Our True Wealth

A person’s true wealth is the good he does in this world.

Muhammad 

As Brother Wayne Teasdale explains it, the founder of Islam had his own unique take on wealth, money and abundance.

“The prophet Muhammad understood well that none of the material wealth of the world lasts. The only things that follow us into eternity are our good works. All the rest is irrelevant. He fixed his eyes on the Divine Will, how Allah measures what is of value here in this world. He knew that material wealth can be enjoyed and hopefully shared in loving compassion with others.

But the only reason  for material wealth is to share it with the less fortunate, not to hoard it for oneself. This is our glory as spiritual beings;  to assuage the suffering of others, to offer what we have to those in need.

Our true wealth of merciful actions is seen by God, and he blesses us for it, continually reminding us of all the importance of other-centeredness. Are you aware of where your true wealth is found? Are you actively pursuing this moral and spiritual treasure?”

It is possible, maybe with the exception of the willingness to be violent, that there is no greater or glaring hypocrisy in the cross cultural religious realm than the motives of greed and the accumulation of personal and selfish wealth. This craven greed is the self-serving accumulation of wealth shared with only a select few while so many human beings, in their own faith tradition, die of preventable conditions such as hunger, disease, and homelessness.

If I am myopic, I would point to the enormous wealth of the Saudi princes at the expense of many other people in Africa and the Middle East.  I could rail at them for their excess and ostentatious wealth and how they will support wars and conflicts and religious restrictions that hold others captive and unequal. 

But if I were to that, then I would had to conveniently excuse the 1% of our USA tycoons and the standards of living aspired to by our Western society where our 5% population that controls at least  40% of all earthly resources, and then brazenly justify it under the rewards of capitalism while there are millions undernourished, poorly educated, and poverty stricken in every town and city in our country!

To repeat the worn out and largely ineffective phrase, “ What would Jesus do?” What would Muhammad do? What would any approach to compassion for humankind, for the animals and for the earth do? 

I aver that the bar for religious observance is set far too low as to be even believed in our contemporary world, so that the only solution is to either truly aspire to live out the teachings of your espoused religious teachings, or that humanity, as a whole, has to dethrone religion from its towers of greed and selfishness, and require a universal tithe, and/or an equitable standard for belonging to any society that truly cares for its people…