Evil: We Have Not Yet Resisted

 

It’s 9/11.

And there is still evil in our midst.

7 years later though, I am no longer terrified.  I am disgusted.  Disgusted at the subterfuge and diabolical strategies that our fellow Americans engage in for the glory of personal gain.

Enron, Worldcom, and Tyco are not isolated examples of poor corporate governance.  They are examples of a corporate culture run amok.  Run amok with a nod and a wink from our fellow American leaders in industry and government, no less.

The mortgage industry meltdown did not occur in a vacuum.  I recall at the height of the real estate frenzy, our fellow American leaders in government enthusiastically championed the housing market as the primary stabilizing force of the American economy.  This despite the opinions and warnings of some very smart people that a time bomb was being created through the combination of inflated housing prices and lax underwriting standards.

It is the tenth anniversary of the home run rivalry between Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa.  Both aimed to break the record of single-season home runs hit.  I am not a baseball fan, yet even I remember fondly the race to the end of the season.  Mark McGuire’s record breaking 70 home runs was overrun a few years later when Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in a single season.  In the end it turns out that all three of these athletic wonders, these multimillionaire sports entertainers, were liars, and cheats, and steroid abusers.  A flim flam was pulled on the American public, and those that knew, or should have known, looked the other way. 

This war that America is fighting in Iraq was supposed to have something to do with national security in the wake of 9/11.  Now, in spite of the fact that this effort of ours in Iraq is fantastically and mind bogglingly costly to the American tax-paying public, its purpose and objectives have changed, and have still not been made clear to the American people.  The great U.S. spending machine is in motion in Iraq, and its engines are not likely to be shut off any time soon–whether or not there is any return on all the money spent.

Nearly $4 for a gallon of gas.  We are led to believe that this pricing outrage is about gas shortages and the need for more oil drilling.  But my $80 tank of gas is not about drilling.  At root it is more of the same unregulated, free market, wheeling and dealing that is the problem.  This time it is oil futures speculation that’s making the rich richer.  Yet we are told, by a unified chorus of voices in industry, government, and media, that it’s more drilling that will allow us to afford to heat our homes this winter.  We are being led like sheep to the slaughter on this oil/energy issue, all for the benefit of those who control the means of oil production.

The most disheartening thing of all, though, is that many of these people who are making poor decisions and taking misleading positions, stand very close to, if not among, those who are called by the name of Christian. 

If these represent Christendom, surely we are doomed.

I am disgusted by self-proclaimed Christians who, in the name of values and principles, betray all they claim to believe.  I am astonished that these self-proclaimed Christians are able to perpetrate such frauds, and yet not incur censure from we the church.  Instead, we applaud their decisions, any and all, as long as they do not involve a compromise of our sexual mores. 

There is evil in our midst.  It is not the terrorist, nor the Muslim, nor the liberal.  It is us.