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In some ways life is good in the 21st Century. I love hearing about new discoveries in medicine, and new treatments for sickness and injury. I also like being able to travel several hundred miles or kilometres in a day, in a car. Horse powered travel might seem quaint but not everyone wants to take a week to cover the distance that takes a day with a powered vehicle. Some modern things are precious. But there is another side to it, maybe.
Centuries ago, even decades ago, more than half of the world's people lived on the land. They grew crops or raised livestock. Or they worked at trades. In each case, they actually made something, to use or to consume. Or they provided a service, for the direct benefit of others. Today, in areas like finance and investment, people do not actually make anything new, they manipulate things to their own advantage.
Tell me if I'm wrong. I'll stand corrected if need be. But is that right or not? Thousands of people do not actually make, grow or gather anything. They just mess about with what other people have made. They make huge salaries messing about with money, buying and selling shares or arranging loans to make their own profit without actually producing or value-adding.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not a communist. It is quite legitimate to work as a trader making things available to people who want to buy, and providing a service to those who need to sell and haven't the time to do their own marketing. I've got some small business ventures going myself. But it seems a huge amount of commercial activity is about getting hold of some money, thinking up things to do with it and getting a profit without making anything new. Nobody's car gets repaired. No new food crops are grown. No clothes are made. No person's health is restored. No new medications are discovered. No new houses are built. If you saw the film "Greed", that's what it showed. Find new ways of doing things with money to make more money, instead of making any new product or service.
Have I got this right? The world's financial wizards built this huge Tower of Babel out of paper wealth, and then it collapsed and caused shocking damage to millions of others. The ones who put it there were not the only ones to suffer.
Is this the heart of the problem? Instead of growing something, making something or providing a service the clever thing is to buy what is there already, transport it three times round the world, get others to buy shares in it and sell it for heaps more than it cost - without the ones who provided it getting much of the proceeds. Is this another way of getting further and further from the way God intended us to live and communicate with Him?
If this is wrong, I'll learn from anyone who can show me how. I need to learn, not just lecture to others. Now I think of it, when there is a recession going on people might have more important things to do than read my scribblings. But any and all comments are welcome.