When currency is valued as the greatest possession on the planet and empowered to buy everything in the material world, then the value we had placed upon God seems to morph right into it. The amorphous concept of some kind of God can't compete in the material world with genuine riches that makes our lives pleasurable to the max.
There is a great worship of wealth today, conscious and unconscious, and money is the key to all of it. Every soul wants it and often will corrupt itself to get it. It is a continuing evolutionary value judgement that all humans must confront.
It is, in fact, only mini-sheets of paper with elaborate designs that takes on this massive value. It is said to represent real wealth – stores of gold – but these actual stashes have been superseded long ago with paper that represents the accumulated wealth of the economy or at least your faith in it.
This is problematic since the government is always in deep debt to the banks and saddled with interest payments before anything else gets done. So, who controls the country, the debt-ridden government and its thousands of elected servants who are, in fact, servants to the rich people who put them there – or claim they did? Or do we just say that the banks are the power behind the republic throne. Governments don't matter as much and are often just tools of the rich.
Some fear the so-called Dark Cabal, a global curse composed of the warmongering rich and their corrupted governments. Perhaps, but if we didn't have an international banking system, we would be in chaos and would need to establish one.
Perhaps our real concerns should be for something much more personal – our own values, what we will do for money and how we use it. Do we support the concept of Truth, the quest for Beauty, the embrace of Goodness? Does our desire for money evolve into worship, so that the values of attaining it would supersede these true values, those which will endure for eternity and aren't wedded to materiality, which is all temporal and bereft of eternal value.
Yachts and fancy cars won't go with you into eternity, but your values will.
Those who bend their souls in pursuit of wealth seem to have divided their reality. They see the world in their 'rat race' tag mentality. We are all rats scrambling around for what gives us sustenance and pleasure. That's the excuse. Any thoughts of a higher reality where God dwells is conveniently faded away and relegated to another world sometime in the future, but not real here, today.
A retreat from spirituality means you don't have to deal with it. Many pay some lip service to religion, but you are much too busy to engage in meaningless theological discussions about something nobody knows much about. No way to understand God or anything else for sure, they say. Just live your life, bunker your family, and work amorphously to be a good person.
Often, people embrace a scripture and call it holy, which they consider valid because it has survived, and been promoted. It gives them a material foundation, a book, to anchor their material lives. They can even forgive the sins of the numerous religious wars as if they don't exist anymore, just part of history. They look at the churches for what they are today. Some find them tolerable but not life-changing. And millions don't like them and stay away.
Since money is literally worshipped as a panacea for all, that stands to reason. And when the religions continue to preach for money and ask for a substantial portion of your income, they come into more question themselves. People will say they're in it for the money, which is a charge often levied and often validated in this world.
The values that you hold within you and that you have practiced in the material world will all come up for review when you pass on. Nothing that you have ever purchased will have any value. Your record of charity will.
Have you contributed to the quality of life around you, or have you taken all that you can and ignored the needy, and the victims of your plunder, and even disdained them for being less worthy than you? We will find that achieving material wealth is not directly related to salvation for your soul. We will find that much of our future depends on how we have treated our fellow man; we may well find that we need some rehabilitation and remedial education in the ascendant worlds beyond mortal death.
In the meantime, it is true that many humans consider money to be a 'necessary evil.' It is in high demand for them and their family, but they strongly resent the power it holds over their lives. They don't worship it, they are just stuck with their need for it, and heavy interest payments for shelter, transportation, and education expenses.
These are the disgruntled people who may forge a better system, one that provides for basic human needs and frees millions of people from incessant and even debilitating money problems. If we could somehow devalue our love of wealth and our constant drive for profits, and value more the struggles of those who are racked with needs by using our announced and pronounced religious values, then we will all be on a higher plane.
Health care and career-driven education should not be a business for profit. These are basic needs and should not be subjected to massive profiteering at the hands of rapacious executives who don't mind soaking everyone for their luxuriant lifestyles.
Again, we face Values judgements. Whether rich or poor or in-between, they are the great constants of life. Make your record; grow your soul.
Values Over Wealth
Wealth has no eternal value. We have yet to learn this.
Website designed by Gwendolyn Cleveland
Web-Master/Designer: Hensel Graphics
© Jim Cleveland 2017