So i'm a middle-class westerner, complaining about how Michael Bloomberg spends his millions. I'm extravagantly wealthy by global standards, even compared to many of my fellow Americans. Aren't I guilty of failing to help others when I choose to buy kitsch at Target or the latest Apple product?
The hard answer is, "yes." Yes, I am. Railing against people like Bloomberg might be satisfying, but it's pointless if we engage in a kind of "champagne socialism" that demands only those wealthier than us consider the needs of our fellow persons. Every time I drive my car, every time I buy a cup of Starbucks coffee, every time I choose between one of several streaming services, every time I tell my house AI to dim the lights, I'm confronted with my own staggering wealth.
We each have to find our own path in this regard. It's not my business to tell someone else, specifically, how to go about such a pursuit. The world is difficult, and there is nothing inherently wrong with relaxation or pleasure; "don't muzzle the ox that treads the grain," after all. This is about a fundamental shift in the way we view community and personal wealth, radically different from the Western work-ethic and conservative views on the "deserving poor" most of us have grown up with.
In many ways (and this is something that should be important to the citizens of a so-called "Christian nation"), it is a return to the earliest practice of the Church. In the face of the callous brutality of the Roman Empire, and with the hope of the imminent return of Jesus Christ, the early Church gladly sold their worldly possessions, divided up enough for themselves, and gave the rest to the poor.
We, too, live in callous times. Innocent men are murdered by the state. What little help the poor and needy receive is constantly under threat. The government takes our money and uses it to kill countless millions of even poorer people overseas. The prison system grows as quickly as the military industrial complex. Most of our fellow citizens are content to let warmongers and would-be tyrants rule over us with barely even lip service paid to notions of "liberty" and "democracy." Now is the time to change the way we look at our own personal wealth; or, more importantly, change our deepest wants and desires, as these things reflect what we ultimately do with that wealth.
The Patriarch said, "Please, go out into the whole city, and make a list of all my masters." But those who listened to him did not understand; they were astonished that anyone, no matter how powerful, could be considered the master of a Patriarch. So they asked him to explain. "Those that you call "beggars" and "the poor,"" the Patriarch said. "These I declare my masters and helpers. For they, and only they, are able to bestow upon us the Kingdom of Heaven. -"Three Byzantine Saints: Contemporary Biographies of St. Daniel the Stylite, St. Theodore of Sykeon and St. John the Almsgiver," translated by Elizabeth Dawes
