The rich man’s wealth is his strong city;
The destruction of the poor is their poverty.
Proverbs 10:15 (NKJV).
Sometimes the message is very simple, but what comes out of that simplicity can become rather complex. When you have resources, you have means by which you can protect yourself, you have means by which you can manifest your will in this world, and if you do not have resources or power, those that do can rule over you.
Think of the phrase "beggars can't be choosers." The nugget of truth here is that if you do not have, and you are asking from those who do, and especially if it is not deserved (like a wage), the person asking is in no position to deny that which they have been given.
In our modern world, however, this has been upended by the "victim identity". No longer is your moral value determined by the choices you make, but by the choices others have made which negatively affected you, and so now restitution must be made and there are none who have any moral authority to disagree.
Rooted in consequences, there is some element of this dynamic which holds true. If you've been wronged by someone else, then restitution does need to be made, and the Bible shows records of how that process worked for Israel on a variety of different topics. The terms and conditions were set beforehand so that a vindictive spirit would not prevail in the process of restitution, but note that even here within Proverbs we have seen that some sins bear a cost which cannot ever be repaid.
When the dynamic of being wronged and needing restitution goes beyond a circumstance and becomes your identity, however, you are perpetually wronged and perpetually justified in whatever you do in seeking restitution.
On modern secular morality, the "beggar is the chooser", and so everyone is in a rush to be recognized as the most impoverished, the most persecuted, the most victimized, so as to maximize their currency in the economy of victim-hood. The bigger the victim you are, the more you can demand, and the less anyone can say anything about it.
Instead of seeking to be the rich man, then, people seek to be the poor man so they can just take the rich man's riches for themselves, as that is indefinitely easier than having to earn and keep those riches by their own efforts.
All the sudden, you deserve anything and everything you can imagine, because if you've been infinitely wronged, you're entitled to an infinite amount of "right", of "justice", to compensate.
Solomon's wisdom is that resources are a form of protection, and in the modern economy, the "riches" are no longer monetary, but circumstantial. In the modern world, "victimization" is the stronghold of the "rich", and the "oppression" of the "poor" is their destruction. It almost makes sense, doesn't it?
Either way, keep in mind this dynamic the next time someone promotes asceticism, or discusses reconciliation for some fictional wrongdoing. What you are being asked to give up is power over your circumstances in order to gain power in some abstract dimension of moral economics.
It's always about power, who has it, and what they'll do with it, and at the most basic level, everyone wants to survive and thrive, so they're going to scheme and toil as best they can to achieve just that.
Everyone is doing it, there are no exceptions, and people who claim otherwise are prime examples of those whose strategy requires deceit and lies instead of a more direct confrontation.
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