sad, because he had great wealth” (Matthew chapter 19, verses
20-22, NIV). The young man "went away sad," since he
had so much materialistic stuff and didn't want to let go of any of
it. But letting go is essential to our own happiness as well as the
world's economic equilibrium. Jesus, Pope Francis and brain
scientists would agree on this. It's a hard teaching, but it's
important. We as humankind must – absolutely must – outgrow our
childish need for accumulating material things. The notion that
economic prosperity equals happiness borderlines on insanity because
of the deliberate refusal of those who practice it to plug into
reality. And so on and on it goes. The saying used to be, “On and
on it goes, and where it stops, nobody knows”, remember that one?
The difference between then and now is that the stopping point is
finally in sight due to a series of wars and natural disasters
culminating in the return of Jesus Christ. Oh, what a day that will
be!
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