In God we trust?
A graven image
We never leave home without
Good
For all debts, public and private
When miss taking goods for good
The most note worthy tender legal
By George, Abe, Alex, Andy, Ulysses, and Ben
Close impersonal friends
Treasuring some denominations more than others
Speaking for itself
Silencing those without
Trust
In God
Wee
It is hard to imagine anything much more ironic than engraving on our money, “In God we trust.” In a so-called Judeo-Christian nation, the irony is even much deeper. Jesus tells us that “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” (Luke 16:13, NIV) Perhaps, the intent of engraving, “In God we trust”, on our money is to remind us that we are supposed to trust God rather than money. However, this also just seems to play into the irony. Of course, this irony has reached the point of the surreal in recent times in the United States, with the US Supreme Court declaring that money is free speech and corporations are persons entitled to rights formerly reserved for human beings. God has created human beings, and human beings have apparently created some other form of persons. In Wall Street speak it would be some form of human derivative. Wall Street is a modern-day Golden calf, creating idolatrous graven images. The reason such activities are considered idolatrous is because it violates the natural order of things. Humans are to serve God and one another. Corporations are legal fictions created to serve humans, a man-made technology or tool to be subservient to human needs. Corporate personhood is a derivative of the modern-day Golden calf, the worship of Wall Street, its so-called best and brightest, and, in the end, the worship of money. Money is a tool. People who worship money become tools, dehumanizing themselves and others. Wall Street brings us to a very sad state: we put a precise price on everything, yet lose our ability to value anything other than the almighty buck — deer me! We must not get caught staring into the bright headlights of unrestrained capitalism and its well funded propaganda trying to convince us that we are helpless against the idolatrous idea that serving money is inevitable and that we cannot do better. It strikes me that living in this surreal and cynical situation requires that real people speak out freely against this dangerous fiction of corporate personhood and money as free speech. Otherwise, corporations will rule us rather than the other way around, and money, concentrated in the hands of a few, will drown out the true speech of the people and we will be robbed of our democracy. This is all just a fancy legalistic way of the richer telling the poorer to shut up. What say you?
