economic inequality is sin

“…The heart of the sons of men
is full of evil,
and madness is in their heart
while they live…”
(Ecclesiastes 9.3)
 
Wherewith shall I come before the LORD,
and bow myself before the high God?
He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good;
and what doth the LORD require of thee,
but to do justly, and to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with thy God?
 (Micah 6.6, 8)
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 It is not given that one man should possess that which is above another, wherefore the world lieth in sin.
​dc 49.20
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Now, there’s a scripture you don’t hear read or referenced every week. Or once a year. Or once a decade. Come to think of it, I don’t know the last time I heard it read or referenced. Maybe never—except by me, of course. I’m rude like that. If you made a list of the top ten read or referenced scriptures in Mormondom, Moses 1.39 and a couple of 3.7s, one from 2 Nephi and one from Amos, would surely be on the list. If you made a list of the least ten read or referenced scriptures, this one might be on the list. Right along aside DC 70.14.
 
“Nevertheless, in your temporal things you shall be equal, and this not grudgingly, otherwise the abundance of the manifestations of the Spirit shall be withheld.”
 
Shoot, a passage from Leviticus about having sex with animals might be more often read or referenced than these two latter-day scriptures. They represent too great a danger to the mad status quo of our time.
 
But the absence of these two and other likeminded scriptures is revelatory. Tells you something about our culture. That something is not complimentary. It is something idolatrous. It’s almost like we don’t even understand those top ten most read and referenced scriptures we are so fond of.
 
All of this came to mind recently when an Associated Press headline caught my eye: “CEOs got smaller raises. It would still take a typical worker two lifetimes to make their annual pay.”[1] Among the eye-popping observations made in the piece was this tidbit.
 
“The median pay for workers at companies included in the AP survey was $77,178, up 1.3% from $76,160 the previous year. That means it would take that worker 186 years to make what a CEO making the median pay earned just last year. At the same group of companies in 2021, it would have taken 190 years.”
 
I am not sure how many things could more obviously NOT be part of “the plan of salvation” than this. While such perversion isn’t part of God’s economy, but that of a fallen, ungodly world, I’ll concede, reluctantly, to the boss making a little more than employees. But what the AP reports is criminal, from any perspective but the perverted. It is criminal and perverted on the part of the CEO. It is criminal  and perverted on the part of the companies that pay it. It is criminal and perverted on the part of the legislators that permit it. It is criminal and perverted on the part of the population that countenances it and does not righteously resist it.
 
It is difficult to find language sufficiently vile to describe such perversion and madness.
 
And not only does such inequality fly in the face of a just God, it flies in the face of all the propagandistic claims of our culture about merit and meritocracy. It is patently obvious to anyone with a brain and a heart that no one is so good at what they do that they are worth two lifetimes of their fellow human beings’ earnings. No one ever worked that much harder than anyone else. It’s simply not humanly possible. American businesses and the legislators that lap from their troughs can’t even be true to their own delusional and idolatrous ideas about merit and meritocracy, for God’s sake! They show remarkable skill in further corrupting what is already corrupt to begin with.
 
One might wonder how the wealthy and powerful so successfully get away with such ungodliness and infidelity to even pretended virtues. Part of the answer to this is the fact that the “liberal media” does not report on such madness—although the “radical leftist/socialist/communistic” media might. More important is the monied class’s ability to deflect and distract. Over nearly a half century, the monied interests, their well-funded think tanks, and the legislators they have bought have spent billions of their ill-gotten gains in stoking culture wars to distract attention from their thievery. It seems people can be made to feel satisfied being pillaged as long as they can beat up on those weaker than themselves—traditionally, African Americans, gays, transexuals, etc., and more recently school teachers and librarians.
 
It is all madness, just as the Bible bears witness in passages such as the one that heads all our just society posts.
 
“…The heart of the sons of men
   is full of evil,
and madness is in their heart
   while they live…” (Eccl. 9.3).
 
One would think that those religious leaders who claim to believe in and most understand scripture would step up and fulfill their prophetic role to expose and resist the ungodliness of inequality. But, alas, all too many of them have been bought off by these same monied interests and have bought into their delusional and idolatrous doctrines. So effective are the wizards of business that one begins to believe in sorcery.
 
But God be praised. We have scripture to teach and warn us against their sorcery.
 
“How sweet are thy words unto my taste! 
   yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!
Through thy precepts I get understanding:
   therefore I hate every false way” (Ps. 119.103-104).
 
“Moreover by thy word is thy servant warned” (Ps. 19.11). 
 
Simply being a decent human being should be enough to reveal the evil of the thieving economic inequality that has infected our society. But it is certain that those who read scripture and claim to be disciples of the Lord, Jesus Christ, should be able to discern the sorcery that justifies the thieving economic inequality of our times. Even if such thieving inequality was not so clearly evil on the face of it, the word of God ought to cast aside all doubt. For it is most certainly “not given that one man should possess that which is above another.” Discerning believers should have no difficulty discerning that the economic inequality of our day in which a few individuals possess more than 95% of the world’s wealth and in which a few individuals make as much in a single year as all their fellow beings make in two lifetimes is proof that “the world lieth in sin.”
 
Those instructed and warned by the good word of God have no choice but to root and pray against such ungodly thieves and scoundrels. Indeed, they have responsibility to do so. They are called to do so. They must pray that the sorcerers who establish, maintain, and operate such vile and perverted and idolatrous schemes fail miserably in their perversions. They must so pray, not out of hate for the vile thief and scoundrel, but out of a desire for the happiness, security, and progress of all God’s children. Such prayer fulfills Jesus’ teaching that we pray,
 
“Thy kingdom come.
Thy will be done in earth,
As it is in heaven” (Mt. 6.10).
 
Even so, come, Lord Jesus!
 
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[1] By Alexandra Olson, May 31, 2023