LDS Cooperative "one heart and one mind...with no poor among us"

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand. [1]

I have often wondered whether Christ knew he would be rejected. There is a certain sense that Jesus actually believed people would follow him. A sense that he believed his announcement of the Kingdom of God including the announcement of a jubilee year, his preaching of enemy love, compassion, and his example would change the world. I have often felt that Jesus hoped, if not believed, the people would follow him rather than torture and kill him. There is a certain sense that his apocalyptic vision of Matthew 24 is not God’s plan or desire but rather the natural consequences of our refusal to follow him. We were offered the kingdom of heaven and instead chose mimetic rivalry. Perhaps the end is not an end brought from above but the natural results of a culture that refuses to follow Christ.

What is the crisis we find ourselves in? We live in a world with enormous economic disparity between the rich and the poor. All the while we are bombarded with a relentless global procession of objects of desire. From the favelas in Brazil to the streets of Cairo, the masses of humanity find themselves taunted daily with desire for things and objects which only a few could ever possess. And still the gap increases as wealth accumulates more and more in the hands of the few. It is the Lord himself who tells us that one man should not possess more than another, therefore the whole world lieth in sin. The centre cannot hold.

The world begins to spin uncontrollably on the carousel of desire. And its spinning faster and faster becomes a vortex in which those at the bottom for whatever reason must inevitably retort through violence, seeking to reverse their destiny. One can imagine scenarios in which such violence is harnessed by reactionary movements, seeking to control the vortex, to slow it, to give it a superficial sense of rhythm, order, and right. This is a solution that can arise itself out of disaster (economic, ecological, or cumulative right wing frustration), and in turn create catastrophe on a scale that would dwarf all previous exercises in scapegoating and the making of victims. [2]

This disparity of economic power led to Marxism and violent revolution. This disparity, regardless of the evil Bin Laden represents, is what terrorist use to mobilize those in the third world, those who justifiably feel like victims in relation to the West. We forget that we live a world economy based upon competition. This mimetic rivalry or competition is always great for the winners but if the winners are always the same individuals then one day the tables will be overturned and the rivalry will mature into its natural end, violence. We should not be surprised when a global economic system based upon desire, competition, and avarice bears fruit? Perhaps this is part of the apocalypse Christ foresaw.
________________________________
[1] The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats
[2] Cross purposes: The Violent Grammar of Christian Atonement, Anthony Bartlett, 222