James 1:17-27
Stained by the World
James Sledge September
2, 2018
There
was an article in The Washington Post recently
entitled, “Are rich people more likely
to lie, cheat, steal? Science explains the world of Manafort and Gates.”[1]
If you followed Paul Manafort’s recent trial, you know about the $15,000
ostrich and python jackets, the exorbitant lifestyle and the lengths he was
willing to go to maintain that lifestyle.
And of course Manafort is but one example in a
litany of cases involving insider trading, misuse of campaign contributions,
and so on. According to the Post article,
a growing body of scientific evidence finds that wealth, power, and privilege “makes
you feel like you’re above the law… allows you to treat others like they don’t
exist.”
Among the scientific studies was one where researchers
watched four-way stop intersections. Expensive cars were significantly less
likely to wait their turn than older and cheaper cars. The same researchers
sent pedestrians into crosswalks and observed which cars obeyed the law and
stopped when someone was in the crosswalk. Every single one of the older,
cheaper cars stopped, but only half of the expensive cars did.
Drawing on many different research studies the Post article said, “That research has
shown the rich cheat more on
their taxes. They cheat more on their romantic
partners. The wealthy and better-educated are more likely to
shoplift. They are more likely to cheat at
games of chance. They are often less
empathetic. In studies
of charitable giving, it is often the
lower-income households that donate higher
proportions of their income than middle-class and many
upper-income folk.”
This sort of research is relatively new, and so
there is a lot it cannot say about why or how this all works. But the evidence
is pretty compelling that being wealthy and/or powerful has a tendency to make
you an awful person. And perhaps that’s exactly the sort of thing our scripture
is worried about when it to keep oneself
unstained by the world.
