I had a surreal moment when I logged into CBC online today, as on the one hand there was a bold headline that described the 8% increase in Canadians' "average net worth to $442,130" alongside a picture that showed the recent Mount Polley spill in BC, deemed an "environmental disaster" after " five million cubic meters of tailings pond wastewater" was accidentally dumped into a creek. The accompanying image shows a boat adrift amid the sludge and ruin of what had been a once vibrant waterway.
The contrast was alarming. Please don't misunderstand me. I applaud "joyful abundance" overall as part of our collective Divine legacy; however, I applaud this for everyone, not for the top percentile of Canadians or anyone else around the globe. The culture of poverty and the "haves/have nots" is one of the most reprehensible aspects of our cultural inheritance, as it is completely man-made.
Have we been so seduced by the acquisition of money at any cost that we have left an environment like the one depicted in the Mount Polley disaster photo for our children to inherit? And if so, what does it avail us to be "wealthy" if our streams are polluted and poisoned, our fish dying, and our forests devastated? What good will our income provide us if we have not been responsible environmental stewards, and the stewards of our children's and the next generation's future? What will we eat if the streams, the oceans the lakes and the soil are poisoned? How will our greatly enhanced income provide for us then?
"What does it avail a man if it gaining the whole world he loses his own soul", a quotation in the Bible admonishes us. Our cultural ethic, our ruinous cultural/material ethic, has been the proponent of material gain/greed at the expense of all else, leaving a wasteland in its wake. The notion that there should be poor among us is a sin itself, and I hate this word, but it seems applicable. Of course, the distorted cultural bias that we live under, as perpetuated by certain religions, governments and corporations serves only to heighten the interests of the "elite" (another cultural misnomer) at the expense of those who for financial reasons are not deemed to be the "elite."
If there is anything we will all collectively account for it is how we kept others enslaved to an ethic of poverty to perpetuate the gross status of the wealthy, and how we destroyed our planet.
It is this mentality above any other that marks us out as a barbaric, dying civilization.
The contrast was alarming. Please don't misunderstand me. I applaud "joyful abundance" overall as part of our collective Divine legacy; however, I applaud this for everyone, not for the top percentile of Canadians or anyone else around the globe. The culture of poverty and the "haves/have nots" is one of the most reprehensible aspects of our cultural inheritance, as it is completely man-made.
Have we been so seduced by the acquisition of money at any cost that we have left an environment like the one depicted in the Mount Polley disaster photo for our children to inherit? And if so, what does it avail us to be "wealthy" if our streams are polluted and poisoned, our fish dying, and our forests devastated? What good will our income provide us if we have not been responsible environmental stewards, and the stewards of our children's and the next generation's future? What will we eat if the streams, the oceans the lakes and the soil are poisoned? How will our greatly enhanced income provide for us then?
"What does it avail a man if it gaining the whole world he loses his own soul", a quotation in the Bible admonishes us. Our cultural ethic, our ruinous cultural/material ethic, has been the proponent of material gain/greed at the expense of all else, leaving a wasteland in its wake. The notion that there should be poor among us is a sin itself, and I hate this word, but it seems applicable. Of course, the distorted cultural bias that we live under, as perpetuated by certain religions, governments and corporations serves only to heighten the interests of the "elite" (another cultural misnomer) at the expense of those who for financial reasons are not deemed to be the "elite."
If there is anything we will all collectively account for it is how we kept others enslaved to an ethic of poverty to perpetuate the gross status of the wealthy, and how we destroyed our planet.
It is this mentality above any other that marks us out as a barbaric, dying civilization.