Ready for an eye-popping example of arrogance? Check out Brian Griffiths, international adviser at investment bank Goldman Sachs, during a church service in Britain last month:
“The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest,” Goldman’s Griffiths said Oct. 20, his voice echoing around the gold-mosaic walls of St. Paul’s Cathedral, whose 365-feet-high dome towers over the City, London’s financial district. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all.”
Now I can’t be certain, but I am pretty sure that’s not the message Jesus wants his followers to take away from his teachings.
It sounds more like Griffiths tolerates inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for himself and his fellow London bankers who can look forward to £6 billion in bonuses (that’s $10 billion for us Yankees) this Christmas season. This in spite of six consecutive quarters of a shrinking U.K. economy and a nationwide unemployment rate of 7.9 percent.
Some mention of charity would have been nice and, well, more authentically Christian.
(Hat tip: TheStreet.com)
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Torn here.
On one hand, those bonuses may be contractual. On the other hand, the guy’s a jerk. Not saying ALL financiers are jerks, mind you.
I will. All financiers are jerks.
What a pompous assbag.
Pompous sure, but I kind of agree with him.
Afterall, that’s why we tolerate the 23% fraud estimated to be affiliated with US social programs, isn’t it?
The reason the US has the best medical care in the world and makes 90% of breaking achievements in the area is because we’ll pay top dollar for it, and it trickles down everywhere.
When’s the last time there was a medical breakthrough in Somalia?
90% of the historically valuable shipwrecks in teh world were found by entrepreneurs, not Federal archeologists.
The list goes on and on.
So I’m guessing he missed the bit in the bible where Jesus went postal on the money lenders in the Temple.
Way to miss the point of the teachings, my darlings.
If the financier met the company set requirements for the year, or exceeded the requirements his contract will state he is owed a bonus. It is not the financiers fault for making his quota. In fact, if they did exceed the quota they do deserve the bonus.
That said, he does really sound like a windbag.
The American Dream isn’t that we’ll all have exactly the same amount of assets regardless of how smart or how hard each of us work.
The American Dream is that we’ll be rewarded in direct proportion to our hard/smart work.
“90% of the historically valuable shipwrecks in teh world were found by entrepreneurs, not Federal archeologists.”
I think you meant “90% of the valuable shipwrecks…” Entrepreneurs are in it for the gold, they get rich. Archaeologists are in it for the history, they don’t get rich. Sucks because the entrepreneurs generally destroy all historical value going after the riches.
Sorry for the tangent, as a former Nautical Archaeologist people like Mel Fischer make me angry.
“The injunction of Jesus to love others as ourselves is an endorsement of self-interest,”
Yes, but what Jesus MEANT was that pursuing the best interests of your fellow man is in your best interest. You are, in other words, your brothers’ keeper.
The conclusions he went on to draw are not supported by Jesus’ quote alluded to above. This guy has little concept of Jesus’ message, but I can only berate him so far for that. The fact that he found his way into that church to speak in the first place, for example, tells me that the stewards of that institution also lack insight into Jesus’ intent. (Otherwise, why’d they let the guy in?)
And this can be no surprise in England, where a king once decided the church’s teachings were inconvenient to him. So he started his own, Anglican church. Today, St. Paul’s serves the exalted and important, in that very tradition of tailoring the rules to suit the powerful.
“more authentically Christian”
Alas, most of it is just as bad. Gotta kiss a lot of frogs and so on.
Do they have the American Dream in Britain?
I’m not knocking the pursuit of riches (after all, once in a while I get paid) but what he’s arguing, that Jesus justifies greed, is laughable.
“We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieving greater prosperity and opportunity for all.”
Lol you say that like it’s a bad thing.
Really, when was the world ever equal? It drives me crazy when people whine about inequality and disadvantages. Geez dumb-a, what’d you expect?
I don’t see that he is saying Jesus justified greed. I am missing it? He is saying it is okay to have self-interest. He does not say self absorbed or self centered.
Apparently he thinks quantum physics proves that putting a camel through the eye of a needle is totes doable now.
Misuse of biblical quotes not acceptable. The Eye of the Needle is a passage way into Jerusalem. In biblical times the wealthy would enter into the city with an entourage – much like today – except they would travel with elephants and camels. It was very difficult for the display of prosperity to enter through the “gate”. So if someone wanted to enter through the Eye they would have to dismount and leave the display behind or turn around and go through the main entrance to Jerusalem. Either way, it was considered humiliating. The point of the passage is to teach us not to be so arrogant with our wealth and be willing to walk the earth with every other soul.
“The Eye of the Needle is a passage way into Jerusalem. In biblical times the wealthy would enter into the city with an entourage – much like today – except they would travel with elephants and camels.”
Apropos of what I said earlier about the tremendous paucity of understanding of Jesus’ actual teachings. What you are reciting is a MYTH perpetuated by, er, God only knows how many religious institutions. (Purpose being to excuse the wealth of some of their members, not to mention their own institutional worth.) I myself have sat in classes taught by experts espousing this tripe, and stopped them cold with a simple question: “Where is it?”
This may explain why I am not terribly popular. (Don’t feel badly for me. It has its compensations.)
Research it. There is not, and never was, such a place.
Always examine your beliefs. ALL of them.
http://msgboard.snopes.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=94;t=000884;p=0
http://message.snopes.com/showthread.php?t=27044
I could dig up better refs than these message boards (I have a small library of theological reference books), but they’re a good jumping off point for your own research. Some things, it’s better to learn yourself. Best of all to learn yourself is how much garbage ‘the crowd’ has tried to shove down your throat. Isn’t that, after all, what Deceiver is all about?
Here’s another ‘needle’ link:
http://www.biblicalhebrew.com/nt/camelneedle.htm
OK, now you’re on your own.
Thank you, Mister Snitch
Te nada, ‘babe’.
You’re welcome, ‘babe’. (I posted this sentiment earlier, and Deceiver dumped the comment. I have no idea why. Maybe they’ll dump this one, too?)
I’m with FS, but old boy Griffiths truly DOES have it bassackwards. Jesus was not endorsing self-interest; He was taking it as a given. Everyone, no matter how self-effacing they try to pretend to be, loves him/herself to some extent. We generally feed, clothe, and look after our needs, don’t we? He was saying that our neighbors’ needs should be every bit as important to us as our own. He wasn’t plumping up the pillows beneath our own well-pampered butts.
Snitch: We didn’t purposely dump the comment, I promise you. Sometimes comments with links get spammed automatically. Yours might have been a casualty of our spam filter.
He wasn’t plumping up the pillows beneath our own well-pampered butts.
Well-put, Beige. But when I talk about this issue, I like to emphasize that Jesus isn’t really saying “stop being selfish” here. He is saying that YOUR best interest is served when someone else’s lot if improved. If you think carefully about the nature of life during Jesus’ time, and the nature of life for many people today, you realize that we all do better when more of us do better. (Yes, I know that sounds like a Yogi Berraism.)
What this big-time banker and faux-follower of Jesus should have understood was this: In telling us to be our brother’s keeper, Jesus was laying out the ground rules for a healthy economy, with a thriving middle class.
Re the eye of the needle: The lesson there is really very much the way it sounds. You CAN’T get a camel through the eye of a needle. Doesn’t fit. Doesn’t anywhere near fit. And yet it is EASIER to get a camel through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven.
Why is that? In some churches, alas, we get the cock-and-bull story I vetted earlier. In others, we are taught that God hates wealthy people, or that he hates wealth. Neither of these explanations is true. (The Old Testament in particular is full of stories of wealthy people whom God loved dearly.)
God ‘hates’ no one, though he does hate things we are prone to do. But the rich man’s problem with God is simple: Wealth gets in the way. It’s stated in the Bible that a smart businessman should use his money to buy friends, allies, and good will in this world. That’s the theme exploited by Dickens in A Christmas Carol. Scrooge found real joy in helping others once he got past being, frankly, a prisoner of his own wealth. BOTH Scrooge AND those around him benefitted from this insight.
This is worth consideration because Scrooge is commonly portrayed as ‘mean’ and ‘cheap’ before he is visited by the spirits, and sees the light. That’s unfortunate, because his real problem is that his wealth left him as emotionally crippled as Tiny Tim was physically crippled. He’s not a bad man who becomes good, he is a damaged man (all his life) who finally sees beyond the constraints of his wealth and becomes whole. He should be seen as a sympathetic figure throughout, not just after he starts throwing money around.
I wonder if this Griffiths has his Christmas dinner at the home of one of his company’s lowly secretaries or janitors. Or if he sees and openly acknowledges the people who serve him in so many ways throughout the year as human equals, or mere conveniences. Scrooge fraternized and took a deeply personal interest in his employees. More likely, Griffith’s social standing – fueled by his wealth – inhibits such behavior. And, well, that’s the point here.
Mister Snitch, that was beautiful.
In fact the teachings of Jesus on wealth are just the opposite of what this banker thinks. For example, in Matthew 6:19 Jesus says “do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth”, and a few verses later, in Matthew 6:24, he says “You cannot serve both God and Money”. In Luke 6:24 he says “woe to you who are rich.”
There’s a good discussion of how Jesus really felt about wealth at http://www.gospel-mysteries.net/teachings-jesus.html. It says that he disapproved of wealth because he thought it was wrong for some people to live in wasteful luxury while others starved.
Bravo, Bob.
“Always examine your beliefs. ALL of them.”
Ament to that!
Interestingly enough, we (meaning, “we ALL”) tend to misunderstand both poverty and wealth in relation to character. Too many of us automatically assume that wealthy people are evil, that they had to have achieved their status on the backs of the oppressed. People who subscribe to this dogma tend to see the poor as somehow ennobled by poverty. OTOH, there’s the idea that God rewards “good” people with wealth and health, and that the poor are poor because God doesn’t like them as much. Either belief is mistaken, reductive thinking.
I know a man who was already comfortable after retiring as a NASA engineer, received a $9 million payoff from stock (in his son’s previously-failing company), and promptly turned around and bankrolled a residential recovery ministry for alcoholics/drug addicts with the money. To me, that looks like God gave him money because he’d know what to do with it. Dude still lives just like he did before the $9 million; he wasn’t poor before, and he isn’t now. But now, because of him, a lot of other lives have been changed.
I also know people who share what little they have with the less-fortunate, and a lot of less-fortunate who sit on their butts and gripe b/c they “ain’t got nothin’”.
No law, no social program, will EVER, EVER make this world completely “fair”. There will always be poor people, and there will always be rich people. Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try to help others. But while there are plenty of poor people who aren’t stupid, stupid people will usually end up poor, because they make stupid decisions, and get stupid results. And there is no cure for stupidity.
I am simply astounded by the number of smart people who read this blog. It’s a real nice place to visit, really it is.
Makes me feel all warm and squishy (either that or in just sat in something)
“stupid people will usually end up poor, because they make stupid decisions, and get stupid results.”
Unless somebody bails them out. Whenever I see someone say “Jesus was a liberal”, I think, “What liberal today would portray a partying prodigal son as a sinner in need of repentance?”
And I’m guessing both you AND Jesus missed the part about the money changers being in the temple because the Holy Poohbahs stubbornly wouldn’t accept the currency of the realm, but insisted on accepting only outdated greek coins…
Try using your confederate dollars at the Piggly Wiggly tonight. I dare ya.