Yesterday, if only for a moment, the Dow Jones Index crossed the 12,000 mark for the first time since June of 2008, since immediately prior to the crash which brought us this most recent version of the Great Recession.
My IRA is not unhappy, which is nice for me. Nor, should I imagine, are any number of stock brokers and commodity traders, who are surely enjoying a seeming return to the profitable days of yore.
Of course, this does not say much for the more than 9 percent of us who are still looking for jobs.
Corporate profits, I read, are good this year, maybe great, large and getting larger. Whether that is being fed by the markets or vice versa, I do not know. Nor, on an even more significant level, do I understand where all those profits are going. I guessing not so much for hiring or wage increases. Not into the hands of the people who need them so that they can put bread on their table or roofs over their children’s heads.
No, what seems to be recovering is the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor in our society.
I am not an economist. I hear politicians arguing about what is best to fix the economy, but I hear few arguing about what is right to do to fix the real problem in the world. For I am quite sure that the real problem in the world today is not so much our fiscal deficits as it is our moral bankruptcy. The problem is not how we are managing our wealth but, as our Lord would surely remind us, how much we love it.
We have created a world engineered for the high purpose of accumulating wealth, holding wealth, worshipping wealth. We cannot afford to provide needed health care for everyone, but we are un-American if we dare to burden the passing of moneyed estates to moneyed children. We thrill at the sight of enormous mansions but look the other way when we see the homeless. We have completely lost track of what really matters. In a world where bankers and commodity brokers are the highest paid among us and the teachers of our children are the least, it should be obvious that our sense of what is actually valuable is far and long gone.
And we should know better.
The Lord enters into judgment with the elders and princes of his people: It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord God of hosts. Isaiah 3:14-15
The price of our guilt stands ever before us, the wage of our accumulated wealth is the slow death of our soul, our life, our hope. We have convinced ourselves and each other that it is our inherent right to have and hold as much as we dare – we have ignored the truth that such pursuit is, in fact, the judgment against us. Our unwillingness to confront our own greed and selfishness has become the prison that will ever confine us to this continual destruction.
But there is a path.
It leads away from the name-calling and false security and self-serving politics of wealth. It leads us away from our love of financial institutions and our faith in market performances to the love of our neighbor and our faith in the greater good for all. It changes our perspective from winner-take-all to I-am-my–brother’s-keeper. It measures us by radically different means.
It is not going to be a hard path to find. It will be an ever harder path to keep. But we are called by our Lord and Savior to this path because it is the only way to peace and true joy. It is our only recovery. It is our only salvation.
Justice, it turns out, is even better than good economic news.
My IRA is not unhappy, which is nice for me. Nor, should I imagine, are any number of stock brokers and commodity traders, who are surely enjoying a seeming return to the profitable days of yore.
Of course, this does not say much for the more than 9 percent of us who are still looking for jobs.
Corporate profits, I read, are good this year, maybe great, large and getting larger. Whether that is being fed by the markets or vice versa, I do not know. Nor, on an even more significant level, do I understand where all those profits are going. I guessing not so much for hiring or wage increases. Not into the hands of the people who need them so that they can put bread on their table or roofs over their children’s heads.
No, what seems to be recovering is the ever-widening gap between the rich and the poor in our society.
I am not an economist. I hear politicians arguing about what is best to fix the economy, but I hear few arguing about what is right to do to fix the real problem in the world. For I am quite sure that the real problem in the world today is not so much our fiscal deficits as it is our moral bankruptcy. The problem is not how we are managing our wealth but, as our Lord would surely remind us, how much we love it.
We have created a world engineered for the high purpose of accumulating wealth, holding wealth, worshipping wealth. We cannot afford to provide needed health care for everyone, but we are un-American if we dare to burden the passing of moneyed estates to moneyed children. We thrill at the sight of enormous mansions but look the other way when we see the homeless. We have completely lost track of what really matters. In a world where bankers and commodity brokers are the highest paid among us and the teachers of our children are the least, it should be obvious that our sense of what is actually valuable is far and long gone.
And we should know better.
The Lord enters into judgment with the elders and princes of his people: It is you who have devoured the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What do you mean by crushing my people, by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord God of hosts. Isaiah 3:14-15
The price of our guilt stands ever before us, the wage of our accumulated wealth is the slow death of our soul, our life, our hope. We have convinced ourselves and each other that it is our inherent right to have and hold as much as we dare – we have ignored the truth that such pursuit is, in fact, the judgment against us. Our unwillingness to confront our own greed and selfishness has become the prison that will ever confine us to this continual destruction.
But there is a path.
It leads away from the name-calling and false security and self-serving politics of wealth. It leads us away from our love of financial institutions and our faith in market performances to the love of our neighbor and our faith in the greater good for all. It changes our perspective from winner-take-all to I-am-my–brother’s-keeper. It measures us by radically different means.
It is not going to be a hard path to find. It will be an ever harder path to keep. But we are called by our Lord and Savior to this path because it is the only way to peace and true joy. It is our only recovery. It is our only salvation.
Justice, it turns out, is even better than good economic news.
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