Some Republican politicians shock me when they make statements like these.
“My tax plan will benefit the working class.”
“We must show how much we care for the poor.”
“It’s not only the rich who’ll benefit…”
“We don’t have to worry about the upper class.”
“Crime is concentrated among the lower class.”
By adopting the language of Karl Marx they surrender to socialism. Socialism’s core belief is secularism whose paramount doctrine is that there is no God directing humanity; no God decreeing morality. Socialism insists that all you see around you is materialism and it owes its origins to nothing but unaided, random physical and chemical processes. It follows that every human being is little more than about $9.50 worth of common chemicals cunningly arranged. A little carbon, some oxygen and a dash of hydrogen; throw in some potassium, nitrogen, and a few other elements, and bingo! You’ve got a person. This is the central organizing principle of secular fundamentalism.
What about hopes and dreams? What about inspiring memories of great ancestors? What about selfless love and devotion? All of that is nothing but biological determinism. Perhaps you mistakenly think you’re drawn to charity, compassion and altruism but it is nothing more than a few neurons firing in your brain creating illusions whose entire purpose is only biological survival. You are no more than a cat, a cow, a kangaroo or a camel. You are an animal. You may be smarter than some animals. You may have less hair than some animals. You may run slower than some animals but you run faster than others. They eat, defecate, mate and die. So do you. You are just another species of animal. That, in a nutshell, is the sacred sacrament of socialism.
Naturally, if you are an animal, you need either a zookeeper or a farmer to whom you belong. He will take care of you and you owe him all your productivity. The center of your existence is not the ‘G’ of God but the ‘g’ of government.
Rich and poor have specific meaning in the Bible and do not define anyone’s essence. Unlike animals, humans are touched by the finger of God and can grow. Animals have only a present. Unlike anteaters and zebras, we have a past and a future as well. Was the pitiful tycoon, Howard Hughes, living a lonely and paranoid existence really rich? Is the young and underpaid medical resident working 12 hour shifts and sharing a tiny apartment with three other doctors-in-training, really poor?
A goldfish without enough food can be thought of as poor. A mouse living in a grain warehouse can be considered rich. But those terms do not apply to humans. For humans those terms are relative. No matter your finances, you can easily find someone with far less than you as you can find someone with far more. Look one way and you can feel rich, while a glance in the other direction can make you feel poor.
As for the term ‘working class’ just who is that supposed to mean? Almost everyone I know goes to work five or six days a week and that includes most of the super-successful people I know. Most heirs to large fortunes as well as those bequeathed significant trust funds work hard in various enterprises.
As for the terms upper class and lower class, most politicians use them as synonyms for rich and poor respectively. This sheer nonsense is predicated entirely on the underlying belief that humans are just like any other livestock. Upper class horses race, lower class horses pull wagons and get turned into glue. Upper class bovines breed while lower class buffalo pull ploughs.
The truth is that none of these terms apply to humans. There is a very good reason why the Bible opens with the words:
In the beginning God created heaven and earth.
(Genesis 1:1)
rather than:
In the beginning God created everything.
or, if you prefer the poetic:
In the beginning God created the entire universe and all that is in it.
Ancient Jewish wisdom explains what the words ‘heaven’ and ‘earth’ teach us that would not have been conveyed by ‘everything’ or by ‘the entire universe.’
Heaven means the spiritual attributes of reality while earth refers to the physical. God is teaching us right from the very outset that the world is both a physical and a spiritual reality. There are things you can measure in a laboratory like food and water, and there are equally important things you cannot such as love and loyalty.
We humans, created in God’s image are chiefly distinguishable from animals by our ability to know the spiritual. Indeed, our lives would be painfully incomplete without it. Most of the important decisions and choices confronting us every day require us to weigh spiritual implications as much as we evaluate the physical.
I delve into this informatively and entertainingly in this special episode of my new podcast. If you have any desire to learn how to include spiritual factors in the decisions you make you should click here and listen for free now.
Oh yes, as for upper class and lower class, what do they really mean? Upper class people, regardless of their bank balances, are people who honor their past and plan for their future. Lower class people, regardless of their riches, live only in and for the present. Having abandoned every vestige of self-restraint, they succumb to every momentary urge and condemn themselves and their unfortunate offspring to utter hopelessness.
