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Do a google search on executive pay compared to worker pay.  You’ll find dozens of articles.  Recently I read that CEO compensation was 344 times the average worker.  Sure you can make statistics say lots of things, but the trend is unmistakable.  Many fat cats are getting fatter without apparent concern for anyone but themselves.

I’ve always read the beginning of James 5:1-6 and thought of our current day environment.   I think it even more so when we look at this credit debacle.  Capitalism fails under a non-virtuous people.  Greed destroys all those it inflicts.  Thankfully brokenness is the beginning of repentance.  My God grant repentance.

5:1 Come now, you rich, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. 2 Your riches have rotted and your garments are moth-eaten. 3 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. 4 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. 5 You have lived on the earth in luxury and in self-indulgence. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter. 6 You have condemned and murdered the righteous person. He does not resist you. (ESV)

In listening to Obama’s rhetoric, there seems to be plenty of reasons to consider him.  Unfortunately when one digs a little deeper, his positions will not bring about the “change” that I would like to see.

This article is just a sample.

I don’t know if there is such a thing as a good depression, but I agree with the major points of this article.

Where is the church in all of this?  Where is the prophetic voice in God’s kingdom calling out Wall Street?

I have read too many reviews lately.  I decided to look up a quote I vaguely remembered from Theodore Roosevelt regarding critics.  I choose to enter the arena and will make every effort to spare my criticism of the valiant men and women who are also in the arena.

It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

~ Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

…the man who really counts in the world is the doer, not the mere critic - the man who actually does the work, even if roughly and imperfectly, not the man who only talks or writes about how it ought to be done.

(1891)

Criticism is necessary and useful; it is often indispensable; but it can never take the place of action, or be even a poor substitute for it. The function of the mere critic is of very subordinate usefulness. It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how the fight ought to be fought, without himself sharing the stress and the danger.

(1894)