Prosperity was promised to Israel by God: "ye shall eat your bread to the full.....I will give you peace in the land.....none shall make you afraid.....ye shall chase your enemies.....(I will) make you fruitful....." (Leviticus 26)--if they would love their God and neighbors. If they would not, He warned: "ye shall be slain before your enemies: they that hate you shall reign over you; and ye shall flee when none pursueth you.....your strength shall be spent in vain....."
Prosperity involved the possession of a land in God-given security. Without secure habitation, there would be no prosperity for Israel.
This promise of prosperity was a collective promise. The judges were enjoined to "do no unrighteousness in judgment" and the people were enjoined to make provision for the poor (Leviticus 19:10-18) who would be "always with" (Matthew 26:11) them because the grave threat to prosperity (and peace and freedom) was internal injustice--or, in other words, enforced inequality.
Of course, Israel's fall was about idols--about things of antiquity--only about anachronisms that are anything but modern?!? But what is idol worship if it is not contrived inequality? Worshipping idols, men lifted up something other than love of God and man--offering it as a substitute for God's judgment. What men lifted up was self-exalting; it abased others--especially those who could not forge or promote an image of their own. In other words, idol worship subjected men to the whimsical judgments of idols and idolaters and not to the egalitarian, loving judgment of God. By lifting idols and idolaters up, idol worship invited inequality. By prohibiting idol-worship, God prohibited injustice.
Prosperity itself can be a pernicious idol. It is a model for false judgment. Presumptuously, wealth is attributed to the attitudes or merits or exertions of its possessors (ie. Americans). Presumptuously, the poor (ie. poorer nations) are faulted as cause for their own poverty. When prosperity is idolized, respect for truth and law gives way to respect for persons and possessions: the rich are received as righteous oracles; the poor are shunned as sinners. This idolatry makes men insecure, possessive, unstable, vain, foolish, proud, and misanthropic. It is adverse to speech, law, truth, faith, justice, and humanity.
To advance the self-made person thesis and the self-made nation thesis, a huge body of folk wisdom--a redoubt for a religion of materialism--is grown up here in America. You've heard variants of this theme: "to be rich is to be righteous". Its corollary: to be poor (ie. a relatively poor nation) is to be perverse. According to this theme, wealth is goodness--however gotten. A prosperous end will justify any means; a poor end will nullify the ideals of the impoverished--however honorable. This Social Darwinism masquerades as a priest among us: blessing the bounteous and cursing the impecunious and their ideals. He offers communion to those who prey in the name of efficiency, productivity, and the holy planned economy. He brings to ignominy ideals that are insubstantial: and freedom and faith and truth and morality are insubstantial (they really can't be quantified) ideals. His pragmatism is pernicious to thought. In this way, the American intellect is made a reserve for the contemplation of how to get the green produce of a paper press--which press has "multiplied wealth" four-fold in almost as many years. In this way, the values that survive and ascend among us are the values that enrich us materially. And because we think riches evince righteousness, there is no principle that would cause us to part from mammon. But at some point, in an era of ever more frenetic and frenzied profiteering, the values that enrich are the very values that defraud. Then, to thrive is to deprive. For example, at some point, the torque is too great to stay atop a twisted treadmill--as the failures at Sunbeam, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, Countrywide and government sponsored enterprises will attest. Each of these failures represents a heavy human cost. But how many among us would have left stock options at any of these--in the heyday, before the crash, out of principle? Recognize that in the hands of crafty monetary administrators, our philosophic optimism and pragmatism may be nothing but a nose ring. But so long as we consider the nose ring an ornament, we will go, skipping to the sound of our self-assuring voices, in chains, to where the planners of our economy lead us. And for the sake of substance gotten, the rich will keep us skipping in tow. Perhaps Jesus preferred the poor because they are less compromising as to truth and principle--because they compromise out of necessity and not for the sake of abundance? In any case, the self-made thesis is nonsense as a stand alone: it denies God. Rarely, will the prosperous (ie. Americans) observe, more rarely, will they acknowledge that the causes of their prosperity were outside of themselves and outside of their control--that their prosperity is simply the stuff of God's generosity--of inheritance, of windfall, of vicinity. Without God-given gifts like a rich land and a constitutional rule of law and its attendant freedom and peace, the best attitudes and merits and exertions would have been as prosperous, even in America, as a lunar miner without air. In the easy air of America, the prosperous found their lodes and made their fortunes. But they clung to and counted their lodes. And forgot the Giver. And neglected the air of freedom. Some seem to think that their stash will save them without a supply of air. For their kin--now gasping--will they save the air? Which came first, the stash or the air supply? Of what use is the lode without the air? Will this idol, prosperity, save a suffocating world? Did idols save Israel?
History reveals Israel chose idolatry and injustice--that Israel put substance ahead of the spirit of God's love. Will America? Israel's institutionalized inequality caused dangerous divisions. It compromised peace. Ultimately, it dispossessed all Israel of its promised land.
Without prospective justice, there is no peace and there is no prosperity. Who can blame the oppressed of Israel for not gifting their allegiance to oppressors--for not rendering fidelity when it would yield servility--for vagrant, bewildering allegiances when their hope was vagrant--for not cherishing the prosperity that they could not partake of--for treachery against a increasingly treacherous, platitude-wielding legalism--for eventually, without prospect of equity, allying with the enemy of their enemy who would captivate their captors and overthrow the land of their oppression? When there is no prospect for progress in terms of justice (ie. when deceit displaces honesty), when there is no hope for amelioration, the oppressed, however magnanimous, will naturally thwart the peace and prosperity of their own people.
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