Did You Read That Controversial Oxfam Report About Wealth Inequality?

The report that said that if poverty is left to continue at this present rate, the wealth held by the world’s richest 1% will be equal to the wealth of the rest of us combined together this year 2016. Yet, the rich still want more.

62 people (-53 men and 9 women) own as much as half of the world population combined.

Mathematically, that means that (the rich)
1% of world population own 48% of wealth

19% own about 46% of the wealth

80% share just 5.5%.

                   

When you hear the term ‘Wealth inequality’, or ‘Global poverty’ (and organisations like Grameen foundation, J-PAL, IRP, etc talking about poverty eradication,) essentially the stakeholders are trying to get more of the wealth of the 1% to trickle down to the other 99%, especially those that are so poor that they cannot survive another day.

The 2015 Nobel laureate in Economics won it for his work on income inequality

I pointed out in a blog post that the Nobel awarding committee thought that wealth inequality is so important to global development and peace that they awarded Angus Deaton the Noble prize last year for his extensive work charting global developments in health, well-being and inequality.

No wonder someone once said that if this inequality and poverty issue isn’t resolved, the 3^rd world war will be between the rich and the poor.

Abuse of Charity (funds)

The other day, I was discussing with someone the Church in Nigeria and the abuse of their charity status.

I said that people who open shops these days and call them churches, collecting ‘tithes’ (10% of people’s salaries), offerings, seeds, etc –without redistributing the wealth/helping other poor members- do not know what they are getting into. (1 Pet 4:17)

Christians are not instructed ANYWHERE IN THE WHOLE BIBLE to pay 10% of their government contracts, salaries, gifts to any church or pastor as first fruit, tithes, etc!

In the Acts of the Apostles, the first church had mostly believers, who were not greedy or money-driven. Acts 4:32; The bible says that no one saw what he had as his own- they brought it to church so that no one will be hungry; so that no one will be unable to pay his rent; so that no one will say he can’t survive. Of course, we know what happened to the greedy ones in Acts 5.

When James was chastising the church (in James chapter 2), he mentioned the fact that they showed favoritism by putting rich people decked in gold and expensive apparel in the front seats while seating the poor at the back. He also chastised those same rich people who tell an hungry believer in church to be ‘Filled by faith’ sending him/her home hungry, instead of helping to feed them.

The church has never been a place where people come and go back the same (negative or poor) way they came...unless that place is not a spiritually uplifting community of true believers/Christians.

Warren Buffet gave away 99% of his billions, saying the remaining 1% is more than enough for him

When the richest stock investor in the world gave away 99% of his wealth to charity, that was perfectly biblical. In fact, more spiritual than many so called Christians who limit God to ‘10%/tithes’.

How do I mean?

In Christianity, you don’t give 10% or 50%, or any percentage at all. There is no such law for us. In fact, you can give 99%, if you have the faith...just like Buffet. And I am sure that the value of Buffet’s 99% is far more than all of the so called 10% some churches ostracize their members over. 

Yet, God will reward a widow who gives all, more than Buffet who gave 99% of billions.

You can give 100%, if you have the ‘faith’ to

When the Widow gave her 2 mites (Mark 12:41-44), Jesus said she gave 100%. He did not tell her to take it back, neither did he tell her to always bring ‘100%’ (as some would do today).

In Christianity, each person has the spirit of God (they should if they are truly Christians), and personally carries his/her cross; each person personally runs his/her race. Christianity is a personal spiritual journey!

God does not punish the sons anymore for the sins of the father, neither does he bless the sons (extra) for the good work of their father. Each person is responsible for his actions and inaction. [That is not to mean that repercussions/rewards don’t spill over to family and friends.]

  

Why Charity organisations are not taxed

The government does not tax charities because they believe they do not have a regular source of income. In other words, they get donations from philanthropists, and those donations are (mostly) infrequent.

But when an organisation, a supposed charity organisation, requests and mandatorily collects 10% of members’ salaries/first fruits/contracts, do you not think they should also be mandatorily taxed by the government?

Wealth inequality: the Governments’, and charity organisations’ fault

But we pay taxes because we expect the government to act in the best interest of the citizenry. [In developing countries like Nigeria, we refuse to pay when we see them misappropriating and embezzling it.]

Likewise we donate to charity/pay offerings in church because we also expect that they will help to eradicate poverty, and bridge the wealth inequality gap -not build lofty cathedrals, buy private jets, and finance universities that their average members cannot afford!