insatiable

"In the commencement of the ninth year, Alma saw the wickedness of the church, and he saw also that the example of the church began to lead those who were unbelievers on from one piece of iniquity to another, thus bringing on the destruction of the people. Yea, he saw great inequality among the people, some lifting themselves up with their pride, despising others, turning their backs upon the needy and the naked and those who were hungry, and those who were athirst, and those who were sick and afflicted’ (Alma 4.11-12).

I recently posted the following to the “Just Quotes” page of this site.

“How much do CEOs actually make? In 2017, the McDonald’s CEO, Stephen Easterbrook, took home $21.8m. That’s 3,101 times more than the typical McDonald’s employee worldwide. The typical McDonald’s worker would have to labor more than three millennia to make as much as the McDonald’s CEO made last year….
“At most major corporations, typical workers still have to labor over three centuries to make as much as their CEO makes in a year” (“Minimum Wage? It’s Time to Talk about a Maximum Wage,” Sam Pizzigati, theguardian.com).

This is pure, rather impure, madness.

It is much worse than bad economic policy. It exposes American capitalism as an abominable affront to a Heavenly Father who loves and appreciates an impoverished worker laboring under the wage slavery of morally bankrupt companies and corporations as much as the rapacious leaders of companies and corporations who commit such violence against society.

Worse still, it is quite literally, murderous; falling under the Hebrew Bible’s rubric of “shedding innocent blood.” People go hungry, become depressed, give up hope, and die because of such social injustice.

Such rapacity makes the “Christian” boogie-man of being gay; and wishing to be united with a gay loved one, look positively saintly.

Yet, too many “Christians” ignorantly howl about the latter while they justify and celebrate American capitalists’ ungodly accumulation of mammon; and elect public officials who pass laws and form policies that promote such violence against a just society. And, of course, all the while those same “Christians,” themselves, voraciously feed at the same trough of avarice and greed.

And what of the “Christian” pastors? Surely they warn their flocks of the evils of the inequality, to say nothing of the dangers of the feeding frenzy itself. But, no, their pastors, largely, remain duplicitously silent. One suspects they are silent so that they too can benefit from the orgy. Their silence is, I suppose, proof enough of the Book of Mormon prophet’s verdict concerning Latter-day “Christianity:”

O ye wicked and perverse and stiffnecked people, why have ye built up churches unto yourselves to get gain? Why have ye transfigured the holy word of God, that ye might bring damnation upon your souls?  … For behold, ye do love money, and your substance, and your fine apparel, and the adorning of your churches, more than ye love the poor and the needy, the sick and the afflicted. O ye pollutions, ye hypocrites, ye teachers, who sell yourselves for that which will canker, why have ye polluted the holy church of God? Why are ye ashamed to take upon you the name of Christ? Why do ye not think that greater is the value of an endless happiness than that misery which never dies—because of the praise of the world? Why do ye adorn yourselves with that which hath no life, and yet suffer the hungry, and the needy, and the naked, and the sick and the afflicted to pass by you, and notice them not? Yea, why do ye build up your secret abominations to get gain, and cause that widows should mourn before the Lord, and also orphans to mourn before the Lord, and also the blood of their fathers and their husbands to cry unto the Lord from the ground, for vengeance upon your heads? Behold, the sword of vengeance hangeth over you; and the time soon cometh that he avengeth the blood of the saints upon you, for he will not suffer their cries any longer.” (Mormon 8.33, 37-41).
 
Moroni, as it turns out, is too kind by half. He minimized modern America’s avarice. When it comes to the poor, we do NOT “notice them not.” We notice them plenty. We know full well they are there. They would, in fact, perhaps be better off if we did ignore them.

But, like that most “Christian” of men, Paul Ryan, and his ilk, too many “Christians” belittle the poor; speaking of them in the most disparaging of ways. Too many “Christians” claim that their actions have nothing to do with the poor’s desperate status, but charge that it is the fault of the poor themselves. Too many “Christians” help pass and zealously support public policy that takes out of their mouth the few crumbs of bread that the impoverished do precariously have in order to place it on the already heaping spoonful of the undeserving rich. Indeed, true to ancient Israel’s insatiable appetite, so thoroughly condemned by Amos, they

“pant after the dust of the earth on the head of the poor” (Amos 2.7).
 
As I so often feel when contemplating such rascality, a prayer seems in order. Unsurprisingly, the Psalmist has the perfect one.
 
”LORD, how long shall the wicked,
   how long shall the wicked triumph?
How long shall they utter and speak hard things? 
   and all the workers of iniquity boast themselves?
They break in pieces thy people, O LORD,
   and afflict thine heritage.
They slay the widow and the stranger,
   and murder the fatherless.
Yet they say, ‘The LORD shall not see,
   neither shall the God of Jacob regard it’” (Psalm 94.3-7).

For Your hands are defiled with blood,
    and your fingers with iniquity;
your lips have spoken lies,
    your tongue hath muttered perverseness.
None calleth for justice,
    nor any pleadeth for truth:
they trust in vanity, and speak lies;
    they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.
They hatch cockatrice’ eggs,
    and weave the spider’s web: 
he that eateth of their eggs dieth,
    and that which is crushed breaketh out into a viper.
Their webs shall not become garments,
    neither shall they cover themselves with their works:
their works are works of iniquity,
    and the act of violence is in their hands.
Their feet run to evil,
    and they make haste to shed innocent blood:
their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity;
    wasting and destruction are in their paths.
The way of peace they know not;
    and there is no judgment in their goings:
they have made them crooked paths:
    whosoever goeth therein shall not know peace” (Isaiah 59.3-8).
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