Talk about your clash of faith, habit and human frailty/fallibility! The codger’s always amazed how faith can guide us, if we honestly embrace it. But too many of us have grown up in a society where habit and fear seem to not only fight genuine faith but warp it to justify our human failings.
We’re all born into societies we didn’t create. America’s is the wealthiest the world has ever known, but it has objectified, eulogized and essentially sanctified the mythologization of a hyper consumer-driven capitalism increasingly to the exclusion of fact or common sense.
The old timer would ask us to join Sherman and Mr. Peabody in the “Wayback Machine” to go back and examine early human community life. Dredging up that $3 term we used a while back, we’ll look at our early efforts at a civic polity/goal focused group.
The function of primitive economies was a safe and productive enough agriculture to allow an opportunity to make a life for people/families and, in their ignorance/innocence, they turned over direction of that effort to rulers who informed them they were either gods or good buddies to gods which governed the weather. In turn, they gave those rulers a share of whatever they produced. Pretty convenient.
As we became more adept at creating things and transporting what we produced, we came up with these curious little, circular devices, primarily made with what we considered “precious” metal to exchange for what was produced, created and shipped. Ching, ching; “capitalism”. By providing safety and for other “needs” our “rulers,” still self-professed compadres of “God,” continued to take it “off the top,” whether “it” be produce or “taxes.”
Meanwhile, as we became more sophisticated, we began to question (1) the motives of the rulers, (2) the share they were taking off the top, (3) what they were really accomplishing for us and (4) their supposed relationship to the man upstairs.
At this point it began to dawn on some of our civic polities that we didn’t need these gilded “middlemen” to determine what we needed and how to best provide it for us. Since then, increasingly the collective “we” (human beings as civic groups/polities) have generally examined the viability of two things: (1) the best mechanism to collectively govern ourselves, (2) the level of support we actually require to assure our collective safety, productivity and functional social and civic fairness and good.
This is kinda the point where genuine faith, habit and human frailty/fallibility butt heads. Looking at faith systems, i.e.; Christianity’s Christ/God, the New Testament tells us that the criteria for embracing Him is pretty simple: “Love each other as you would yourself.” And; “love me and keep my commands”, more specifically to serve and care for one another and His creation, this beautiful earth and all it contains.
So, if we’re responsible, working members of a civic polity we might limit to America; but more accurately/functionally encompasses all of humanity; enshrining the myth that we live in and/or ought to live in a 100% capitalist economy is not only unchristian, it’s not functional for us collectively as human beings or for the planet which is our home.
To reiterate:
Any maximally functional economies for the past thousand years have been mixed economies, where the civic polity’s members produce, create and distribute goods and services while it collectively creates the best policies to ensure the safety, rights and care of their fellow members.
To pretend otherwise would be turning our backs on 2,000 years of Christian faith and responsibility as well as on any type of actually functional civic and faith-based, humanity inclusive polity. The result, not good for civilization or humanity itself.
The codger, as he girds himself to shuffle off this mortal coil, would humbly offer that together we can be an Indivisible faith and civic based polity, if we choose. Hasta la vista and Adoramus Te.
