The post before last, I wrote on the institutionalization of envy, and thought I needed to address a reasonable question that may have arisen in the minds of some. In the first post, I made some reference to the situation that might cause this question — I wrote how hard it is for many for people to feel sorry for the rich who are being oppressed by our system of democratic pillage. Poor buddy is have trouble with his yacht payments, etc.
The question that could arise can be formed in scriptural terms this way. “Where in Scripture does it warn us of the great moral peril of oppressing the rich?” Why is the preponderance of warnings directed against those who would rip off the poor?
There are a number of ways to answer this, and so let me mention one very briefly, an answer that operates on the practical level. But then I want to move on to the central moral myopia that the question represents.
The practical reason we are not warned against the pillage of the rich is that democracies as we know them today did not exist back then. We are not warned in this way for the same reason that we are not told to avoid computer fraud. Robbing the rich on a wide scale is not mentioned for the same reason that the instrument for accomplishing this, the House of Representatives, is also not mentioned.
But there is a real blind spot revealed by the question. Where does the Bible tell us not to steal from the rich? In the same place where it tells us not to steal period. That commandment is in the same place where we are told not to steal from Ford Motor Company, WalMart, your mother’s purse, or any other place where the money you want might be found. The morality of the thing has nothing whatever to do with the moral condition of the victim, or with his extra resources. Stealing is stealing whether or not the person involved would ever miss it, and envy is envy even if the wealthy are parading about in some unconscionable fashion. What is that to us? It is not our money. We must not want it, seek it, angle for it, manipulate for it, vote for it, or write prophetic jeremiads with one eye on the main chance. The only thing we may do to get some is by offering a lawful service, diligently performed. Surrounding the palace with ballots is no more acceptable that surrounding the palace with torches and pitchforks.
When we are commanded not to covet anything that belongs to our neighbor, the command presupposes that the neighbor concerned is someone who actually has all that stuff. I can’t covet the wives of bachelors. I don’t covet the car of a man who has only a bike. The tenth commandment presupposes that envy and covetousness are operating in some sense “uphill.” In effect, we are commanded not to oppress the poor, and we are also commanded, by definition, not to envy the rich.
And this is the sin into which America has fallen headlong. We have perversely defined greed as someone with a goodish bit of his own money wanting to keep it. And we have defined altruism as the desire to get someone else’s money for free. Isaiah 5:20 is a passage for just such a time as this. America is materialistic all right, but not in the way that our “common sense” says we are. Envy is in our bones, and it is certainly in our voting patterns.