So, where are all these Christians?

So how can this be, and what is so wrong with being rich?

In the first place, the church in almost all its forms has always felt the need to awe and impress, just as secular leaders, the “kings and potentates”, have: despite worshipping a man who had nothing more than the clothes on his back, and the sandals on his feet. Indeed, it could be argued the church has been, willingly or not, consciously or not, the very tool of oppression, offering solace to the poor even as it condoned the decadence and hypocrisy of the rich.

Even in Australia, a young country in terms of Christian culture, I have seen outback townships where all the houses were built from corrugated iron and clapboard, and the only brick building was a church.

What is so wrong with being rich?

According to the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus was asked by an expert in law, “teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the law?” Jesus replied (a man of his times, and as superstitious as any) “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it. Love your neighbour as yourself. All the law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Obviously, atheists would choose to disregard the first rule entirely, Wiccans and other nature worshippers might choose to substitute Nature, or Gaia, for God. This in no way invalidates the second rule.

The “expert” then asked, “Who is my neighbour?” Jesus went on to relate the parable of the “Good Samaritan”, which I would like to address a little later. Suffice to say, Samaritans were the enemies of the Jews, yet Jesus advocated loving them, on the basis that not all Samaritans were bad people.

In other parts of the Gospels Jesus, the sublime teacher, tried to clarify and simplify even more by adopting the “Golden Rule”: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Even I, as a Jesuan, cannot claim this was original. Zoroaster, Buddha, Confucius, the ancient Greek philosophers, Mohammed, and virtually all the world’s religions somewhere, at some time, refer to some variation of this very simple, very fundamental rule.

So ask yourself this simple question: if you were the parent of one of the 30,000 children who die every single day, simply because they are too poor to live, how would you feel about the very concept of billionaires? Or even millionaires, like the fervently Christian Kevin Rudd.

We’re talking here about the accident of birth, and this is where the story gets really sickening.

That other mob, the Jesuits, have a saying, “there, but by the grace of God, go I”. This is a simple admission that not one of us, ever, has chosen the place, time or manner of our own birth. We don’t choose our genetic inheritance, our nationality (of birth), our sex, our adult height, looks, physical or mental characteristics, the place where we grow up, the schools we attend, our teachers, even the local pool of individuals we can dip into for close personal friendships.

In short, we have no control over any of the things that make us who we are.