I read the following note from Michael Moore this morning. It is posted on his website. You can go there and read it for yourself. I’m going to post it here because it prompts some thoughts of my own that I want to write about.
Friends,
I’d like to have a word with those of you who call yourselves Christians (Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Bill Maherists, etc. can read along, too, as much of what I have to say, I’m sure, can be applied to your own spiritual/ethical values).
In my new film I speak for the first time in one of my movies about my own spiritual beliefs. I have always believed that one’s religious leanings are deeply personal and should be kept private. After all, we’ve heard enough yammerin’ in the past three decades about how one should “behave,” and I have to say I’m pretty burned out on pieties and platitudes considering we are a violent nation who invades other countries and punishes our own for having the audacity to fall on hard times.
I’m also against any proselytizing; I certainly don’t want you to join anything I belong to. Also, as a Catholic, I have much to say about the Church as an institution, but I’ll leave that for another day (or movie).
Amidst all the Wall Street bad guys and corrupt members of Congress exposed in “Capitalism: A Love Story,” I pose a simple question in the movie: “Is capitalism a sin?” I go on to ask, “Would Jesus be a capitalist?” Would he belong to a hedge fund? Would he sell short? Would he approve of a system that has allowed the richest 1% to have more financial wealth than the 95% under them combined?
That question he poses, “Is capitalism a sin?” has crossed my mind too. The further question, “Would Jesus be a capitalist?” naturally follows. I’ve posed the questions to myself as “What would Jesus think about all this?”
You can learn something about sin and capitalism is on Wikipedia. Its complicated.
Capitalism is an economic system. In and of itself it is not, I think, a sin. Capitalism becomes sinful, I submit, when it gets out of balance. Would Jesus be a capitalist? I doubt it. Capitalism has to do with acquiring wealth. Jesus was not in the business of acquiring wealth. Consequently I don’t think he would have been interested in belonging to a hedge fund or engaged in the stock market. His focus was more on the poor and their well being. I can’t believe he would have approved of a system “that has allowed the richest 1% to have more financial wealth than the 95% under them combined.”
Our problem, here in the United States, is that under capitalism we have permitted an extreme unbalance to occur. Extreme wealth at one end of the economic continuum and very little at the other end. It is out of balance.
I have come to believe that there is no getting around the fact that capitalism is opposite everything that Jesus (and Moses and Mohammed and Buddha) taught. All the great religions are clear about one thing: It is evil to take the majority of the pie and leave what’s left for everyone to fight over. Jesus said that the rich man would have a very hard time getting into heaven. He told us that we had to be our brother’s and sister’s keepers and that the riches that did exist were to be divided fairly. He said that if you failed to house the homeless and feed the hungry, you’d have a hard time finding the pin code to the pearly gates.
I guess that’s bad news for us Americans. Here’s how we define “Blessed Are the Poor”: We now have the highest unemployment rate since 1983. There’s a foreclosure filing once every 7.5 seconds. 14,000 people every day lose their health insurance.
At the same time, Wall Street bankers (“Blessed Are the Wealthy”?) are amassing more and more loot — and they do their best to pay little or no income tax (last year Goldman Sachs’ tax rate was a mere 1%!). Would Jesus approve of this? If not, why do we let such an evil system continue? It doesn’t seem you can call yourself a Capitalist AND a Christian — because you cannot love your money AND love your neighbor when you are denying your neighbor the ability to see a doctor just so you can have a better bottom line. That’s called “immoral” — and you are committing a sin when you benefit at the expense of others.
The United States is a materialistic society. We are consumers. We like our luxuries. We’re selfish. We hypocritically claim to be a Christian nation, but in fact, we’re not. Consider how much death and destruction we have caused by our ideological pursuits of wars of choice, such as Viet Nam and Iraq. We may be paying a price for it right now.
When you are in church this morning, please think about this. I am asking you to allow your “better angels” to come forward. And if you are among the millions of Americans who are struggling to make it from week to week, please know that I promise to do what I can to stop this evil — and I hope you’ll join me in not giving up until everyone has a seat at the table.
Thanks for listening. I’m off to Mass in a few hours. I’ll be sure to ask the priest if he thinks J.C. deals in derivatives or credit default swaps. I mean, after all, he must’ve been good at math. How else did he divide up two loaves of bread and five pieces of fish equally amongst 5,000 people? Either he was the first socialist or his disciples were really bad at packing lunch. Or both.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
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