(Many links are here already, but more are coming soon.)
Thousands of scientists and thoughtful people from many worldviews agree that our world is not just facing gigantic disasters in the future, but is already experiencing severe dangers and disasters. Scientific research shows that due to many misguided and harmful choices, especially greed in combination with a great deal of well documented propaganda, 8 people now own more than the bottom 50% of the world’s population.
“Oxfam interviewed women working in a garment factory in Vietnam who work 12 hours a day, 6 days a week and still struggle to get by on the $1 an hour they earn producing clothes for some of the world’s biggest fashion brands. The CEOs of these companies are some of the highest paid people in the world. Corporate tax dodging costs poor countries at least $100 billion every year. This is enough money to provide an education for the 124 million children who aren’t in school and fund healthcare interventions that could prevent the deaths of at least six million children every year.”[1]
Some wealthy people did make their money by hard work and talent, but Oxfam reports that their analysis of each individual worth more than $1 billion on Forbe’s list found that
“one-third of the world’s billionaire wealth is derived from inherited wealth, while 43% can be linked to cronyism and that once you are super rich…The super-rich have the money to spend on the best investment advice, and the wealth held by the super-rich since 2009 has increased by an average of 11% per year. This is a rate of accumulation far higher than ordinary savers are able to obtain.”
I strongly recommend reading this report to understand how many current economic and politic policies heavily tilt the playing field in favor of the super rich. Policies such as making people dependent on the rich directly (conservative) by support for trickle down economics and privatization of government departments that provide essential needs as well as indirectly (liberal) by making people dependent on governments for their health care and various other needs and having to spend enormous amounts of time going through red tape both heavily favor corrupt corporations.
https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/bp-economy-for-99-percent-160117-en.pdf
High levels of inequality are the root cause of a myriad of social problems and destructive evils in societies including broken marriages and families, loss of educational opportunities, chattel/labor slavery, debt slavery, sex slavery, repression of women and minority races and more.
It’s time to start a campaign for real independence based on solid spiritual and scientific principles that have worked and are actually the only thing that has worked in history. They have to be simple so that all can understand and follow them. It would be ideal to do them at the government level, but they have to be ones that work whether or not governments and the wealthy follow them or not. These principles do exist, they are simple, they have worked and they are the only thing that really has worked long term in history. I strongly propose that we have events every independence day in every country to promote them and at other times when possible too.
High concentrations of wealth/greed are the roots of all evil as the Bible stated (1 Timothy 6:10). Why? Because when a few people control most of the wealth,
1) they can buy and manipulate political leaders to do what they want regardless of the will of the population. As Dr. Chomsky of MIT points out, American politicians routinely ignore 70% of the population completely.
2) the wealthy can buy or threaten judges and police to do their will and allow them to be above the law.
3) eventually science, education, some aspects of religions, atheism, and many other institutions are manipulated into putting abusive levels of profiteering above welfare for all human beings. Scientists for example will be rewarded, paid and promoted for finding that align with corporate interests and if they do not, many will lose grants, promotions or even jobs. Similar things can happen in religious and atheistic organizations.
4) as the institutions of society fall more and more under the control of a few, the rest are forced into various kinds of slavery whether it be the very common debt slavery, the abuse of sex slavery, the exploitation of chattel slavery or the more hidden form of wage slavery or others.
These are some reasons why God in the Bible, many other religions, some wise American pioneers and many intellectuals throughout history warned against greed as one of the worst dangers to humanity and freedom.
If governments and corporations act to follow wise principles, they can solve these problems quite easily. But if they don’t, large numbers of people following wise principles can also solve them. It’s very crucial to join the “Even it Up” campaign and make an economy that works for all of us. We will be gathering on July 2 to show solidarity for this movement and discuss practical ways to reverse plutocracy. Check this site for more details soon.
evenitup.org or https://www.oxfam.org/en/campaigns/even-it-up
George Orwell wisely said,
“All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers.”
Billionaire Nick Hanauer concurs saying,
“We plutocrats have a long and proud history of controlling human societies, and the belief systems that we create about how the world works enable us to do that. ‘Earth is the center of the solar system’ was a useful one for us in the past. ‘Lowering taxes on the rich produces growth’ is one of our current favorites. You show me an orthodox belief, and I’ll show you plutocrats who benefit from it.”
Dr. Mark Crispin Miller, professor of Media Studies at New York University, Dr. Jerry Kroth of Santa Clara University and others cite many examples of how many popular views in society actually originate from corporations and are for their benefit, but cause damage to economics, education, politics, addict people to destructive habits and much more.
“Propaganda & Engineering Consent for Empire” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7HmFH-Wo1s,
“Propaganda and Manipulation: How mass media engineers and distorts our perceptions”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pfo5gPG72KM (see also the 2003 documentary “The Corporation”)
The government is unfortunately now so completely controlled by the big banks that we need to focus on resisting it more at local levels (but if you feel you can be effective in government or media, work hard, do your best, work with like minded people since the more we can do to eliminate corruption there, the better it will be for all).
The Bible and science have given us many simple and crucial solutions that can reduce or prevent injustice even when nations are beasts. This is what the early Christian church did. This site and others under the human rights category in this site document many of the simplest ones. But to do so, churches are going to have to follow the Bible’s principles faithfully, especially in the areas of Bible economics/land rights and keeping the Sabbath. The Bible indicates that these are two of the most important principles for successfully opposing injustice.
Sabbath is one of the most crucial doctrines because it is a symbol/reminder of the most important truths and solutions to the most serious problems in our world. It points to creation which is the foundation of equality for all (Ex. 20:8-11) in contrast to the predicted deception of Darwinism which institutionalizes inequality and injustice. Sabbath reminds us that God is the origin of freedom for humanity (Deut. 5:15) while sin enslaves people (Romans 6:16). Sabbath is a symbol of the sanctuary message which points to Jesus our Saviour and again reminds us that we are all sinners and equally in need of grace (Lev. 19:30; 26:2).
Creation is the foundation of all major Christian doctrines such as the origin of sin/guilt (Gen. 3), the promise of Messiah to redeem us (Gen. 3:15) and male/female marriage/family (Gen 1:27-8). Creation is the foundation of God’s health message (Gen. 1:29; 2:16; 3:2, 18) and the science of chronobiology has discovered a circaseptan cycle in nature which shows that people and nature function best with rest every 7 days. So Sabbath itself is healthy. Sabbath points to the importance of caring for the environment and keeping it clean for future generations (Gen. 1:26,28;2:15) as well as animal rights (Ex. 20:8-11). It reminds us that God’s ideal way to live is in a garden (Gen. 2:8). Growing local gardens is one of the easiest and most profound solutions for many modern problems as the illuminating documentary “Economics of Happiness” points out (and also several TED talks).
The Sabbath as a symbol of freedom is intrinsically connected to justice (Isaiah 58:1-14) and economic justice/land rights for every family which is the ground of stable nations (Gen. 2:8,15, Lev. 25:1-20, Ez. 45:9+, 47:22-23). Sabbath reminds us of a Creator who through prophets opposed greed, the root of all evil(1 Tim. 6:10) and all forms of injustice in over 2,000 verses.
Creation itself of course points back to Sabbath (Gen. 2:2,3) which reminds us weekly that God is our Creator, Savior and source of earthly life, eternal life and all good gifts.
Some of the most important actions you can take according to the Bible and science are VERY briefly these (more citations are in a longer section on these topics later on this page):
1) LOVE, DON’T BE ATOMIZED: The main aim of the elite is to atomize and divide everyone into as many splinter groups as possible: Americans vs. foreigners, conservatives vs. liberals vs. libertarians, black vs. white vs Asian vs. Arab vs. Hispanic, rich vs. poor, religious vs. non-religious, pro-life vs. pro-choice, Darwinian vs. creationist, homosexual vs. straight vs. transgender and many others.
The elite do this for one big reason. They are greedy and the main cause of all the evil, including racism, violence, conflict, family break down, crime, war, etc. on the planet is greed:
- “For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” 1 Timothy 6:10
- “Greed brings grief to the whole family.” Proverbs 15:27 NLT
- “[The godless] oppressed the poor and left them destitute. They foreclosed on their homes. They were always greedy and never satisfied. ” Job 20: 19-20
- You have eyes only for greed and dishonesty! You murder the innocent, oppress the poor, and reign ruthlessly.” Jeremiah 22:17
- “In their greed they have gathered up many nations and swallowed many peoples.” Habakkuk 2:5
The last thing the elite want is for the lower classes of all races to understand that greed is the #1 cause of all the injustices and problems in the world and blame the greedy super wealthy for their problems as the Jews in Nehemiah 5 did, inspiring Nehemiah to demand that the rich give back all the land they had immorally monopolized and all the interest they had immorally charged.
The elite are scared to death of people understanding Bible economics and that godly governmental would require the restitution of trillions that the wealthy have gotten through slavery, oppression, and exploitation of the masses in many ways that explicitly broke many of God’s laws in the Bible. So they use various techniques to stop this. For example:
1) They use atheism to discredit Christianity so that people won’t know about Bible economics and justice.
2) They use anti-Old Testament pastors to discredit Bible economics and justice.
3) They use the media to try to consume enormous amounts of time with trivia so people won’t know the real cause of their problems and how they are being exploited.
4) They also spend billions of dollars trying to cause dissension and conflict between races and other classes of people so that they can get people to blame other races or political groups or religions or atheists or whatever for the problems they have instead of what God blames as the main source of all problems, greed. In this way, it will be very difficult for the general population to unite and work together to mount any effective opposition to the greed of the 1% who have concentrated trillions of dollars and power in a very few hands and who are by God’s word repeatedly, the main and real cause of all problems.
Much of the money the elite have compiled through well documented fraud and injustice and using non-linear warfare propaganda to keep people splintered into small groups. It is a very effective way of keeping people distracted from the most serious cause of problems (although some of those issues are important). This money which could easily solve all the challenges we face if used in the service of truth.
This article is very insightful on this point.
Manufacturing Dissent – the New Culture War https://www.nationofchange.org/2017/08/27/manufacturing-dissent-new-culture-war/
www.filmsforaction.org/articles/manufacturing-dissent-the-new-culture-war/
This link from science shows how pretty much all problems in society are rooted in greed and high levels of inequality.
http://blog.truth-is-life.org/rights/equality/
The most important way to oppose plutocracy is to follow the golden rule, both in genuinely loving others, but also in treating their rights, their evidence and their logic with complete fairness just as we would want ours to be treated since using the golden rule and the same standards for all sides is also the foundation of rational thought and the best prevention against descending into misunderstandings, conflict, injustice, and violence. We need to be willing to change our views if someone else’s view has more evidence than ours does, especially if their view follows the gold standard of truth and wisdom in the Bible and science which is simply this:
“Test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good….always do good for each person and all people.” 1 Thess. 5:21, 15.
Basically this means to follow the view that brings the highest quality and quantity of life to the most people long term. If you can find that God’s principles in the Bible align with systematic reviews in science, that’s a very solid evidence of truth and what should be followed. Why? Because
A) Scientists and scientific organizations can be distorted by corporate greed. Up to 50% of what is considered fact in science is found to be not true within ~50 years. God’s truths help amputate the influence of greed and false ideologies in science.
B) Language changes over time, sometimes drastically. So sometimes what we think God meant is quite different from what the words meant in ancient times (faith, love, perfect, slavery and other terms meant vastly different things in the Bible than they do to most people now). Science can help us critique our understanding and figure out what God really meant.
Each person should focus on being independent and making their family stable, then teach truth and contribute in various ways to empower and help those who are being exploited to do the same and then be able to do that for still others. specific ways to do this are next.
2) MAKE STRONG FAMILIES: Work to make your marriages and family happy and strong and then do what you can to teach and empower other families to do the same. Broken families create poverty and all kinds of addictions and chaos (watch some of the lectures by Dr. Gabor Mate on addiction for starters). The best and simplest ways to keep marriages strong are to
A) Try to say yes to your spouse over 87% of the time.
B) Make/Create ~4-5 positive interactions for every 1 negative one.
C) Find out their emotional needs/love language and try to fulfill that.
D) Keep promises, stay faithful, don’t keep secrets, admit wrongs and hurtful things you’ve done and follow principles like these to build trust.
3) JOIN BIBLICAL CHURCHES (that follow Bible economics): The elite got super rich by being smart and greedy. To beat them we have to be smarter and loving. The only way to be smarter than they are is by trusting and following God, esp. in economics since the Bible tells us its designed so that the weak can beat the strong, wealthy and corrupt (1 Cor. 1:25-27). It is a place where the oppressed and abused can find protection, assistance in recovery and learn valuable truths to help them become independent and empowered to help others. But it has to be a church which takes Bible principles from both the Old and New Testament seriously (since it is the in the Old Testament where most of the economic principles and human rights principles were given).
4) BE HEALTHY: Avoid or at least greatly reduce smoking, drinking alcohol, eating meat and make sure you get enough exercise and share these simple practices with others. United Nations scientists point out that most of the 40 million deaths a year and most of the $6.5 trillion a year that is spent on diseases is because of not following these 4 habits (3 of which are mentioned in the Bible and the 4th, smoking, some wise Christians have been warning against for centuries)
5) PROTECT THE ENVIRONMENT: If we don’t have a safe environment, almost everything else collapses. There is very strong scientific support for the danger of global warming. But even if don’t take that seriously, already ~8 million are dying every year due to air and water pollution. So learn how to eliminate producing pollution in your life as much as you possibly can and find ways to help reduce pollution (join the websites “local futures”and “films for action” on facebook for many brilliant ideas. A simple but profoundly valuable way is to growing a garden naturally and easily in almost any soil. See the documentary “Back to Eden”.
6) OPPOSE WAR/ADVOCATE FOR PEACE: Love prevents wars, and peace is over 60 times cheaper than war. Who pays for wars? The lower classes in blood and taxes. Who profits from wars? The weapons companies and the elite who own them.
7) PROMOTE CREATION/OPPOSE DARWINISM: Darwinism promotes a world of struggle and fighting and dominance where the strong survive and the weak die off. The subtitle of Darwinin’s book also explicitly advocated racism, protecting the favored races which as the leading Darwinian professor Stephen Gould at Harvard admitted resulted in racism becoming “orders of magnitude” greater than ever before. When people are taught Darwinism, most will have a worldview where success is based on conflict and dominating others. They will be very vulnerable to being exploited as cannon fodder in wars. They will try to dominate as leaders of corporations and pursue greed above human welfare. Darwinism is an extremely corrosive doctrine against the public good as so much history and research has solidly proven. Even the virulent atheist Darwinian Dawkins from Oxford has said:
“…study your Darwinism in order to learn what to avoid in setting up society. What we need is a truly anti-Darwinian society.”
Darwinism is also heavily linked with capitalism which is also very destructive because it promotes profit over people (communism and most forms of socialism are of course as bad or worse). Both create a world where many people ruthlessly pursue dominance and exploitation instead of cooperation (see: http://creation.com/darwins-critical-influence-on-the-ruthless-extremes-of-capitalism).
In addition, Darwinism badly fails all three tests of truth, pragmatic truth, correspondence truth and coherence truth. every version of universal common decent and Darwinism for 1000s of years going back to Greek times has had a short heydey of popularity and then been falsified and abandoned by all scientists on sides. Even many leading secular scientists are agreeing that all the major pillars of the current version taught in textbooks, the modern synthesis, have been falsified.
There are many effective and simple solutions to prevent and reverse plutocracy that researchers have found, but it’s crucial for many people to learn the solutions, share the solutions widely and live them out in daily life.
WHAT ARE THE MAIN SOURCES OF THE PROBLEMS
Let’s dive into this with a little more depth. First, it’s important to be aware of what the problems are accurately so that we can actually to the best actions to solve them. These are some of the most serious dangers that we are facing according to 1000s of the best and most rigorous studies in science.
DANGER #1: ECONOMIC INJUSTICE/PREJUDICE: A lot of media blames the problems of the world on terrorists, religion, secularism, socialism or other things. But research shows that the root of almost every problem we have is actually greed. Research from Princeton shows that since at least the 1980s, economic injustice has result in a few plutocrats deciding almost all major decisions in America which means that “America is an oligarchy[2], not a democracy or republic[3].” (Europe,[4] Canada,[5] Australia and many other nations are also plutocracies[6]). This economic injustice has horrific effects. It causes~18 million people to die every year, has reduced ~46 million people to extreme forms of slavery (human trafficking, forced labor, sex trafficking, forced marriage)[7] and is forcing billions of people into debt bondage[8] and/or wage slavery. It causes millions to lose their homes and as a consequence have to pay up to ~50% or more of their salary in rent alone[9], sending them down the road to poverty. Economic injustice also increases racism, police killings[10], sexism, political prejudice and other types of discrimination/hatred for minorities and also increases deaths and suicides for all classes.[11] It significantly increases family breakups and suicides partly because it depresses wages and is gutting the middle class as well.[12]
These things split people into a myriad of small groups that can’t effectively confront the exploitation of the 1% because they are in conflict with each other and most have lost the knowledge of how to find truth fairly. Societal progress is also badly damaged, crippled or destroyed in numerous ways. While there are sincere individual politicians in all parties, economists like Dr. Jeffrey Sachs say that “Big Oil owns the Republicans while Wall Street owns the Democrats”[13]. An illustration of this is that families lost at least $9 trillion due to conservative trickle-down economics under Bush, but families also lost ~$4 trillion in 2016 under liberals. Stephen Hawking warns: “We can’t go on ignoring inequality, because we have the means to destroy our world but not to escape it.”
It may be helpful to understand more of what’s happening from the eloquent and award winning journalist Chris Hedges.
www.truthdig.com/report/item/revolt_is_the_only_barrier_to_a_fascist_america_20170122
Hedges points out that, “The ruling elites…bought the allegiances of the two main political parties…This campaign, laid out by Lewis Powell in his 1971 memorandum titled “Attack on American Free Enterprise System,” was the blueprint for the creeping corporate coup d’état that 45 years later is complete.
The destruction of democratic institutions, places where the citizen has agency and a voice, is far graver than the ascendancy to the White House of the demagogue Donald Trump. The coup destroyed our two-party system. It destroyed labor unions. It destroyed public education. It destroyed the judiciary. It destroyed the press. It destroyed academia. It destroyed consumer and environmental protection. It destroyed our industrial base. It destroyed communities and cities. And it destroyed the lives of tens of millions of Americans no longer able to find work that provides a living wage, cursed to live in chronic poverty or locked in cages in our monstrous system of mass incarceration. ”
www.truthdig.com/report/item/revolt_is_the_only_barrier_to_a_fascist_america_20170122
As Hedges says, if we don’t understand the exploitation that is happening to others and work as a group against the plutocrats, they will eventually bankrupt us, force us into debt slavery and exploit us to in various sophisticated ways as well. As people of God, or even just human beings, we should care about what’s happening to other victims. But if a person is so immoral as to not care about that, at least they should act because they will also be hurt in time if they don’t
In a talk with Bill Moyer’s about Capitalism’s Sacrifice Zones, Hedges shows pictures and videos of communities around America that have been gutted and destroyed by corporations, a stark reminder of what will happen to many other communities, and eventually ours, if we don’t stop living the cult of the self and thinking only of our own welfare, which is a parasitic addiction that only does harm to everyone eventually, including even the rich.
Hedges says:
It’s absolutely imperative that we begin to understand what unfettered, unregulated capitalism does, the violence of that system, which is portrayed in all of the places that we visited.
These are sacrifice zones, areas that have been destroyed for quarterly profit. And we’re talking about environmentally destroyed, communities destroyed, human beings destroyed, families destroyed. And because there are no impediments left, these sacrifice zones are just going to spread outward.
When Moyer’s asks him what is the connection between the suffering of Native Americans on the Pine Ridge Reservation and the unemployed coal miner in West Virginia and the inner-city African American in Camden, he answers simply and eloquently.
Greed. It’s greed over human life. And it’s the willingness on the part of people who seek personal enrichment to destroy other human beings. That’s a common thread. We, in that biblical term, we forgot our neighbor. And because we forgot our neighbor in Pine Ridge, because we forgot our neighbor in Camden, in Southern West Virginia, in the produce fields, these forces have now turned on us. They went first, and we, [two-thirds of this country,] we’re next.
We are rapidly replicating that totalitarian vision of George Orwell in “1984.” We have an inner sanctum, inner party of 2 percent or 3 percent, an outer party of corporate managers, of 12 percent, and the rest of us are… an underclass that is hanging on by their fingertips.
And this is already very far advanced. I mean, numbers, I mean, 47 million Americans depending on food stamps, six million exclusively on food stamps, one million people a year going filing for personal bankruptcy because they can’t pay their medical bills, six million people pushed out of their houses. Long-term unemployment or underemployment– you know, probably being 17 to 20 percent. This is an estimate by “The L.A. Times” rather than the official nine percent. I mean, the average worker at Wal-Mart works 28 hours a week, but their wages put them below the poverty line. Which is why when you work at Wal-Mart, they’ll give you applications for food stamps, so we can help as a government subsidize the family fortune of the Walton family. It’s, you know these corporations know only one word, and that’s more.
And because the mechanisms of governance can no longer control them, there is nothing now within the formal mechanisms of power to stop them from the creating, essentially, a corporate oligarchic state…
American values were effectively destroyed by Madison Avenue when, after world war one, it began to instill consumption as a kind of inner compulsion. But old values of thrift, of self-effacement, or hard work were replaced with this cult of the “self”, this hedonism. And in that sense, you know, we have become complicit, because we’ve accepted this as a kind of natural law. And the acceptance of this kind of behavior, and even the celebration of it is going to ultimately trigger our demise. Not only as a culture, [but also] as a country.”
…the very forces that we document in this book are the same forces that are responsible for destroying the ecosystem itself. We are watching these corporate forces, which are supranational. They have no loyalty to the nation state at all, reconfigure the global economy into a form of neo-feudalism. We are rapidly becoming an oligarchic state with an incredibly wealthy class of overlords.
Sheldon Wolin writes about this in “Democracy Incorporated” into what I would call, what he calls inverted totalitarianism, whereby it’s not classical totalitarianism, it doesn’t find its expression through a demagogue or a charismatic leader, but through the anonymity of the corporate state that purports to pay fealty to electoral politics, the Constitution, the iconography and language of American patriotism, and yet internally have seized all of the levers of power. This is what it means when lobbyists write all of our legislation, or when they stack the Supreme Court with people who serve the interests of corporations. And it’s to render the citizen impotent.
billmoyers.com/segment/chris-hedges-on-capitalism’s-‘sacrifice-zones’/
DANGER #2: HEALTH: Harmful health habits already kill ~40 million people[14] and cost over $6 trillion every year. If people followed wise health habits and directed it wisely, they could in this way alone offset most/all economic injustice.
DANGER #3: ENVIRONMENTAL POLLUTION/CLIMATE CHANGE: Air[15], water and soil pollution kill about 7-9 million people every year and air pollution alone costs us ~$5 trillion[16] in damage to land, water forests, and oceans and human welfare. Climate change is a factor in ~400,000 deaths every year[17] and costs billions already and will cause much worse problems if we don’t make radical changes. This is due mostly to corporate greed, putting profit above people (the Bible calls this greed). One of the very biggest causes of pollution is eating meat which goes against the Bible’s ideal diet in Eden. Eating meat is also 2nd biggest cause of climate change[18] and the top cause of deforestation[19].
DANGER #4: ENERGY: There is a serious lack of enough energy/oil to access/sustain modern lifestyles for all nations.[20]
DANGER #5: WAR/VIOLENCE/TERRORISM: Greed, materialism and the lack** of oil/energy are major factors why the last century has seen the highest levels of crime, violence and more death from wars and state violence than all other centuries combined.~4.5 million die from murder and ~2-400,000 from terrorism and war every year. Peace is ~60 times cheaper than war economically and if followed could easily save us enough money to end most other problems we face as well as ending the displacement of millions of refugees.
Like other scientists, Dr. Homer-Dixon concludes that these crises are interconnected and because of this, disasters in one area can cause “a cascading collapse of systems” and exponentially increase the threats to cities, nations and modern civilization. He calls this risk “synchronous failure” and warns that if we don’t make radical changes, “a looming collision of world crises” may be inevitable.
WHAT ARE THE BEST AND SIMPLEST SOLUTIONS
The gold standards of science (systematic reviews and pragmatic results) show that there are simple, easy to understand solutions that confirm principles the Bible and some religions gave. In Bible times and throughout history, governments have in quite a few cases solved poverty by guaranteeing every family rights to land. This happened in 1 Kings 4:25, Nehemiah 5 and other places and fulfilled a promise of God in Leviticus 25:18-19 and Deuteronomy 15:4. But individuals in churches were also able to solve poverty in many cases throughout history by sharing in a community that put people’s rights and needs above materialism. Here are some ways to do that now.
1) LOVE & INTERDEPENDENCE CAN BEAT PLUTOCRACY: Many scholars like Dr. Noam Chomsky of MIT, William Engdahl from Princeton and many religious scholars agree that the most dangerous concept to the elite 1% is genuine love. Why? It can stop wars, crimes and conflict which they profit from the most. The Bible and indigenous religions repeatedly condemned greed and hoarding as the main root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10, Ezekiel 16:49, Daniel 4:27, Nehemiah 5, James 5:1-5, Matthew 23:14, 2 Tim. 3:1-5) and required people to speak up for the oppressed. 1000s of scientific studies comprehensively confirm the danger of plutocracy. If not stopped, it eventually leads to national collapse or dictatorship. To beat plutocracy, we have to move beyond dependence and independence to interdependence, the highest form of living. How do we do it?
A) MAKE STRONG FAMILIES: Confucius wrote, “The strength of nations derives from the integrity of the home.”. People who stay married can sometimes save up to 60% on their expenses which saves them up to $1 million over the course of their lifetimes. But far more seriously, science shows that when families breakup or are in chaos/dysfunctional, people have higher levels of crime, suicide, much worse health, worse grades and become vulnerable to many addictions which massively benefit certain corporations, such as the the smoking and alcohol industries (this is why many soap operas/movies promote dysfunctional family behavior and a lot of drinking and smoking)
http://www.filmsforaction.org/watch/what-is-addiction-gabor-mate/
An OSU study shows that on average, divorced people have 77% less wealth than single people in the same age group. moneycrashers.com/financial-benefits-marriage-single/
Over a lifetime, unmarried women can pay as much as a million dollars more than their married counterparts for healthcare, taxes, and more. https://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/01/the-high-price-of-being-single-in-america/267043/
So stay married through thick and thin (unless there is ongoing abuse)! How? One of the best ways to do that is to follow the biblical principle of mutual submission, always looking for ways to say yes to your partners requests and make their life happier (as long as they aren’t asking you to rob a bank or do something harmful 🙂 ).
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/06/happily-ever-after/372573/?utm_source=SFFB
http://blog.truth-is-life.org/human-rights/gods-principles-for-thriving-civilizations/land-rights-most-crucial-for-freedom/)
B) JOIN BIBLICAL CHURCHES: If 2 people in an interdependent marriage can save ~$1 million, how much can larger groups of people living in genuine interdependent biblical love in churches save? The answer is BILLIONS! The 1% elite got to where they are largely by forcing people out of their homes/lands, charging interest of ~5-50% on debts, by printing money out of thin air and then charging interest to use this money and other ways that usually went against Bible principles. The non-religious scientist Dr. Cnaan, has though found that churches can effective reverse that. He found that for every $1 a religious congregation spends on its programs, communities get at least an estimated $4.77 worth of valuable services and sometimes up to $10 (depending on how biblical the church is). That means there’s a whopping 477% to 1000% percent increase on the money invested in churches. Where could you get that in the stock market?***
These benefits come from a wide array of outreach efforts with an “individual impact,”including counseling to suicidal individuals; counseling to strengthen marriages; assisting people suffering abuse; helping people obtain citizenship; referring people to drug or alcohol counseling (or providing it directly); working with people at-risk of committing crimes/going to prison; teaching youth pro-social values; helping people form new friendships; and enabling people to work by caring for senior family members, working to help immigrants, language education, and many others.
www.haloproject.ca/phase-1-toronto
www.sacredplaces.org/uploads/files/16879092466251061-economic-halo-effect-of-historic-sacred-places.pdf
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0899764016661032?ai=1gvoi&mi=3ricys&af=R&
See more on Bible economics here:
truth-is-life.org/jubileeeconomics.html
http://blog.truth-is-life.org/human-rights/gods-principles-for-thriving-civilizations/land-rights-most-crucial-for-freedom/
C) BUY LOCAL: One of the best things to do is to learn to grow and make your own things or buy from local stores and businesses. This way you radically reduce transportation costs and pollution to the planet and you also support individuals and families instead of corporations. Many ideas are here:
https://www.facebook.com/TheEconomicsofhappiness/
D) SHARE USED TOOLS/MACHINES/CLOTHING: Create centers where people can share used things. Samaritan center. net/
2) HEALTH:The World Health organization has recently reported in a summary of over 800 studies that the #1 killer in the world above all else is bad health habits. This kills 40 million people per year (poverty kills ~8 million, pollution kills ~7-9 million and war kills ~2-400,000 per year). It also costs the world ~$6.5 trillion dollars ($3 trillion for the US). In addition, bad health habits are the cause of ~60% of bankruptcies in America. The main causes of death are “tobacco use, unhealthy diet and physical inactivity, and the harmful use of alcohol”.
REFERENCE: “Noncommunicable diseases” www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs355/en
Long ago, the Bible advocated these health habits of unrivaled value, which if followed would literally save us enough money to end poverty worldwide at least 50 times over in many verses such as these:
A) Nutrition: God gave the ideal diet in Eden, a vegetarian one.
“Then God said, ‘Look! I have given you every seed-bearing plant throughout the earth and all the fruit trees for your food.'” Genesis 1:29(NLT) “…You will eat of its grains.” Genesis 3:18 (NLT)
This article shows how if everyone ate meat like Americans did, it would wreck the planet.
https://mic.com/articles/143621/american-diet-is-so-disastrous-it-would-have-wreck-the-planet-in-year-2000
B) Exercise: “Physical training is good, but training for godliness is much better, promising benefits in this life and in the life to come.” 1 Timothy 4:8 (NLT)
C) Alcohol: “Wine produces mockers; alcohol leads to brawls. Those led astray by drink cannot be wise.” Proverbs 20:1 (NLT)
Seventh-Day-Adventists pioneered taking these and many other Bible health habits seriously. They became the longest living population in the USA as National Geographic researcher Dan Buettner found. Many national science organizations have done extensive scientific studies on why they are the longest living people in America. The scientific results of studying them have been some of the most valuable in history. Scientists say: “There has likely never been a series of scientific medical studies that provided more useable health benefits to as many people than those conducted on the Seventh-day Adventists over the last 50+ years.”
What Adventists Mean To You
http://www.worldlifeexpectancy.com/what-adventists-mean-to-you www.ted.com/talks/dan_buettner_how_to_live_to_be_100?language=en
3) ENERGY: Scientists are finding numerous solutions to our energy problems. The big problem is that politics and corporations are creating many obstacles to change and sometimes destroying very effective solutions in order to maximize their profits. “How Big Oil Conquered the World” documents some of these. Many scientists in these TED Talks and in other lectures discuss very effective solutions in the area of using sustainable methods of energy to replace polluting fossil fuels and there is also quite a bit that individuals can do. https://www.ted.com/topics/energy
4-5) ENVIRONMENT/CLIMATE: They are numerous easy ways to change our lifestyles to protect the environment. We can Stop Junk Mail Give Up Bottled Water Reduce Your Waste Conserve Energy Conserve Water, Green Your Transportation, Eat Local Organic Foods, Build A Strong Community and others.****
Dr. Marco Springmann and colleaugues from Oxford speak of one of the most important ones, “What we eat greatly influences our personal health and the environment we all share…more plant-based diets…could reduce food-related greenhouse gas emissions by 29–70%.” They found that savings from not eating meat could be up to $20-$30 trillion worldwide per year.
Analysis and valuation of the health and climatechange cobenefits of dietary change. Marco Springmannet all. www.pnas.org/content/113/15/4146.full.pdf (see also: www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/03/the-economic-case-for-worldwide-vegetarianism/475524/)
Just one person mostly/totally giving up meat can save 162,486 gallons of water annually, freeing water needed for 445 people! www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/eat-for-the-planet-meat-and-the-environment/
www.livescience.com/22814-meat-eating-vegetarianism.html
6) PEACE: First, we must not engage in any physical violence. Non-violent protest is far more effective in the long run. When activists become violent, it gives the military industrial complex and corporations an excuse to portray them as criminals or even terrorists and use their weapons. This is exactly what profiteers from violence and war want. The more violence, the more they profit. Preventing war is 60 times cheaper than fighting it. https://www.fcnl.org/updates/invest-in-smart-security-171
Dr. Chenoweth points out that it can take as little as 3.5% of the people in a nation to cause major change, something we saw recently in South Korea where ~2% of the people protested for weeks and it caused the removal of the president.
The success of nonviolent civil resistance: Erica Chenoweth at TEDxBoulder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJSehRlU34w
Second, who pays for wars? Middle class and poor taxpayers, in both money and more tragically in blood. Who profits? The military-industrial complex and corporations that build the military machines. Why is it that they make billions of profits in every war from the blood of citizens? In what other industry can you find a situation where one group pays all the costs and takes all the risks while another group risks nothing, pays nothing and yet reaps all the profits? It is for this reason that America’s founders made very serious warnings against endless wars.
Many researchers and documentary makers as well as US generals, congressmen and presidents have agreed that war is not very often for the official purpose that it is claimed to be for. News organizations are also fairly easily manipulated to blow the trumpet of patriotic support for war while minimizing and sanitizing the greed, abuse, suffering and death that happens to innocent people, especially those on the other side. John Pilger brilliantly exposes this problem in this documentary:
The War You Don’t See
Chris Hedges talks about his experiences with war:
“I spent most of my adult life in war. I began two decades ago covering wars in Central America, I spent five years in the Middle East, I spent seven in the Balkans, where as Mary Ellen mentioned, I covered the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo. My life has been marred, let me say deformed, by the organized industrial violence that year after year was an intimate part of my existence. I have watched young men bleed to death on lonely Central American dirt roads and cobble stone squares in Sarajevo. I have looked into the eyes of mothers keening over the lifeless and mutilated bodies of their children and I have stood in warehouses with rows of corpses, including children and breathed death into my lungs. I carry within me the ghosts of those I worked with my comrades now gone.
…We have become tyrants to others weaker than ourselves and we believe falsely that because we have the capacity to wage war we have the right to wage war. Once you master a people by force you depend on force for control…Thucydides wrote of Athens’ expanding empire and how this empire led it to become a tyrant abroad and then a tyrant at home. The tyranny Athens imposed on others, it finally imposed on itself. The lust for war, the desire for profits led the Athenians to lose sight of democratic ideals, ideals that are their legacy to us and should be our legacy to others…
The attacks on the World Trade Center illustrate that those who oppose us, rather than coming from another moral universe have been schooled well in modern warfare. The dramatic explosions, the fireballs, the victims plummeting to their deaths, the collapse of the Towers in Manhattan, were straight out of Hollywood. Where else, but from the industrialized world, did the suicide bombers learn that huge explosions and death above a city skyline are a peculiar and effective form of communication? They have mastered the language we taught them. They understand that the use of indiscriminate violence against innocence is a way to make a statement.
We leave the same calling cards. We delivered such incendiary messages in Vietnam, Serbia, Afghanistan, and now Iraq. It was Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, who in the summer of 1965 defined the bombing raids that would kill hundreds of thousands of civilians north of Saigon as a means of communication to the Communist regime in Hanoi…
www.altruists.org/static/files/War is A Force That Gives us Meaning (Transcript).htm
Third, we need to understand the main causes of violence in our world now. Dr. Pape from the University of Chicago studied all suicide terrorist attacks from 1980-2009. He found that 95 percent of all suicide terrorist attacks are due to “a specific secular goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory the terrorists view as their homeland…every suicide terrorist campaign since 1980 has had as its main objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw combat forces from territory that the terrorists prize.”
http://terrorism.about.com/od/causes/f/SuicideBombFAQ.htm
See also:
http://political-science.uchicago.edu/people/faculty/pape.shtml
Third, one of the biggest fears of the 1% is that soldiers will stop fighting for them. In ancient Rome, when the plebians were desperate and getting more enslaved in debt, many finally refused to fight for the rich patricians when an enemy was approaching. In desperation, the patricians pleaded with them to fight. They said they would if certain conditions were met.
“We will return to Rome if you will agree, first, to forgive the debtors who cannot pay; second, to free those who have been made slaves; and, third, to have two tribunes appointed to see that the patrician magistrates do not wrong us.” www.heritage-history.com/?c=read&author=tappan&book=roman&story=plebeians
Maybe it’s time for soldiers these days to consider doing something similar. This is especially true, since it’s very clear established fact that most wars are fought to control valuable resources like oil as even CNN reports.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/19/opinion/iraq-war-oil-juhasz/
7) CREATION: Darwinism portrays a world of survival of the fittest and violent conflict with a few who are powerful dominating the rest. In contrast, creation inspired numerous human rights activists throughout history as well as the Declaration of Independence with the concept that all people are created equal. It’s no accident that the world has seen much more conflict after Darwinism and materialism were widely accepted. Even Richard Dawkins of Oxford has said, “…study your Darwinism in order to learn what to avoid in setting up society. What we need is a truly anti-Darwinian society.” and “Let us understand Darwinism so we can walk in the opposite direction when it comes to setting up society.”
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/danthropology/2014/12/richard-dawkins-we-need-an-anti-darwinian-society/, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/03/AR2006020300822.html
But if people are taught that Darwinism is true, even when it’s quite clear it is not true by the 3 main ways truth in science is decided (pragmatic truth, correspondence truth and coherence truth), many are going to act in violent ways, especially if they are in desperate situations. A very brief summary of the evidence is:
PRAGMATICS: Creation science concepts and scientists have produced enormous benefits including inspiring equality and human rights, pioneering the scientific method, the peer review process and the idea of scientific journals, discovering most of the foundational branches of science, and saving ~2 billion lives due to biblical/creationist concepts promoted by Norman Borlaug, Edward Jenner, Semmelweis, Mendel, Pasteur, Nightingale, Ellen White and others. In contrast, Dr. Coyne admits that there are no practical benefits to Darwinism, except possibly 2 things. But the 2 that he mentions are actually part of creation science.
COHERENCE: All the main pillars of universal common descent for thousands of years going back to Greek times have had a short heyday of popularity and then been falsified and rejected by all scientists including Lamarckism, transmutationism, recapitulation, orthogenesis, xenogenesis and many others.
CORRESPONDENCE: Now even leading like Oxford scientist Denis Noble who pioneered systems biology “all the central assumptions of the Modern Synthesis (often also called Neo-Darwinism) have been disproven… “[21]
Other major scientists write, “We have identified seven key principles in The Origin of Species (Darwin, 1859)…None of the seven points…can be permanently retained. Recent advances from genomics refute the ideas of gradualism, exclusive vertical inheritance, evolution selecting the fittest, a common ancestor and the TOL. Indeed, there may not be any two genes that have the same evolutionary tree.” [22]
Just as important, all the main pillars of creation have been confirmed by science including a universe with a beginning, the origin of the solar system, the origin of life/biogenesis, the idea that the varied species of life on the planet have developed due to loss of genetic information (genetic entropy), creation health principles (that can save millions of lives and trillions of dollars per year), the origin of sex, the creationist concept of heterosexual marriage being best for children’s development, the importance of the weekly cycle and a day of rest for humans after work, the prediction that DNA has useful purpose and is not full of useless junk and a myriad of others.
Why do some secular scientists disagree with other secular scientists who see profound evidence of design in nature like many theistic scientists do? There are 3 big reasons.
1) Again, corporations and the 1% like conflict much better than peace because they profit from it. So as many have documented, they heavily promote Darwinism.
2) The 1% have heavily promoted a fallacy called methodological naturalism that is an a priori fallacy and is exactly the opposite of good science. Good fair and truth seeking science says that we must follow the majority evidence wherever it leads. Methodological naturalism says, no, at all costs do not do that. Your answers must always end up in materialism, no matter what. As a leading Darwinian professor put it :
‘Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic’ Todd, S.C., correspondence to Nature 401(6752):423, 30 Sept. 1999.
But there are many problems with this:
A) It is the exact opposite of genuine science and how rational thinking work.
B) The Bible warns against predetermining your conclusions with assumptions saying:
“Fools base their thoughts on foolish assumptions, so their conclusions will be wicked madness;” Ecclesiastes 10:13
3) Dr. John Lennox, professor of mathematics at Oxford explains that a great deal of media has caused many people to be confused on some essential questions in regard to science. He talks quite about real science vs. pseudoscience in this talk:
Why I am a Christian Complete Event in Perth, WA
“~41:00 Where did your I-phone come from? It came from technology. Where did technology come from? Modern science. Where did modern science come from? From belief in God, ladies and gentlemen.
C.S. Lewis put it brilliantly. He said,
‘Men became scientific. Why? Because they expected laws in nature. Why? Because they believed in the Lawgiver.’I’m not remotely ashamed to be both a scientist and a Christian and a scientist because Christianity arguably gave me my subject. Isn’t it odd therefore that Isaac Newton, Galileo, Kepler, Babbage, Maxwell… all of them werebelievers in God. It didn’t hinder their science. It was the powerful motor that drove it. That’s fascinating to me.
It’s even more fascinating…that people like Stephen Hawking…say that you and I have to choose between science and God. Newton didn’t say that. He said the more he studied the universe, the more he admired the genius of the God that did it that way….How have we moved from Newton to Hawking?
I want to suggest that we’ve moved from Newton to Hawking by a series of colossal and partly deliberate misunderstanding of two things. One is the nature of God and the other is the nature of science. Very briefly, because this is why I am a Christian. Because it makes sense of my science. It gives me a rational basis for doing it.
The problem with God is that many of the atheists who are my friends think that I believe in a God of the gaps, that is, I can’t explain it, therefore God did it…like the Greek god of lightning. Do atmospheric physics experiments at the University of Western Australia and that god will disappear in a single lecture. Those gods disappear by the advance of science. If you think God is a god of the gaps, of course you’ll ask people to choose between God and science. But the problem is that’s the way you’ve defined science. The God of the Bible isn’t the god of the gaps. He is the God of the whole show, the bits we do understand and the bits we don’t. He is the Creator and Sustainer of the Universe. One of the major problems in the contemporary debate is that people relegate God to be a Greek god and then dismiss him. The argument is pseudo. People who do that haven’t the faintest notion of the ancient gods. One of the world’s authorities on ancient near eastern gods Werner Jaeger, professor at Oxford, “The difference is vast. The ancient gods of the Greeks, the Romans, the Assyrians, the Babylonians are all descended from the universe. They are products of the basic primeval mass energy of the universe. The God of the Bible created the universe.” That’s the difference. So we need to be clear about God.
~43:00 But then we need to be clear about science. Because you see the problem is people say we’ve got a law of gravity Hawking says, therefore the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Now apart from the triple logical self-contradiction in that sentence, because we’ve got a law of gravity (because we have something, the universe will create itself from nothing which is a flat contradiction). What he’s saying is because we’ve done some science, therefore there’s no God. We’ve got a law. Marvelous. Imagine I have an engine and give you 2 choices.
A) The law of internal combustion.
B) Henry Ford.Well, that’s absurd isn’t it. I find that even children can see what professors can’t see.
Why is the kettle boiling? Because the heat energy has got to such a stage that the molecules or water are vibrating and they are splitting off steam…No it isn’t. It’s boiling because I want a cup of tea.
It’s the same at the level of the universe. God is not the same explanation as a scientific explanation. He is the reason there is any explanation at all.”
CONCLUSION & FUTURE ACTION
Marches and protests are valuable. But it’s crucial to make substantive actions in our daily lives and also politically in regards to who we support. Start following the principles above and join marches for real independence following Bible principles. Insist on changes by governments and corporations based on the principles above. But when they don’t follow them, work to implement them at family, church and local levels in every area you can learn about. Then share them with others. Follow specific personal actions to bring change with or without politicians and corporations.
Check this website for more information on this in the near future for more information.
Visit local churches to find out more information about God’s way to change the world!
https://www.adventist.org/en/utility/find-a-church/
See also:
http://blog.truth-is-life.org/human-rights/socialjustice/
Learn all the science you can and study the Bible for the best solutions to world problems.
God bless!
REFERENCES
[1] Just 8 men own same wealth as half the world. Anna Ratcliff. 16 January 2017. https://www.oxfam.org/en/pressroom/pressreleases/2017-01-16/just-8-men-own-same-wealth-half-world
[2] America is an oligarchy, not a democracy or republic, university study finds.Cheryl K. Chumley. The Washington Times – Monday, April 21, 2014 www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/apr/21/americas-oligarchy-not-democracy-or-republic-unive/
[3] Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens. Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page. September 2014, pp. 564-581 https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-politics/article/testing-theories-of-american-politics-elites-interest-groups-and-average-citizens/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B
[4] Europe’s Transition From Social Democracy to Oligarchy.Michael Hudson. December 6, 2011. michael-hudson.com/2011/12/europes-transition-from-social-democracy-to-oligarchy/
[5] Outrageous FortuneDocumenting Canada’s Wealth GapDavid Macdonald. April, 2014. https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/National Office/2014/04/Outrageous_Fortune.pdf
[6] “Rise of the imperial plutocracy: New research is exposing the stunning domination of global super-elites. Sean McElwee. Aug 31, 2015. www.salon.com/2015/08/31/rise_of_the_imperial_plutocracy_new_research_is_exposing_the_stunning_domination_of_global_super_elites/
[7] http://www.filmsforaction.org/articles/worlds-lowcost-economy-built-on-the-backs-of-46-million-modern-day-slaves/, www.globalslaveryindex.org/findings/
[8] http://www.nationaldebtclocks.org/
[9] Black and Hispanic Communities Are Spending Almost Half Their Incomes on Rent. Annalyn Kurtz. Mar 29, 2017. http://fortune.com/2017/03/30/rent-black-hispanic-neighborhoods/
[10] http://theweek.com/articles/573307/end-police-violence-have-end-poverty
[11] theweek.com/articles/587242/why-poor-white-americans-are-dying-despair
[12] Robert Reich: The 1 percent is gutting America’s middle class. Robert Reich. Nov 19, 2014 www.salon.com/2014/11/19/robert_reich_the_1_percent_is_gutting_americas_middle_class_partner/
[13]Big Oil owns the Republicans while Wall Street owns the Democrats” www.dailykos.com/story/2011/11/14/1036362/-
[14] www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs355/en/
[15] www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2014/air-pollution/en/
[16] Air pollution costs the global economy more than $5 trillion annually in welfare costs, time.com/4484027/air-pollution-economic-toll-world-bank/
[17] Climate Change Kills 400,000 a Year, e360.yale.edu/features/calculating_the_true_cost_of_global_climate_change
[18] https://www.amazon.com/Meat-Climate-Change-Leading-Warming/dp/0692641157
[19] http://www.climatecentral.org/news/studies-link-red-meat-and-climate-change-20264
[20] http://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2012-10/daily-infographic-if-everyone-lived-american-how-many-earths-would-we-need
[21] Physiology is rocking the foundations of evolutionary biology – Denis Noble – 17 May 2013, onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/expphysiol.2012.071134/full, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/suzan-mazur/replace-the-modern-sythes_b_5284211.html, Neo-Darwinism has failed as an evolutionary theory, www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/features/neo-darwinism-has-failed-as-an-evolutionary-theory/98152.article
[22] “Rhizome of life, catastrophes, sequence exchanges, gene creations, and giant viruses: how microbial genomics challenges Darwin”, Vicky Merhej and Didier Raoult, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3428605/, Aug. 28, 2012.
ADD
short summary on land
EXTRAS
A couple verses in the Bible which illustrates a key test of whether our practices are following love or greed are these:
A) GIVING IS A BLESSING
Paul wrote:
“And I have been a constant example of how you can help those in need by working hard. You should remember the words of the Lord Jesus: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’” Acts 20:35
We should always give tithe and offerings to God’s church and science shows enormous benefits from doing so which confirms the Bible’s claims (Malachi 3:8-10). Research by Dr. Cnaan shows that for every $1 given to churches, there are ~$4.77 of benefits to the members and surrounding communities(and sometimes up to $10 if a church is more biblical). This investment beats nearly all others in financial ways and also other ways.
We should also give to those who are in emergencies around us or that we are aware of in other places because of the golden rule and because science shows it is quite valuable for us in terms of health, relationships, building trust and other ways.
https://www.happify.com/hd/science-of-giving-infographic/ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/generosity-health_n_4323727
B) GIVE MORE WHEN YOU HAVE NO MAJOR DEBT
Our first responsibility is to work to make ourselves independent and take care of our families (1 Tim. 5:8). The Bible says we should aim to owe no one anything except love.
“Owe nothing to anyone—except for your obligation to love one another.” Romans 13:8
“But those who won’t care for their relatives, especially those in their own household, have denied the true faith. Such people are worse than unbelievers.” 1 Timothy 5:8
There may be emergencies or times of war or depressions, joblessness and certain exceptions when we have to go into debt. The Bible understood and provided for and made a welfare system where a person could work to provide for their needs, pay off debts, etc. (this was called slavery in the Bible, but is wrongly understood to be chattel slavery…it was voluntary since forced slavery and its source, kidnapping, were condemned as capital crimes in Ex. 21:16). God also said that after 7 years all debts should be canceled if a person was still unable to pay (Deut. 15:1) since no one should be enslaved to debt for life. But if at all possible, debt should be avoided.
C) WHY IS GETTING OUT OF DEBT IMPORTANT?
Why should we pay off our own debts before giving large amounts to others? Because being in debt is a form of slavery and actually robs God’s people and church of more funds long term:
“The borrower is slave to the lender.” Prov. 22:7
All throughout history, exploiters/tyrants tried to force people into debt since that is when they could strip them of their assets.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2011/12/02/debt-slavery-why-it-destroyed-rome-why-it-will-destroy-us-unless-its-stopped/
And when people are in debt, they are often forced to give over a lot more of their financial resources, leaving less to take care of their families and less to contribute to God’s cause.
D) By the Bible’s definition of love, if we have enough for our needs, which includes paying off all debts we ow, then we are to find ways to give to others in need to help them become independent too.
“If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister[a] in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person?” 1 John 3:17 (NLT)
According to researchers like Dr. Chomksy and others, this kind of giving love is the scariest thing to the people who are in the top 1%. At a lecture at Syracuse Peace Councils, Noam Chomsky said:
“…this concept of sympathy and social solidarity is considered extremely dangerous [by the most powerful and wealthy people, the top 1%]. There’s a major propaganda effort to try to drive into people’s heads that you should only be concerned for yourself…There’s been a tremendous effort over the years to somehow drive that into people’s heads and to drive out all normal human feelings…That’s pretty dangerous. If it was happening in a small country, it would be a shame. But when it’s happening in the richest most powerful country in history, it’s very dangerous.”
Noam Chomsky on U.S. Education System https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5xkp8ce7DQ (~8:08)
The reason love, sympathy and solidarity are considered so dangerous is because one of the biggest ways the super wealthy make profits every year is by forcing many people into debt, charging them interest, consuming enormous amounts of their time by trying to figure out how to juggle debts, and then stripping away their wealth and assets in various ways.
The church needs to pay very serious attention to this, because as evidence in the 2nd section below shows, this can consume huge amounts of people’s salaries, sometimes all of it and plunge them into debts where far more of their resources will be taken by banks and financial institutions. Then people will be far more limited in how much they can contribute to the church. This is a severe detriment to not only churches, but communities where churches are located as well as the research by Dr. Cnaan above proves.
Ellen White has many warnings about how Satan tries to cut off funding for churches so they can’t do God’s work as well, and this is certainly one of his most successful ways to cripple the church.
If Christians and other moral people teach valuable truths, follow God’s principles of love, equality, justice and helping those suffering oppression as the Bible tells them they must do (Prov. 29:7; 31:8,9, etc.) and help those in difficulties, the super wealthy will lose much of this way of getting billions of dollars per year for no work done at all.
Some sincere people though become a little confused by a couple texts in the Bible (esp. Acts 2:42-7;4:32-25, Luke 14:33) and feel guilty if they don’t sell their houses and all they have and give (almost) everything to the poor or missions. This is a serious misunderstanding because not only is it not following Bible principles, math and economics show that it is detrimental to the individual, their family, the church and society which also proves it is not what God wishes. As research below shows, just the cost of rent alone will cause a person to lose ~30-70% of their income and there are other consequences as well. If God tells someone by revelation to do that for an urgent reason, then it would of course be for the best. But it is clear from principles above and below that the early church members sold off extra houses and gave to those in need to help them get out of poverty (Acts 2:42-7; 4:32-35).
The Bible has numerous balanced verses/principles showing that God wants each person to avoid the evil extreme of greed on one side, but also the evil extreme of poverty and landlessness and homelessness on the other.
1) Jesus was very clear that He did not come to abolish the laws of the Old Testament in Matt. 5:17-18. Apostles confirmed this and complemented early Christians on following all of God’s laws in several cases. This means that the early Christians understood and followed to the best of their ability the principle of God that every family should have their own home/land outside cities (Lev. 25:1-20, Ez. 47:22-23, etc. Land rights are the foundational capital that underlies every farm, growth of plants, business and nearly every venture and project of any kind on this planet. See more on this here:
http://blog.truth-is-life.org/rights/thrive/land-rights-most-crucial-for-freedom/)
So when the Bible says that believers sold everything and gave to the poor, it should be quite clear that this is meaning they sold the extra houses and lands they owned, gave away money they didn’t need to help other church members become stable and things like that.
2) God tells us that we are responsible to take care of our family’s needs first or else we are worse than pagans (1 Timothy 5:8). Having land and a home debt free is certainly part of that.
3) The Bible, Jewish culture and Ellen White are very clear that we should not give in ways that create dependence (Ellen White in fact says that some kinds of giving cause harm to people…and she is referring to types of giving that create dependence). We may need to help in emergencies, etc. But whenever possible give in ways that can help people to become independent themselves so that they can also be able to contribute and thus exponentially increase the ability to help people in need. Paul wrote:
“Our desire is not that others might be relieved while you are hard pressed, but that there might be equality. At the present time your plenty will supply what they need, so that in turn their plenty will supply what you need. The goal is equality. ” 2 Cor. 8:13-14
Here are some principles the Jews followed, and they are some of the principles that helped them to endure, overcome and eventually conquer all their oppressors, nearly all of whom have disappeared from history.
Maimonides defines eight levels in giving charity (tzedakah), each one higher than the preceding one.
On an ascending level, they are as follows:
8. When donations are given grudgingly.
7. When one gives less than he should, but does so cheerfully.
6. When one gives directly to the poor upon being asked.
5. When one gives directly to the poor without being asked.
4. Donations when the recipient is aware of the donor’s identity, but the donor still doesn’t know the specific identity of the recipient.
3. Donations when the donor is aware to whom the charity is being given, but the recipient is unaware of the source.
2. Giving assistance in such a way that the giver and recipient are unknown to each other. Communal funds, administered by responsible people are also in this category.
1. The highest form of charity is to help sustain a person before they become impoverished by offering a substantial gift in a dignified manner, or by extending a suitable loan, or by helping them find employment or establish themselves in business so as to make it unnecessary for them to become dependent on others.
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/eight-levels-of-charitable-giving
See also:
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/256321/jewish/Eight-Degrees-of-Giving.htm https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/45907/jewish/Eight-Levels-of-Charity.htm
4) God tells us that debt is slavery (Prov. 22:6), and in Romans 13, Paul tells us that we should try to owe no one anything except love. So getting ourselves out of debt is a priority. There may be emergencies that come along when we can and should help even if we are in debt, esp. life and death situations or time sensitive one. Look and see who has the greater need, pray about it and act according to the principles God gives and what He impresses you to do.
5) Happiness is not just something nice to have. It’s important and it is a need for many reasons. It increases efficiency 20-30%, improves motivation according to former Harvard professor Stephen Achor, and many other things. So it’s important to do some enjoyable things with family, make memories, and things like that with your spouse/family. If you do this, then you can be a lot more efficient in doing other work and benefit others more.
But be careful to avoid the temptations of luxury and hoarding that are wasting resources that God gave to human beings to do good works and that don’t create any more happiness anyway. As even atheists have acknowledged, the the most effective ways to be happy are by following God’s principles in the Bible, especially by making strong relationships with God and being part of a healthy church community weekly involving celebrations, eating good food, service to those being oppressed and more. There are many other important habits that improve happiness to a greater or lesser degree as well. Here are ~54 of them and most are quite simple and cheap.
https://www.happierhuman.com/how-to-be-happy/
6) Some have a hard time with Luke 14:33 . But Ellen White explains that it’s about giving up anything that would separate us from Jesus. “In giving ourselves to God, we must necessarily give up all that would separate us from Him. Hence the Saviour says, “Whosoever he be of you that forsaketh not all that he hath, he cannot be My disciple.” Luke 14:33. Whatever shall draw away the heart from God must be given up. Mammon is the idol of many. The love of money, the desire for wealth, is the golden chain that binds them to Satan. Reputation and worldly honor are worshiped by another class. The life of selfish ease and freedom from responsibility is the idol of others. But these slavish bands must be broken. We cannot be half the Lord’s and half the world’s. We are not God’s children unless we are such entirely.
http://www.ellenwhite.info/books/bk-sc-05.htm
There will be deceptions and thieves and injustice in our world and have been in many cases in the past. But if God’s people as a community follow His principles and protest and oppose injustice, they will eventually conquer all enemies. Not only that, God says that the wealth of the wicked will eventually come to them.
“Good people leave an inheritance to their grandchildren, but the sinner’s wealth passes to the godly.” Proverbs 13:22
The history of the Jews and much science confirms this too. For example, look at the massive benefits, including financial benefits, that come from following Bible health principles. These alone can double your money by your 50s if followed.
http://blog.truth-is-life.org/health/health/