What I have noticed while reading City of God is the view on
rich and poor, which resembles the perspective we came across in the Bible. We
can see this when Mary talks about her gratefulness to God and all the power
that he has, as she includes “He has brought down the powerful from their
thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty” (Luke 1:52-52). In City of God, we are also faced
with discussion bout rich and poor in the form of analogy, saying that the poor
man is better: “is religious and pious, of kindly disposition, healthy in body,
self-restrained, chaste in morals, and at peace with his conscience”(Book IV,
Chapter 3), while the wealthy man has worries, enemies, insecurity and fear.
What struck me the most about this is the recurring view of negative things
being attached to the wealthy and more positive to the poor. Is this in a way
an aspect of justice and equality or on the other hand, relationship between
rich and the poor and the view on authority and power mainly by the poor, with
underlying cultural context in both cases.
I think that a lot of this view has to do with Augustine's opinion based on the cultural context of the situation in which he lives. Also in Book IV, Chapter 3, Augustine says "is there anyone so senseless as to hesitate over which of the two to prefer...it will be easy to see on which side lies folly ad on which true happiness." Augustine believes that the modest man lives the better life. I thought that perhaps this is because the modest man may have less instances in which he will be tempted to sin because of all of the positive qualities attributed to his poverty. Though he may not live a wealthy lifestyle, the poor man is not nearly as greedy and is more faithful to God. The way I interpreted it was that the poor man is more powerful because he has more control over himself and his sins (I could totally be reading this the wrong way though).
ReplyDeleteI interpreted this as the poorer man taking more to religion and God for blessings in their life. In times of need, people turn to prayer for answers and signs. However, when one has everything they could want and masses of wealth, there is no need for prayer, as all of their prayers seemed to have been answered. Also, more wealthy people seem to be more authoritative, therefore turning less to the authority of God. What is strange is that God creates these people knowing the wealth they will achieve, yet regards the wealth with negativity.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree with Rama's point. One of the things I was unsure about was Augustine's belief that true happiness is unattainable. In Book IV, Chapter 3, he asks "It is reasonable and wise to glory in the extent and greatness of the Empire when you can in no way prove that there is any real happiness in men?" He then goes on to talk about the different conditions between the rich and the poor man. Perhaps Augustine believed that the poor man was closer to reaching happiness?
ReplyDeleteI agree with both Grace and Rama that Augustine regards wealth with negativity. I think this can be related the negative image the wealthy have today and in the time of Christ. The wealthy tended to want to show the general public that they were religious and showed off by praying in large ceremonies in public places. I can't find the exact verse, but in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ addresses the Pharisees about this and again, he talks about this in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5) when he says "Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the Earth." The wealth in general, tended not to be meek or were fake-humble in order to protect their public image and change the negativity attached to being wealthy. It's almost ironic because this in itself was a sin and Augustine would have probably scoffed at it because he believes the more modest man to lead the more humble life. This idea of modesty and lack of money has perpetuated today as we often view the rich as greedy and arrogantt.
ReplyDeleteI think that this means that the poor often look to God for help, more than so the rich, who feel that they don't need as much help from God. But also I think that God has a total bias for the poor, there are passages where he talks about taking wealth away from the rich any giving it to the poor. Which in all honesty is not just. A lot of those rich people worked for the money, if he took it away from the Kardashians it wouldn't be a problem. But a lot of people who are high up have worked very hard to get to where they are. Lets be real here though, the Bible was probably written by people who were poor so I feel like naturally there is going to be a bit of bias there. I think that a lot of times people who are not as wealthy as some have accepted the fact that they are most likely not going to do as much, and are happy with their life, they are okay with being poor as long as they are doing what they want.
ReplyDeleteYou talk about the Bible as basically written by poor people with a class interest. I pretty much agree. However, there isn't some neutral ground for you to stand on and look down at them for being "biased". You yourself carry bags full of bias when considering political-economic issues like wealth inequality. When you throw out the rhetoric of capitalist liberalism, e.g. "individual accomplishments", "hard-work", "entrepreneurship" etc (not that you yourself necessarily used those terms), your are effectively upholding a class interest, i.e. that of the bourgeoisie, and an ideological interrest, i.e. free-market capitalism and liberalism. And here you find yourself in the same position as the Biblical authors. I myself also acknowledge, while writing this response to you, that I have my own leftist agenda and certain groups I'd like to uphold. In political matters these expressions of community and allegiance are inescapable.
DeleteI thought it was interesting that in the first letter of Paul to Timothy he writes in chapter 6, lines 9 and 10, "But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains." Why did God create this gap between the wealthy and poor if loving money is considered evil? We can say this is because of free will, where people make their own economic choices, but then why does he create the concept of money? If he is this all powerful being he would not have made something so evil.
ReplyDeleteI believe that he associates power with the poor mainly because there is an abundant more amount of them. Maybe by associating more negative things with the wealthy he is portraying that too many good things go to lesser amounts of people, ultimately creating an imbalance in the city. I think this is a very monumental statement regarding the poor being better off because it recognizes that with struggle can come success, even if it is interpersonal.
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