God and Mammon
Today everybody knows that mankind has technology and energy to produce agricultural foods and industrial goods enough to feed and take care of all the people in the world.
With this level of technology and energy, poverty must have already been a dead word for mankind for a long time. But, the fact is opposite. There are so many poor people and potential poor people in the world, though there are also a lot of rich men.
The point at issue to be focused on is human desire and a lack of love to their neighbors. One of common patterns is that a poor man, one day, gets determined to be rich. He will neglect and then abuse poor people so as to leave the poor environment. He will never help or support other poor people at the sacrifice of his success. But he will make the best effort to be employed by a rich man or a business. To be promoted, he will accept and follow the way of thinking and living of the rich man and the management of the company.
And he will soon know that rich people in society can be rich and continue to be rich as they do neglect and abuse poor people. So, he will stick to this policy of neglecting and abusing the poor.
Of course there are so many levels and steps for a poor man to go through to be rich. Accordingly, he will not directly face this ugly reality in his career. He will not feel the prick of conscience.
But, he can wonder why mankind cannot yet feed and take care of all the people in the world with such high technology and big energy they have developed and obtained. And he must know the answer: it is because a poor man can be rich only by neglecting and abusing the poor.
No matter how humane a rich man looks, at the bottom of his mind there is adherence to the philosophy that a poor man can be rich only by neglecting and abusing the poor.
Indeed what makes poor people suffer is a gap and the disparity between the rich and the poor.
Truly what makes poor Americans suffer is a gap and the disparity between the rich and the poor. Indeed what makes poor Africans suffer is a gap and the disparity between the rich and the poor.
If all the Americans are equally poor, there will be little pain among the poor. If all the Africans are equally poor, there will be little pain among the poor.
So, Christ Jesus teaches that a man cannot serve both God and Mammon. God tells a man not to be greedy. But Mammon persuades a man to be greedy as much as possible.
Income inequality has been on the rise in most countries since the early 1980s, including in advanced, emerging, and transition economies, Milanovic finds. Explanations for this increase include technological progress, government policies on the use of taxes and social transfers to redistribute income, changing social norms, and globalization. Today, the poorest 20 percent of the world's population receive only 1.27 percent of global income, while the richest 1 percent alone receive 13.08 percent.
So, if this top 1% is not so rich, the poorest 20% will not suffer so much as they can obtain financial resources to solve their problems.
The point at issue here is a lack of faith among these top 1% rich people in the world. They might look outwardly Judaists, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, or Buddhists, but they belong to a religion that reveres Mammon.
And, it is only faith and a correct religion that can force this top 1% rich people to repent and change their philosophy.
In other word, all the non-religious discussions about the gap between the poor and the rich that are not based on religion and faith will turn to be useless eventually.
The answer and the solution to the Wall Street evil are in religion and faith but not in politics and economics.
In Britain, the gap in earnings between the richest and poorest in the working-age population has risen from eight to one in 1985 to 12 to one in 2008.
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Luk 7:3 And when he heard of Jesus, he sent unto him the elders of the Jews, beseeching him that he would come and heal his servant.