Mammon's Empire
by Bastante Solipsis Marquez blog link
MARCH 1, 2010
Jesus was not a capitalist.
Jesus did not advocate capitalism, and in admonishing us to give up our things, Jesus specifically denounced capitalism. In order to work, capitalism requires us to constantly acquire more things. And Jesus told us to stop acquiring more things - Jesus told us to give them up entirely.
When Jesus said that man cannot serve two masters, that man cannot serve both God and mammon, Jesus was pointing out that we cannot serve God which is love while at the same time serving capitalism. The two are irreconcilable.
We can be capitalists, or we can be Christians, but we cannot be both. Jesus condemned capitalism and was consequently murdered by the prominent bankers and politicians who saw that his success would lead to their demise.
Capitalism requires a return on an investment. Love requires nothing in return. If we invest ourselves in order to get something in return, we may be good capitalists but we are not ushering in the Kingdom of Heaven.
Christians have a moral responsibility to denounce capitalism and forgive all debts, signing on to the debtors union, abandoning the capitalist teachings and investing in ecological rehabilitation.
Jesus preached against capitalism and Jesus was killed by capitalists who foresaw the destruction of their empire.
The Kingdom of Heaven is not capitalist. The Kingdom of Heaven is love, and love expects nothing in return. The Kingdom of Heaven loves the way the sun shines on the earth. Not once has the sun ever said to the earth, 'what have you done for me?' The sun simply shines, as love gives without needing to receive.
We have become a society of intelligent investors, proud of our rational self-interest. which is another way of saying that we have forgotten how to love. In order to love, in order to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven, we must change our ways, and we must begin by changing our minds. We must choose between capitalism and the Kingdom of Heaven. We must choose between God and mammon.
The Kingdom of Heaven requires sacrifice. We cannot get a good return on our investment and still love. We must give up all returns, and we must invest without getting a return, in order to be loving. We must sacrifice our rational self-interest. In our corrupt world, which has placed rational self-interest on an altar and now worships this false god called capitalism, we must face persecution as we denounce the greed and the selfishness and the egotism that are natural consequences of rational self-interest. We must abandon rational self-interest, and must embrace irrational, self-sacrificing love if we are to usher in the Kingdom of Heaven. And if Christians are unified in the praying of the Lord's Prayer as taught to us by Jesus Christ then we must forgive debts, give up entirely the acquisition of things, and learn how to love.
For many of us, indeed for most of us, we must learn how to love for the first time. Native English speaking Americans have been raised on capitalism, which DOES NOT FORGIVE DEBTS. we have been conditioned since birth and before to be unloving. Consequently, we live in a society filled with highly sophisticated investors and broken families and a dying, corrupt and bloated empire. And we do not understand why all of our intelligent investing has left us with unhappiness and a pain in our hearts which we cover up with stimulants, anti-depressants, technology, distractions, business, shallowness, and violence. We, the American investing public, must learn how to love from the very cultures and races that we have violently oppressed, who have never forgotten how to love and thus consequently never been that great at capitalism.
The damage that has been done is so great that there would be no forgiveness available to us if Jesus Christ had not already established the universal precedent of unconditional forgiveness through his willing sacrifice of self on the cross. In forgiving the Jews, the master race, the chosen people of God, the bankers and the investors who have heartlessly enslaved an entire planet to a financial system that refuses to forgive debts, Jesus established a precedent that all citizens of the world are now able follow as we see through the illusion of capitalism to the truth of the Kingdom of Heaven.
The salvation of the world does not lay with capitalism. The salvation of the world lies in the abandonment of capitalism. Jesus Christ preached this 2000 years ago and capitalists murdered him. He knew he was before his time, he knew he would not be understood until now. He was merely establishing a precedent that would, over the next millennia, become globally appreciated and revered. Not merely though ultimate sacrifice but through ultimate unconditional forgiveness and ultimate unconditional love.
Christians cannot be capitalists, and capitalists cannot be Christians. If we are to follow the teachings of Jesus we must forgive all debts, and this leads inevitably to the downfall of capitalism, which opens the way for the abandonment of rational self-interest in favor of unconditional love. As a capitalist society, we have no concept of what it is like to live with open and loving hearts - we have been conditioned to be rationally self-interested. As humans made in God's image, of course we know what it's like to love, and we are sick at heart because we have built a society that thwarts our deepest need. As long as the economic premise of rational self-interest remains unchallenged, we resign ourselves to a life of suffering in mammon's empire.
We must overcome our selfish conditioning, and we must forgive ourselves, and we must allow those cultures and peoples who are not inherently conditioned capitalists to show us how to love. We must empower those we have enslaved to step forward and lead the way. This is merely the beginning of a lifetime of atonement, this renouncing of capitalism. To be fully Christian, we must empower the last to become first and the first to become last...
I pray that Christ forgives me, I pray that Christ returns and leads us into the truth which is unconditional love under God within the Kingdom of Heaven
BASTANTE SOLIPSIS MARQUEZ
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