Our society worships many things, but greed is one of the largest things. Says me, who has Gear acquisition Syndrome — something one of my sons is also afflicted with. We can spend hours drooling over… catalogues. (Computer parts for one of us, lenses for the other). And I am not averse to earning money. I’ve been poor and rich: rich is more fun.

But no money can buy beauty. Beauty exists everywhere, and one has to open your eyes.

That photo was taken with the product of my semi obsessive collecting of old cameras, that are no longer fashionable. One does not need much in this life.

Moreover, those who are quite rich often got there by cheating, by defrauding, and by exploitation. And for that we are called to repentance.

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit”—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil. So whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.

Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver have corroded, and their corrosion will be evidence against you and will eat your flesh like fire. You have laid up treasure in the last days. Behold, the wages of the laborers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, are crying out against you, and the cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts. You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you.

(James 4:13-5:6 ESV)

There are many things that we should care about and pray about. We need to consider the issues of justice in this life, and in our society. We need to protect our young men from the predations of the SJW and our young women from the same group, for they feed women sweet poison and introduce them to the thug life while removing any traces of masculinity from men who produce: the thugs they desire are drones at best.

We need to be thinking that our plans can change at any time: it has been my experience that every 10 year plan I make breaks down because of the needs of people. And people are more important than plans. One does not know: I could not survive today — if a road crash does not take me, my job does have a risk (at least one psychiatrist is killed most years by a patient somewhere in the world) and illness can take us at any time.

James reminds us that we are mortal, and we have to account our possessions and plans as mere tools. This is a harsh correction to those of a geeky bent, like me, who enjoy writing study plans and processing photos, or planning hikes in detail. And for those things (as it would be for any business) planning is required to prevent failure.

But the plans have to be abandoned if life gets in the way.

And in Christ our success is not measured in toys. Or the size of our pensions. The righteousness of the nation is not measured by the GDP. And if we say that, or believe it, or teach it, we are falling into error.

Instead, consider prosperity a trial and trap. Being well off allows a society to be stupid, to subsidize people’s idleness, and puts us all under trial. For when we are rich we assume that our daily bread will just be there.

And it is far worse when you rely on this weeks wages to feed and clothe your family, but your leaders tell you that we are prosperous, we are rich, and that we are secure. Those statements are a lie: you are but one blood clot (in your heart or brain) away from losing your job, or indeed one statement from being hounded from the same by the protests of the perpetually offended.

We are called to far more than increasing the profit of a corporation. We are more, as a society and nation, than our GDP. The measure of how we are doing is the teaching of righteousness and the protection of the vulnerable.

And on those measures, the societies of the late 20th century, regardless as to if they are capitalist, social democrat or overtly socialist, have failed. For we rejected the creator that made us, and disavowed our frailties, in the hope we could, make people better.

That is hubris: we cannot. Deciding that the inconvenient should simply die, by termination of pregnancy or the Liverpool protocol, compounds this and adds to our guilt.

And unless we repent, the judgement will be terrible.