On Having Less

Recently four premier football players on a major league team had problems with the police for various bad behaviors…serious traffic violations, assault, having trouble with women in hotel rooms, etc. This all made the news, of course, to the embarrassment of the team manager who touted his players as a “gold star” team…good behaviors on the field and off as well. Well, not anymore. Stories like these are not real news anymore. In the world of high-stakes sports we have seen any number of multi-million-dollar young players engaging, at the very least, in careless, if not illegal, behaviors simply because they could…no ethics involved here.

What becomes real dismay is that these stories are not found only in world of sports. They are found wherever a few have huge sums of money and are able to do pretty much whatever they want…from buying up smaller companies to influencing elections. Once Middle America did not begrudge the well-to-do their money. After all, that was the American Way, as long as we could work well, work fairly and care for our families and share some of the wealth.

There were always the have-mores and have-nots, and we tried to help the have-nots. Now there is a new kind of living level that I call the have-less. These people are not falling into poverty; they are not usually able to increase income much, and they find that they have less and less to work with and must work more and longer to the point where some will now never be able to fully retire. Instead they are paying attention now to the huge flows of money that go to a very few, and the word, inequality, begins to be heard in terms other than racial and ethnic.

As spiritual thinkers, themes like jealousy and envy do not serve our good health, and they do not help in seeking new and greater possibilities. Still we could ask: Is ethical behavior fleeing the land of the free and the home of the brave? We may not completely be our brothers’ keepers, but we may be in danger of becoming immoral orphans. Our legacy as spiritual beings should bind us together, but our behaviors are casting us into shadows.

Jesus said that we cannot serve God and mammon. I always thought we could…but spirituality needs a better shake than it’s getting!