godless capitalism

"the fool hath said in his heart, there is no god."

i am certified by the standards of the world not to be a fool. by that i mean that my "i.q." has been measured to be about 150. yet again and again i find that i hold convictions that are commonly called foolish by popular contemporary wisdom: the virgin birth; the resurrection of the body; the ascension; pentecost. all of these things are wisely rationalized away by any number of best-selling books by people who claim to be making "christianity" "relevant."

it is popular these days to remember forgotten stresses or abuses from childhood at the hands of one's parents. as far as i can remember about my parents, i was a desired and cherished child. but i do remember that i was stessed and abused by the government of my country. i grew up in the "duck and cover" period of american history, when we were told of the daily dangers of "godless communism." even my father, who was a self-professed taoist, came to visit me early one morning at my college because he had seen on the news the night before a communist speaking at my school.

but as i have grown older, i realize that the danger was never from godless communism. i never quite found that theory believable anyway, because so few things the government was telling seemed believable, but i realize more and more the danger from godless capitalism.

but perhaps i am too harsh on capitalism. this state religion does seem to have a god, the god of the bang: the big bang which has replaced creation; the sacrilegious bangs of the trinity project: alamagordo and hiroshima and nagasaki; the bang-for-the-buck that measures all things.

i sat this week in a coffee shop and wept. i heard of the newest war-idol of the empire, a tank with a specially-shaped bottom to resist the bombs that had toppled the previous idol, the british challenger. the cost was expected to be $81 million each.

i confess i am less-than-thrilled that one of the projects best-supported by american main-line churches has been the millenium development goals. but even that lame project, to which my little parrish in eureka springs magnanimously donated the proceeds of our yard sale in our generous efforts towards sharing .07% of our income with starving children, would be a far better way to spend eighty-one million dollars than for another machine whose sole purpose is the destruction of human life and homes.

it is not that capitalism has no gods. it merely considers the living god no longer to be necessary for its purposes, and is convinced it can created any god it does need.