The Corporate Antichrist

The recent Supreme Court decision, allowing Corporations to funnel an unlimited amount of BRIBES directly into the coffers of their hand-picked candidates, sounded like the death knell for freedom in America. The hope that we could salvage our ‘government of the people’ is being ground to pieces under the jackboot of corporate power. If Benito Mussolini was correct in proclaiming that: "Fascism should more properly be called 'corporatism,' since it is the marriage of government and corporate power." - then John Roberts is the presiding judge who performed the wedding ceremony.


But the hijacking of democratic government is only an outward manifestation of a deeper spiritual problem. As Paul pointed out, “we fight against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” The real enemies of democracy and freedom, of God and mankind, are the demonic spirits that once masqueraded as pagan gods but now have taken on the shape of Multinational Corporations.


Clement of Alexander (circa 150-213) proclaimed: "The verdict of the prophets is that the gods of all the nations are images of demons." Like the earlier pagan gods, corporations are both the inventions of human beings and demonic in character. Because any principality or power that we bow down to and serve, other than God, is demonic by definition. The pagan gods deceived and enslaved humanity, and kept us from knowing the true God. In the same way, modern corporations have deceived us into believing that they serve our interests, even though we are serving theirs.


If we were to worship a god carved out of a stick of wood, we would be worshiping a demon of our own creation. Any power attributed to our false god would be the power that it had to take away our freedom and deceive us spiritually.


In the same way, we’ve created thousands of Corporations out of wood/paper. And like pagan gods, we’ve created them in our image (by making them legal persons), made them potentially immortal, and given them power to direct our lives. So whether we bow down to Zeus and Hera, or allow Goldman-Sachs to hijack our government and make all the rules, is really beside the point. The point is that we are now doing their bidding. We were created to rule over God’s creation (Gen 1:26); but instead, we have created false gods/demons/corporations, to rule over us and direct our lives.


God is not a name, but a title. Whatever becomes the controlling passion of our life is our god. If our life is controlled and directed by greed, it was only natural and necessary that we would eventually bow down to the gods of greed = corporations. The principle that rules in our heart must eventually rule over our life.


America is a nation with a multitude of gods. The only difference is that our gods are listed on the stock exchange, which we follow with religious devotion. Wall Street has become Mt. Olympus, where our collective fate is in the hands of the corporate gods. Wherever the market decides we should go, we must follow. Whenever they are in financial trouble, we must bail them out. Whichever candidates they select, we have no other choice but to vote for. And whatever position they take on legislation, our government has no choice but to yield.


As David Korten pointed out in When Corporations Rule the World:

“In the quest for economic growth, free-market ideology has been embraced around the world with the fervor of a fundamentalist religious faith. Money is its sole measure of value…The economics profession serves as its priesthood. It champions values that demean the human spirit, it assumes an imaginary world divorced from reality, and it is restructuring our institutions of governance in ways that make our most difficult problems more difficult to resolve. Yet to question its doctrines has become virtual heresy, invoking risk and professional censure and damage to one’s career in most institutions of business, government and academia.”[1]

Multinational Corporations command countless millions of employees and contractors, while directing the lives of billions of consumers across the globe. They determine whether or not we get basic health care, whether we can buy a house or a car, and whether we will go to war. The power once attributed to the gods has been actualized in modern corporations. Their only purpose is to make money, and people are only the means to that end.


The confused message of the tea party movement is symptomatic of the moral confusion that reigns in America today. Folks have every right to be angry when their lives are no longer under their control, but unfortunately, they don't seem not to understand who/what is responsible. Democratic governments is based upon the Judeo-Christian principal that “all people are created equal, with certain unalienable rights.” Self government is the antidote for corporate rule. The problem isn’t that our government spends too much money; the problem is that the tax code, along with most of the money our government spends, are both geared towards serving corporate interests.


The problem isn’t with our government but within ourselves; our government is the reflection of our values. If human greed empowered the rule of corporations, then by establishing justice we could make them less powerful. Health Care Reform, insuring that every American has basic health care, would have been one small step in that direction. But it seems that the power of corporate interests is already so strong, and the confusion among the public so complete, that our government is powerless to act on our behalf.


I've had to deal with my own health issues the past few years, which is why I haven't have the time or energy to post on this blog. I know first hand how screwed-up the system really is. More time and energy is spent in just trying to deal with the economic repercussions of getting sick than with the illness itself. That's not the way it should be in America, and that's not the way it is in every other industrialized country in the world. Basic health care should be the basic right of every American, instead of punishing people for getting sick. Maybe if we had a president who was as good at making that case as he is at trying to prove he's bi-partisan they would have passed a bill months ago. But that's another story.