How did we come to this?

 A friend recently asked me:

How did we come to this?

It's been a slow spiritual journey that started with questioning God's Commandment, "Though shalt not covet ..."

Just as the Serpent taught Eve to question God regarding the fruit, our society has been taught to question God's law about covetousness. We've been told that it's good to covet the possessions and wealth of those who are millionaires. Than we can covet the possessions of those who are $250,000-aires.

Once you covet another man's possessions, it's a short step to stealing them, and if he resists, then it's a short step to killing him to take those possessions. This is especially true if we can tell ourselves that we're doing it for “a good cause”. Who can't think of someone more deserving of money than “that greedy millionaire”. So, in our own pride, we've supplanted God's Law with our own judgment as to what is right. We take it upon ourselves to supplant God with Man.

All of the Commandments are tied together. For as we are made in God's image, to sin against another man is to sin against God. But as it is evil for a rich man to forgo charity, it is equally evil for us to exalt ourselves to the position of God, or deem ourselves more knowing than God, and say to the rich man, “We are going to take your money by force and distribute it as we see fit, for we are higher than God and we know better than God how to allocate that money. God made a mistake when he allowed you to have it, and we are here to fix God's mistakes”
Do you think people that have already told themselves they are smarter than God, and more fair than God, will hesitate to disobey any other commandments? To justify covetousness, is to justify theft, and to justify murder. Just as Jesus said to lust after another man's wife is adultery in your heart, and hating a man in your heart is murder, once you covet in your heart you've committed the theft. Once you convince yourself to hate the millionaire, you've justified his murder in your heart.

But at the heart of the matter is lack of faith in the principles of God's Word; an unbelief that what is written is true.

If you're not a Christian, I'll quote Yoda “Fear is the path to the Dark Side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

This fear of not having enough leads both the greedy and the covetous to sin. But neither groups' sin excuses the other.

Eventually, we end up in a society where everyone is using legal means to keep their temporal possessions or take those possessions from someone else and we lose sight of the spiritual truths as our focus is drawn to rest squarely on the physical And when we're only looking at our physical well-being, the spiritual withers and dies. Once we lose our faith in God, and put man, or government on God's throne we've lost the spiritual battle. And once that happens, everything evil is possible.

 Of course, that's a shortcut.