The Divine Universe

Jesus told a story about a rich man, sometimes called Dives, and a poor man named Lazarus, and, when they died, Lazarus went to heaven and the rich man went to hell.

There is anger in this story; the eternal fiery punishment of the rich man is horrible. Apart from being rich, we might wonder what he had done that was so wicked. Not everyone knows that, under Jewish law, every individual is required to care for the poor. The rich man’s conduct was not only thoughtless and selfish; it was a criminal offence.

Of course, as in virtually every society, if you are rich enough you can get away with murder. Between the rich and the poor there is a huge and extensive maze, guarded by clever and expensive legal thugs. So, since the rich man couldn’t be brought to book in this world, he was punished in the next. Significantly, in the story there is an impassable divide between heaven and hell too.

Obviously, we have not yet got the message. The gap between haves and have-nots is even greater today than it was then. The very rich don’t only buy expensive clothes and food; they buy capital assets and even whole companies worth millions of dollars: things that make them grow exponentially richer still. I have been told that 4% of the wealth of the richest 225 people in the world would feed, clothe, house and provide essential amenities to everyone in the world. If you are a multi-billionaire, what difference would the loss of 4% of your assets make to you? The situation makes no sense.

But it isn’t that simple. 4% of Bill Gates’ $49bn (about $2bn) would be the assets of a biggish company. Liquidating those assets to provide aid to starving Africans and others would traumatically affect a great many employees. The magic words, “job losses”, come to mind. So we are stumped. To get the world on an even keel, to establish some sort of international political stability and social justice, requires a complete rethink of our economic system. It means going back to the drawing board to design a system that actually works in this post-industrial age. As the rich get richer and ordinary people find themselves getting poorer, dry rot and white ants are appearing in the foundations of our capitalist system. But we have no alternative to offer.

In the end, people power is needed: some kind of people’s revolution. But it need not, it must not be a bloody revolution. Violent revolutions generally lead only to the substitution of one oligarchy by another. People who think they can solve the world’s problems by violence are terrorists, whether they are Al Queda or the American military coalition – fundamentalist Moslems and fundamentalist Christians differ mainly in their resources for destruction. There is a lot of money to be made in the war industry, so, once again, the rich get richer but the poor lose everything, often even their lives. In another startling statistic, it has been estimated that two weeks’ current worldwide military spending would provide comfortable living for everybody in the world for a year.

There has to be a better way. There has to be a worldwide change of heart, and then we need some very smart lateral thinking. I don’t know where we’ll find the smart thinkers, but the change in heart has to begin with you and me. We tend to think that money is the cure-all. Public opinion also tends to support violent solutions to violent problems. Our public law and order systems tend to be violent.

But our individual opinions are part of public opinion, and they can change. A year ago there was a sudden awakening of the public to climate change – a shift of attitude from blind indifference to realistic concern. Even our reluctant governments have had to make token gestures of response. Perhaps we will one day realise that being rich is not the answer to an individual’s problems, and violence is ineffective in solving the world’s problems. Maybe it may also dawn on us that the horrendous gap between the rich and the poor actually lowers the quality of our own lives in subtle but significant ways such as global health, economic and political stability and even personal safety.

One day, we must discover a genuinely better way to live. One day, cleverer people than us, people with the ability to be very rich if they wanted to, must work out and initiate ways that everyone can live better lives, even Africans. That’s positive thinking, and it can be positive praying too. Don’t underestimate the power of thinking and the even greater power of praying. The difference between thinking about something and praying about it is like the difference between a table lamp and a laser beam. One is useful and illuminating, but the other is powerful.

In Jesus’ religious language, his story implies that what we do in this life has an enduring effect on what happens in the afterlife. His image of a hell of burning fire comes from folk tradition. Jesus didn’t really believe in a cruel and merciless God; he was angry and frustrated. But we need to take his parable seriously. Even in this world, many business moguls and gamblers on the stock market are inflamed with greed and tormented by anxiety and fear. Their stomach ulcers and migraine headaches give them hell. There is a psychological dimension to all this, and Jesus’ parable suggests that there is a spiritual condition that physical death will not cure. These driven people may be so conditioned that they can’t even see, let alone accept God’s free forgiveness.

Don’t underestimate the difficulties. I don’t think we, the affluent, are going to give up our comforts willingly. We need to be reassured. We need to know that there is enough for everyone to live comfortably. It has been shown many times that the world’s resources are sufficient, if we use them right. Scientists confirm this, even in the face of global warming. What gets in the way is not only greed and lust for power; it is inertia. We are afraid of change. We fear that if the financial infrastructure and our energy industry have to be replaced the sky will fall in.

It will be difficult but it will not be the end of the world as we know it. And what a dream! Think of a world without weapons of war. Trillions of dollars freed for living rather than killing. Think of a world where we make money to live rather than live to make money. It is not impossible. As every child knows: where there’s a will there’s a way.